Leading Sustainable Change: An Organizational Perspective
Rebecca Henderson, Ranjay Gulati, and Michael Tushman
Abstract
Our civilization is in trouble. We have already overshot the carrying capacity of the Earth, while population and economic growth are rapidly expanding our impact. Meeting the legitimate aspirations of billions to rise out of poverty while reducing our global footprint to sustainable levels is the defining issue of our times—and it is one that can only be addressed with the active participation of the private sector. But change is hard. The business case for environmental sustainability is becoming increasingly compelling—but persuading well-established organizations to act in new ways is neve ... More
Our civilization is in trouble. We have already overshot the carrying capacity of the Earth, while population and economic growth are rapidly expanding our impact. Meeting the legitimate aspirations of billions to rise out of poverty while reducing our global footprint to sustainable levels is the defining issue of our times—and it is one that can only be addressed with the active participation of the private sector. But change is hard. The business case for environmental sustainability is becoming increasingly compelling—but persuading well-established organizations to act in new ways is never easy. This book is designed to support business leaders and organizational scholars who are grappling with this challenge by pulling together leading-edge insights from some of the world’s best researchers as to how organizational change in general—and sustainable change in particular—can be most effectively managed. The book begins by laying out the economic case for change, while subsequent chapters explore leadership in a range of companies, describing how leaders at firms such as Du Pont, IBM, and Cemex have transformed their organizations through innovation, exploring issues such as the role of the senior team and the ways in which firms shift their identities, build innovative cultures, and processes, and begin to change the world around them.
Keywords:
environmental sustainability,
innovation,
leaders,
leadership,
organizational change
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198704072 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198704072.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Rebecca Henderson, editor
John & Natty McArthur University Professor, Harvard Business School
Ranjay Gulati, editor
Jaime and Josephina Chua Tiampo Professor, Harvard Business School
Michael Tushman, editor
Paul R. Lawrence, MBA Class of 1942 Professor, Harvard Business School
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