Embedded sustainability: The Next Big Competitive Advantage - Book Report/Review Example

“Embedded Sustainability: The Next Big Competitive Advantage” Book Review A) SYNOPSIS The corporate world is undergoing a major transformation in terms of social responsibility and resourcefulness. The twentieth century viewed corporate social responsibility as a complementary service. However, environmental and social tensions have needed a new kind of organizational response since the year 2000s. The book is an attempt to demonstrate to organizations how they can leverage global issues better for long-lasting returns and growth. Authors Chris Laszlo and Nadya Zhexembayeva present the idea of “embedded sustainability,” which they define as the integration of ecological, health, and social principle into central business operations without compromise in cost or quality (Laszlo and Zhexembayeva 141). This integration allows organizations to generate even more profits for investors while reacting to the new market truths of decreasing resources, drastic transparency, and increasing consumer anticipations. The body of each chapter helps readers gain an insight into and take action in support of the concept of embedded sustainability. Here, Laszlo and Zhexembayeva expound on why embedded sustainability is currently a requirement in each industry, how smart firms are increasing value for their clients and investors, and what new management skills are required to compete in current markets. Laszlo and Zhexembayeva divide the book into four parts. Part I. The first part is “Suitability on the Shores of Business.” This part comprises two subsections, namely “Business reality reshaped: the BIG three trends” and “To the desert and back: a brief history of value.” Here, the authors note three separate but interrelated trends visible when one looks into the financial social, health, and environmental tensions that are beneath the sustainability canopy. The trends are decreasing resources, drastic transparency, and rising consumer expectations. Jointly, the three trends are turning into a key market determinant that is reshaping the manner in which organizations compete. The current states of these trends are so critical that they are altering the rules for returns and growth in nearly each industry of the United States economy. Part II. The second part is “What it means for business strategy.” This part comprises three subsections, namely “What would a strategist do?” Cool strategies for a heated world,” and “Embedded sustainability.” This part begins with a brief introduction entitled “The tree of profit: introduction to part II.” Part III. The third part is “getting it done” and comprises of three subsections, namely “Hot competencies for a cool world,” “Change management redux,” and “Putting it all together.” Part IV. The last part is “Leaping into the future” and begins with a brief introduction entitled “Fruits of the future: introduction to part IV.” This part comprises two subsections, namely “The world in 2041: a job interview” and “Sustainability inquiry.” B) REASONS FOR WRITING THE BOOK Laszlo is a junior Professor at Weatherhead School of Management where he serves as the director of Faculty Research at the Fowler Center for Sustainable Value (SUP 2015). Zhexembayeva works at the IEDC-Bled School of Management as the chairperson of the Coca-Cola Chair of Sustainable Development. Zhexembayeva also teaches sustainability approaches, organizational design, and leadership at this Slovenian school. Laszlo also wrote “Sustainable Value: How the Worlds Leading Companies Are Doing Well by Doing Good” in 2008 that explored sustainability in a different manner (SUP 2015). Laszlo and Zhexembayeva possibly wrote this book to communicate the need for modern organizations to accept a new model of economic discernment. This model has to integrate the “embedded” ecological and social expenses related to organizational decisions for companies to have a favorable business future. This intention was a friendly call that other writers in the field of economics are making. For instance, authors Pavan Sukhdev published articles and texts about the integral nature of sustainability in newly formed corporations in the United States and the EU. However, a difference in their works and this book in Laszlo and Zhexembayeva’s inclusion of a myriad of debates in economics concerning building designs and architecture. The authors organize the text to make it an indirect narrative that can seem clumsy for some readers. To communicate the message of the significance of embedded sustainability, Laszlo and Zhexembayeva use narrative that has prevalent, recurring, zigzagging, and delaying features. These features compel readers to go read through more than 100 pages before the proper introduction and explanation of the “embedded sustainability” concept. I presume the lengthy introduction to the book’s thesis is to demonstrate how sustainability is integral and pivotal for corporate development in terms of discerning business value. This way, the authors make an important distinction between former piecemeal strategies to sustainability and the more recent generation of approaches that insert sustainability in their central business activities. C) HOW THE BOOK APPLIES TO THE CURRENT BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT The book teaches organizational leaders that business approach and competitive edge are in essence about decision and discipline. However, increasing environmental and social tensions have left numerous firms across the globe struggling in terms of what these strategic decisions and discipline ought to resemble. The industrial corporate paradigm of the 1800 and 1900s is slowly fading and the sustainable business model of the 2000s is replacing it at the same rate. As a result, only keen leaders will quickly exploit the book’s plan for embedded sustainability as the basis for an innovative economic rationale of competitive edge. Essentially, embedded sustainability is the discipline for today’s business environment. Modern business environments know natural resources are decreasing and more transparency about internal, executive business operations, and more and more consumer expectations. This knowledge means corporate social responsibility is not adequate anymore. The defining feature of the prosperous twenty-first century business will be its capacity to embed sustainability in its backbone of existence and operation. Today’s business surrounding needs to embed sustainability to assure its future returns and value production. From this perspective, the book serves as a captivating guide for enterprises to perform while employing sustainable operations. The book admits the seriousness of connecting rigorous logical developments to the testing foundation of involvement with practical problem solving. Laszlo and Zhexembayeva use business language for the book clearly to appeal to organizational leaders today. This language is an indirect indicator of a positive message and hope for the environment and future businesses. If earth is to become sustainable, businesses can change their individual environments and not simply their images or be part of the key. Today, people trust corporate leaders the least and are on the verge of being disdained as much as political leaders. The potential of integrating sustainability in modern business environments is enough to make these corporate leaders the bringers of change that political leaders have always claimed to be unsuccessfully. This change affects the planet positively and develops a promising image for businesses from consumers and the community. In the process, it motivates workers to cherish their employers. Laszlo and Zhexembayeva contend that sustainability also builds the image of corporate settings. However, what parts three and four set the entire text aside from other texts about image-building, social responsibility and sustainability is the embedded nature of sustainability. This means the authors are not encouraging false advertising or greenwashing. In contrast, some organizations endow millions of dollars for charity efforts, record employee volunteer hours that reach a mere ten hours annually, and support just one sustainability project for several years. The outcome of these efforts do not compare to those of embedded sustainability in the sense that it alters organizational culture from one that is temporary-focused to a new one that concerns over the interests of all stakeholders. D) PERSONAL LESSONS FROM THE BOOK I learned that the integration of ecological, health, and social principles into central business operations without compromises in cost or quality are key to long-lasting returns and growth. Despite of references to companies pursuing a sustainable future, embedded sustainability seems like a very good idea to me. It means companies will have a more decentralized control over efficiency in its widest sense. As a result, business will gain full awareness of ecological and social movements, associated risks and opportunities, and possibly result in innovation and experimentation that includes additional bottom-line advantages. Furthermore, embedded sustainability gives workers and stakeholders new opportunities to discover new meaning in organizational culture. I also learned that sustainability is here to stay. Organizational leaders must adopt the opportunities formed by this new spectacle. Basing their business environments on the three separate but interrelated trends observed in the first part introduce an influential new model for transforming these challenges into organizational merits. Emphasizing the boundaries between enterprises, clients, the media and government can be confusing. As a result, Laszlo and Zhexembayeva contend that it is time for sustainability to drift from a bolt-on approach operating similar to a business’ main approach to becoming embedded fully in the tradition and operational, underlying forces of the sustainable enterprise. This book changed my thinking and behavior in the sense that it really expanded my mind and converted the principle of sustainability into an appealing instrument. I realized that this instrument is within all nations’ reaches although not without essential shifting of the manner people see sustainable value and the methods for accomplishing it. This realization made the book seem pleasant and terrifying to me at the same time. The vision of an available, sustainable reality formed by Laszlo and Zhexembayeva is wonderful but the effort required to get to here is terrifying. E) Conclusion Considering my goal was to learn how to tap into the power of sustainability to form enduring competitiveness, new wealth, and stakeholder value for a hypothetical business, the book was extremely helpful. I consider the book a must-read for all business leaders and managers. Laszlo and Zhexembayeva demonstrate major points through case studies and examples that offer a clear insight into how to implement an approach of embedded sustainability. Today, there is delightful and quickly growing literature in the field of corporate social responsibility and sustainability. However, many of these works rank as high as this book in terms of being insightful and innovative. This is because the concept of embedded sustainability approaches the field in a pleasantly all-inclusive yet pragmatic manner. I also found reading this book totally worth my time and not simply another grade. I consider myself a strategist, which made me find the book’s arrangement and consolidation with modern business approach systems very helpful. Modern business environments often think of this arrangement and consolidation as the missing link, which makes the advent of a special strategy a highly valuable aspect. In this case, the aspect is embedded sustainability and provides actionable logic, systems, and solutions that really move sustainability into the heart of an organization. Works Cited Laszlo Chris and Nadya Zhexembayeva. Embedded Sustainability: The Next Big Competitive Advantage. California: Stanford University Press, 2011. SUP. About The Authors. 2015. Stanford University Press. Web. 28 Feb. 2015. Read More