Strategy and Sustainability ─ A Hard-Nosed and Clear-Eyed Approach to Environmental Sustainability for Business

Business and environmental sustainability are not natural bedfellows. Business is about making money. Sustainability is about protecting the planet and the life forms on it. Business is measured in months, and quarters. Climate change, deforestation, and the reduction in biodiversity occur over decades or even centuries. Business is about maximising this year's profit. Sustainability often requires significant short term costs to secure a very long term benefit. It's difficult to bridge the gap.

Strategy and Sustainability encourages its readers to move beyond the hype and takes a decidedly pro-business, fact based point of view, recognizing the complexity of the issues at hand and the strategic choices businesses can make. It blends the work of some of the leading academic thinkers in the field with practical examples from a variety of business sectors and geographies and offers a roadmap with which Sr. Management might think about engaging with the topic, not to save the planet but to fulfil its medium and long term responsibility to shareholders and other stakeholders.

Mike Rosenberg is an Assistant Professor at IESE Business School. Professor Rosenberg joined the faculty at IESE after working for more than 15 years as a Management Consultant for companies such as Arthur D. Little, A.T. Kearney and Heidrich & Struggles. The bulk of Professor Rosenberg's consulting experience was in the Automotive Industry where he led project teams working in all aspects of the business in Europe, North America, and Asia.

As an Academic, Professor Rosenberg lectures on Strategy, Globalization, and Sustainability in IESE's MBA and executive programs. He is also Academic Director of a number of the school's executive education programs. IESE has been ranked in the top 3 for its custom executive education programmes by the FT for the last three years. In addition to his work in Academia, Professor Rosenberg routinely consults with leading international companies and is asked to speak on topics relating to scenario planning, sustainability, and managing global firms.