The Sustainable MBA: A Business Guide to Sustainability 2nd Edition

This book will be used as the textbook for business sustainability.It covers why sustainability matters and why businesses must take the lead. It is also good in that it covers each of the core disciplines in a business school and how to make them act more sustainably.The book closes with a "what can I do" which is clearly needed for business students.

The content is very interesting and everything is explained in a way that everybody should understand. Easy to read font. The font is also bigger and the textbook is not your average size textbook; it is about the size of a novel. The book also does not cost an arm and a leg unlike your normal textbooks.

Excelent.grate tool to make students generators of sustainable values

Author Giselle Weybrecht worked for a number of years in the UN on sustainablity before taking an MBA and this book laudably aims at bridging the gap between the “wouldn’t it be nice if ...” and the hard nosed business reality. Once it gets into its stride in the main part of the book, it is hugely successful at this and very readable.To start with I was concerned that this was no different from the reams of pages written on why we should be greener. She cites the many international conferences on sustainability (let’s let slide the carbon cost of bringing all these people together - with Rio seeming to crop up with curious regularity) and while their conclusions are hard to object to, they do seem to be more like the Miss World desires for “world peace” that Sandra Bullock lampooned in Miss Congeniality. However, to her credit, what Weybrecht does well is to understand that what drives corporate action is the bottom line and she frequently notes where sustainability has been proven to make financial sense too. She does rather throw numbers around without reference or support which can be a bit discerning, but it does make the book very readable and not too academic.The secret to the success is the structure of the second, and largest, part of the book. She goes through the core business areas of an MBA - accounts, economics, entrepreneurship, ethics and corporate governance, finance, marketing, operations, HR and strategy - and for each one addresses:why it is importantthe key conceptschallengestrends and ideas.There is the potential to get too bogged down in conforming to the structure but this never happens. It’s true that some topics are more successful than others (the accounting chapter is on the weak side) but the best chapters (strategy, economics, marketing, operations) are amongst the most sensible and helpful approaches to sustainability that I’ve read. It’s also worth pointing out that she provides a raft of sources of further information about most topics covered.The key is that she balances business needs with those of the sustainability movement. Too much of the writing in this area treats the two as antagonists which is less than helpful. This is realistic and thought provoking. There’s a huge amount of common sense here. I will not be sending this book to the recycling any time soon.

The Sustainable MBA is a great resource for students, teachers and practitioners. As a Finance and CSR lecturer, this book provided great discussion in the classroom around implementation of sustainable practices, what sustainability looks like in different settings and environments, and how students can get involved with sustainable topics which most interest them. The Sustainable MBA suggests many resources and discussion areas, making it a strong companion in late-undergraduate and post-graduate programmes.