Description
Book SynopsisChallenging current attitudes to governance and regulation in business, this timely book ascertains how regulatory approaches can innovate to ensure sustainable business that contributes to social justice for current and future generations within ecological limits.
Combining a research-based approach with a gendered perspective of how sustainability goals are shaped and how businesses should engage with them, this pioneering book creates a comprehensive and contemporary understanding of what sustainability means for business. Identifying the limitations of current approaches to gender and equality alongside the weaknesses of current regulatory and theoretical approaches in business, chapters seek to enhance the practical understanding and embeddedness of sustainability into business within legal and regulatory landscapes. Insights from an international collection of expert scholars in fields ranging from sustainability science to law offer meaningful alternatives to the sustainable business status quo on both conceptual and concrete levels.
Providing a regulatory analysis of business positioned in a systems-based sustainability research framework, this book will prove an invaluable resource for students and scholars of sustainability science, business and management, and law and regulation. With practical insights, it will also prove essential for policymakers working in business regulation and sustainability in business.
Trade Review‘This work belies the adage “Never judge a book by its cover” because the cover is inspiring and so is material within.’ -- Nordic Journal of International Law
‘Innovating Business for Sustainability
is an ambitious book that successfully questions business-paradigms and offers concrete, well thought out methods to implement sustainability in the modern business world. . . an important steppingstone in not just innovating business for sustainability but innovating the economic way of thinking around the globe.’ -- LEAD journal
‘Existing corporate sustainability practices and regulatory approaches may no longer be fit for purpose for our COVID-19 world and beyond. Innovating Business for Sustainability
not only captures the zeitgeist, its contributors do so in a reflective work of real scholarship which conveys the urgency of the challenge, bringing to bear thought-provoking fresh angles that frame and advance the field against the backdrop of a global pandemic.’ -- Deirdre Ahern, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
‘There is growing recognition that the interconnected global crises we face require urgent reforms to the conduct of business, yet the nature and extent of such reforms remain hotly debated. This essential volume compellingly argues that we must embed the concept of sustainability at the very heart of corporate law, and the authors’ expert analyses challenge us to rethink prevailing regulatory approaches in light of the gendered nature of existing structures and the complexity of social-ecological systems.’ -- Christopher Bruner, University of Georgia School of Law, US
‘The circular economy, corporate social responsibility, green finance, and other proliferating concepts in the corporate landscape speak to the importance of embedding greater environmental sensitivity in business practice. This timely, cosmopolitan volume provides, through the voices of female scholars, valuable insights into adapting business governance to the upheavals of the Anthropocene. Professors Sjåfjell, Liao and Argyrou offer a superb, landmark contribution to theoretical and empirical knowledge in this field.’ -- Benjamin J. Richardson, University of Tasmania, Australia
Table of ContentsContents: Preface x Foreword xii 1 Innovating business for a sustainable post-pandemic future 1 Carol Liao, Beate Sjåfjell and Aikaterini Argyrou PART I SUSTAINABILITY, GENDER AND THE ROLE OF BUSINESS 2 We need to talk about gender in the ‘safe operating space for humanity’ 18 Sarah E. Cornell 3 Systems thinking and the law in the age of the Anthropocene 48 Hanna Ahlström 4 The problem with selling gender equality as business innovation 67 Roseanne Russell PART II REGULATORY APPROACHES TO INNOVATING SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS 5 Superannuation funds and corporate sustainability in Australia 89 Vijaya Nagarajan and Ann Wardrop 6 Sustainability and implementation of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive in the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain 115 Isabel Άlvarez Vega and Charlotte Villiers 7 The shortcomings of regulating transparency for sustainable development in African mining 142 Sara Ghebremusse 8 How legal and tax support can reinforce the innovative and inclusive power of social enterprises 165 Pjotr Anthoni, Aikaterini Argyrou and Tineke Lambooy PART III RECONCEPTUALIZING THEORY, LAW AND GOVERNANCE 9 Can the modern corporation operate sustainably? 190 Susan Watson 10 Resilient corporate agents 210 Yue S. Ang 11 Regulation by litigation on the path to sustainable corporations 231 Carol Liao 12 Re-embedding the corporation in society and on our planet 255 Beate Sjåfjell 13 Corporate law and sustainability in a reimagined post-pandemic world 283 Carol Liao, Beate Sjåfjell and Aikaterini Argyrou Index
