The Sustainability Edge: How to Drive Top-Line Growth with Triple-Bottom-Line Thinking

Apte, a former sustainability officer for Kimberly-Clark who now runs his own consultancy firm, and Sheth, a marketing professor at Emory University, propose a practical road map for businesses seeking both growth and sustainability built around responsible products and services. The book outlines the authors’ sustainability framework, in which seven stakeholder groups—consumers, customers, employees, suppliers, communities, investors, media, government, and NGOs—contribute to “practices that put a business in harmony with its whole ecosystem and environment.” Each element of the framework increases revenues through attention to the “triple bottom line” of financial, social, and environmental concerns. Best practices and case studies of companies such as Walmart, Ikea, and AT&T reinforce the authors’ argument. A stakeholder sustainability audit tool provides a series of questions for various stakeholder communities about their perceptions of where their company stands in its sustainability journey. The audit tool features a web-based survey, but readers need clearer instructions about where and how to access it. The book also helps explain the global reporting initiative used by many companies to report on sustainability. The book’s textbook-like style and narrow focus on the authors’ framework will likely limit its readership to business, government and advocacy groups. (Jan.)