The Impact Challenge: Reframing Sustainability for Businesses

This book explores the role of businesses in delivering positive societal and financial outcomes as they seek to bridge the gap between short-term organizational behaviors and long-range sustainability commitments. By addressing the inevitable data challenges associated with the strategic integration of a sustainability mindset, it enables faster adoption of social, environmental and governance metrics that generate lasting enterprise value. Inspired by the experience of practitioners that have successfully influenced the learning behaviors of complex organizations, this book helps readers drive systemic innovations as they leverage sustainability initiatives in a programmatic and intentional manner.

Features:

• Defines a toolkit to generate sustainable business value by focusing on the organizational design underpinning sustainability-oriented initiatives.
• Provides a multidisciplinary lens on shaping the impact dialogue through applied frameworks.
• Discusses the need to analytically identify an organizational learning curve before developing impact targets and framing sustainability commitments around them.
• Combines theory and practice in a practical style by presenting a variety of real-life applications at a global level.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Alessia Falsarone, SASB FSA, is a sustainable finance expert and a fellow of the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program. She currently serves as an adjunct instructor at the University of Chicago where she has launched the Circular Economy and Sustainable Business Management program in the school of professional studies. Her work bridges the gap between sustainability, financial innovation and risk management. A sought-after commentator for media outlets and academic programs, Ms. Falsarone is a member of high-level advisory groups that promote environmental and climate finance, including the G7 Environmental Ministerial, the London Stock Exchange, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (Value Reporting Foundation) and the UN Principles for Responsible Investment. In recognition of her innovative vision for business and society, she has received an Honoree Award from the Women’s Venture Fund. She is an alumna of Stanford University, the MIT Sloan School of Business and Bocconi University. Ms. Falsarone holds certified director status with the National Association of Corporate Directors. An avid advocate of sustainability in business education, she has contributed to educational initiatives on the topic at the Asian University for Women, the Society of Corporate Compliance, the Swiss Sustainable Finance Initiative, the United Nations, Stanford University and New York University, including delivering training on climate risk and green finance in Asia Pacific and Latin America.