In my last post I listed 10 books of the Noughties that make the case that contemporary capitalism is failing most of us. So what if you are convinced that business has to change: how do you set about changing it?

This second list features ten of the best titles published over the last decade on the subject of advancing sustainability in business.

The first five books help you make the case for change within your organization. Whereas the majority of books on sustainability argue that change should be advocated using the argument that “being good generates more profit”, - an argument that fails to bring about necessary change in those cases where behaving responsibly costs money - the selected books make the case that business has to change because society’s expectations of business have changed – with social and political consequences if business resists.

The second five books present management frameworks, perspectives and skills that will help to transform a business into a more responsible and sustainable organization.

1.  Value Shift: Why Companies Must Merge Social and Financial Imperatives to Achieve Superior Performance by Lynn Sharp Paine

Written by one of the only business school professors around with the intellectual integrity to point out the devastating flaw in the argument that you can rely on the pursuit of profit to motivate business to act responsibly. Paine argues clearly that there is something beyond shareholder value changing the business landscape, though she stops short of detailing what those other forces might be.

2.  The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy by Lisa Dodson

This book looks at the consequences of failing to reconcile business practices and ideologies with the better side of human nature. Put people in a situation where their freedom of conscience is restricted and they will find opportunities to resist. People like Bank of America’s Jackie Ramos.

3.  The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society by Frans De Waal

De Waal's latest exploration of what makes people tick. Why is it here on a list of books about business sustainability? Because the ideology and institutions of contemporary capitalism systematically undermine the application of empathy, and I argue that is a core reason why capitalism is in crisis, and why we will increasingly witness resistance like that illustrated in The Moral Underground above.

4.  The Market for Virtue: The Potential And Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility by David Vogel

David Vogel's book is here because he articulates clearly the limits of the supposed "business case" for responsible business behavior on which 90% of corporate responsibility advocates rely.

5.  The Civil Corporation: The New Economy of Corporate Citizenship by Simon Zadek

Zadek does a great job of describing the phenomenon of civil regulation - the pressures being brought to bear on business to improve its conduct. My only criticism is that Zadek is too focused on non-governmental organizations engaged in civil regulation, and ignores the more organic way in which individuals inside and outside business are advancing the movement for responsibility

6.  Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships by Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman is best known for his old book on Emotional Intelligence, but this newer book is more than an excuse to include Goleman's work in the present list. Social Intelligence brings the focus to bear on the importance of relationships at work, and what it takes to nourish them. Crucial for those seeking ways to move from business based on transactions to one of relationships.

7.  Making Sustainability Work: Best Practices in Managing and Measuring Corporate Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts by Marc J. Epstein

A very solid, reasonably comprehensive sustainability management framework in a single volume. The main criticism is that the case for action relies on the business case, and Epstein pays almost no attention to questions of character and empathy.

8.  Managing for Stakeholders: Survival, Reputation, and Success (The Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics Series in Ethics and Lead) by R. Edward Freeman

This book is the most recent encapsulation of Edward Freeman's stakeholder view of the firm. Freeman is the father of stakeholder theory.

9.  Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough

A simple but popular book that is great simply for throwing into question the way in which products are designed. Simple and radical.

10.  Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution by L. Hunter Lovins

Add together these new ways of doing business and what kind of economy will take shape? This book presents a now classic vision of sustainable business.

If you have enjoyed these two selections of books, do take a look at the other selections available at the APEsphere bookshop. This is an Amazon affiliate focused on responsible business and engaged, sustainable living. By buying your books from our bookshop you help cover the costs of running APEsphere – and you pay the same price that you would on the main Amazon site. Please take a visit and support APEsphere.

 

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This decade’s end almost passed me by – so immersed I have been in writing projects. That would have been a shame. The period of the Noughties marks precisely the period following my departure from the world of financial services when, after some false starts, I set about writing full time about the place of business in society.

It was a decade that began with the dotcom boom and bust, the Enron and WorldCom scandals, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s investigation of deep-rooted conflicts of interest on Wall Street and the investment houses, the rise and stagnation of the World Social Forum, the crystallization of mainstream concern about man-made climate change, and the high stakes game of financial pass-the-parcel-bomb that precipitated the global financial crisis, the Great Recession and with it placed over 100 million people around the world into a state of severe poverty and hunger.

I would like to share with readers of this blog the best of the books  I have read about these crises of capitalism and those which signpost the way forward. In this post I will list my favourite ten books of the Noughties that have drawn attention to what is deeply wrong with the particular incarnation of capitalism that has taken root over the last 30 or so years. In the next post I will list the ten books published during the decade that I feel help best to lay the foundations of a new approach to business management that is genuinely sustainable.

So, first to the selection covering the crisis of capitalism.

1. No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs by Naomi Klein

For younger generations awareness of the cultural problems stemming from contemporary capitalism began with this book, and for earlier generations it updated older concerns by addressing the impact of economic globalization.

2. Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin

This is the most comprehensive account yet produced on how the current financial crisis happened.

3.  The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan

A smart analysis of what is wrong with the corporate form using the even smarter metaphor of psychopathy to bring out what those flaws mean for the real world. There is also a great documentary based on the book.

4.  Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life by Robert B. Reich

Reich - Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration - does a solid job of describing precisely how big business is undermining democracy. He is also dismissive of the claim made by many corporate responsibility consultants that the profit motive can drive responsibility, in other words that it costs you nothing to act responsibly with due regard to the impacts of your actions.

5. Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz

This is the book that brought the academically lauded economist Stiglitz to a much broader audience. He cuts through the free market rhetoric to identify how the institutions of global capitalism undermine its promise of higher standards of living for all, everywhere.

6. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

Ehrenreich went undercover to research this account of how hard it is for working class Americans to get by or to improve their situation. US capitalism does not offer opportunity to everyone.

7.  The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein

Of course business always knows how to turn a crisis into opportunity, but what happens when they gather sufficient power to influence the shape of crises as they emerge? Klein's detailed analysis of this disturbing new trend earns her a second book on the list.

8. The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy by Marjorie Kelly

This book by the founder of Business Ethics magazine represents one of the earlier and better analyses of how the focus on profit maximization costs society dear. She then sets out a vision of how the course of business can be reset.

9. The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies by Robert Edwards Lane

Much of the defence of contemporary capitalism rests on the argument that for all its undoubted flaws we are much better off for it. This book comprehensively rebuts that complacency by reviewing what has happened to happiness within western market economies.

10. The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Peter Elkind

While Wall Street heads back to business as usual, insisting that the financial crisis cannot be repeated, this wonderful report on the fall of Enron reminds us (and I hope honest politicians) why good regulation is needed.

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Please view this video for an explantion of the revisions made to the APEsphere site this summer and an indication of our future plans.

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I received an email from Bentley University in the US this weekend encouraging recipients to get their colleges to embrace a pledge upon graduation.

The pledge goes:

"I pledge to explore and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job I consider and will try to improve these aspects of any organizations for which I work."

What I like about the pledge is:

• simplicity
• encourages the graduate to explore, i.e. to ask questions. I believe that most ethical (social and environmental) issues at firms begin with people who fail to ask questions
• it encourages the pledgee to recognize their freedom of action, their individual moral agency

What I like less about the pledge is:

• it does not mention ethics or, even more boldly and generally, something like "the firm's negative impacts on other people". Graduates will be faced with many more ethical challenges than solely social or environmental ones
• it does not make explicit that an ethical outcome might result in not taking on a suspect piece of business i.e. that an ethical solution might not be the most profitable, at least in the short term. The email I received makes it clear that some have taken it this way, but something about "not compromising an ethical outcome for profi maximization" would make explicit that the pledge is worthless if maximum profit must be achieved even at the cost of broader ethical concerns.

My only other concern is the "is that all?" point: I know that institutions that encourage adoption of the pledge will often require students to undertake a business ethics course - at least I hope they do. They may even offer a course on corporate social responsibility.

But the pledge seems to me first and foremost to be about being aware of one's agency - of one's choice of action - of having consciousness of that, and that is a tall order for a single sentence.

To my mind, that degree of consciousness emerges from the development of the habit of questioning, and in particular the habit of questioning the "taken-for-granteds" of business.

Not everyone feels comfortable questioning the basic tenets of contemporary business ideology; fewer still are able, even though we insist that contemporary capitalism is about freedom. Freedom begins with free thinking.

Even those who are willing to question need an opportunity to develop the skills for doing so constructively and relevantly. Where else will that occur but in a business school degree?

It is high time we built on the pledge movement by demanding that not just business ethics and CSR, but rather the philosophy of business be integrated as a core foundation stone of every business school program.

Get more information about the pledge from the Graduation Pledge Alliance homepage.

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Apologies for the hiatus in APEsphere's coverage. Madameape and I have been somewhat preoccupied by the latest addition to our family: Penelope.

I am taking the opportunity to make some changes to the site by way of response to some feedback we received, and also just because after six months of experience with the site we have come to some conclusions about what works and what doesn't.

We should be back on the job with the site changes implemented within a week or so.

Thanks for bearing with us.

Andrew Newton

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In the wake of the financial melt down, many major business schools have increased their focus on business ethics. Harvard students have created a voluntary ethics pledge for new graduates. At Columbia, all business school students must sign an honor code. Wharton now has seven faculty teaching ethics courses.

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This time it is Marylhurst University launching a "sustainability MBA" online.

Anaheim University in California already has one and has taken this moment to announce that enrollments are doing very nicely thank you: nearly doubled over the last 3 months.

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Ronald J. Colombo, corporate and securities law professor at Hofstra University School of Law, argues that the route out of this crisis is character.

In a well written piece in the HuffPo, Mr Colombo sets out the limits of law in providing a real solution to current problems, the need instead for the cultivation of virtue - a renewed emphasis on character development in business education.

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In one of the latest contributions to the HBR debate on business education, the Rotman School's Roger Martin calls for a deep, broad and dynamic MBA.

In some respects he appears to be advocating a more philosophical approach to management education that encourages the questioning of standard assumptions, models and frameworks. Good to see from a business school dean.

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The business school at Edinburgh University is launching a service to provide firms with like-for-like carbon emissions comparison data.

Carbon ENDS, as the service is called, is run by Craig Mackenzie, a senior lecturer at the school. They will be taking groups of companies by sector and producing company funded peer-group comparisons. The first report, due this month, compares companies in the UK supermarket sector.

The service builds on the university's work in running an MSc in climate change, and their work in developing an MSc in carbon finance. MBA students and undergraduates are also able to take an optional course in climate change.

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