Capitals and Capabilities: A Framework for Analyzing Peasant Viability, Rural Livelihoods and Poverty

Modern management theory is constricted by a fractured epistemology. which separates humanity from nature and truth from morality. Reintegration is necessary if organizational science is to support ecologically and socially sustainable development. This article posits requisites of such development and rejects the paradigms of conventional technocentrism and antithetical ecocentrism on grounds of incongruence. A more fruitful integrative paradigm of “sustaincentrism” is then articulated, and implications for organizational science are generated as if sustainability, extended community, and our Academy mattered.

http://ingenieroambiental.com/inf/elparagigmadeldesarrollosustentable.PDF

Shifting Paradigms for Sustainable Development: Implications for Management Theory and Research

http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/md/awi/professuren/intwipol/energy.pdf

Does higher economic and financial development lead to environmental degradation: Evidence from BRIC countries

The goal of this paper is to examine whether business performance is affected by the adoption of practices included under the term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). To achieve this goal, we analyse the relation between CSR and certain accounting indicators and examine whether there exist significant differences in performance indicators between European firms that have adopted CSR and others that have not. The effects of compliance with the requirements of CSR were determined on the basis of firms included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI), and specific accounting indicators were applied to measure performance. For the purposes of this study, we selected one group of firms belonging to the DJSI and another comprised of firms quoted on the Dow Jones Global Index (DJGI) but not on the DJSI. The sample was made up of two groups of 55 firms, studied for the period 1998–2004. Empirical analysis supports the conclusion that differences in performance exist between firms that belong to the DJSI and to the DJGI and that these differences are related to CSR practices. We find that a short-term negative impact on performance is produced.

http://repository.binus.ac.id/2009-1/content/F0122/F012261494.pdf

Sustainable Development and Corporate Performance: A Study Based on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index

This paper proposes a new approach to measure corporate contributions to sustainability called Sustainable Value Added. Value is created whenever benefits exceed costs. Current approaches to measure corporate sustainable performance take into account external costs caused by environmental and social damage or focus on the ratio between value creation and resource consumption. As this paper will show, it is more promising to develop sustainable measures based on opportunity costs. Sustainable Value Added is such a measure. It shows how much more value is created because a company is more efficient than a benchmark and because the resources are allocated to the company and not to benchmark companies. The concept of strong sustainability requires that each form of capital is kept constant. As Sustainable Value Added is inspired by strong sustainability, it measures whether a company creates extra value while ensuring that every environmental and social impact is in total constant. Therefore, it takes into account both, corporate eco- and social efficiency as well as the absolute level of environmental and social resource consumption (eco- and social effectiveness). As a result, Sustainable Value Added considers simultaneously economic, environmental and social aspects. The overall result can be expressed in any of the three dimensions of sustainability.

Sustainable Value Added - Measuring Corporate Contributions to Sustainability Beyond Eco-Efficiency

Since the establishment of the Environment Department in 1987, the Bank has made a concentrated effort to incorporate environmental concerns into its lending and advisory activities In January of 1993 the Vice Presidency for Environmentally Sustainable Development (ESD) was created to take forward the incorporation of sustainability issues into all aspect's of Bank work This report is a compilation of eight essays which attempt to capture current thought on a number of key conceptual, methodoligical, and practical issues The collective authors cover a range of concerns including: poverty and the environment; gender and ecosystem management; the sociologist's, ecologist's and economist's approaches to sustainable development; the integration of environmental concerns into development policymaking; the World Bank's agenda for the environment; and an epilogue regarding the expansion of capital stock

Making development sustainable : from concepts to action

The purpose of this document is to provide clients-borrowers, project sponsors, and executing agencies-of the Inter-American Development Bank with guidance, in accord with Bank safeguard policies, to address the impacts of projects and programs on biodiversity. This document is a work in progress based on the safeguard policies of the Bank and best practices in the assessment and management of the impacts of development on biodiversity; it is a dynamic document that will be updated based on experiences in implementation.

Colin Rees

Papers

Making development sustainable : from concepts to action

Guidance for Assessing and Managing Biodiversity Impacts and Risks in Inter-American Development Bank Supported Operations