Strategy and Sustainability

Business and environmental sustainability are not natural bedfellows. Business is about making money; sustainability is about protecting the planet. Business is measured in months and quarters; sustainability often requires significant short term costs to secure a sometimes uncertain long-term benefit. To some activists, all executives are exploitative, selfish '1 percenters'. To some executives, all activists are irresponsible, unyielding extremists.

And yet engaging with the issue isn't optional - all businesses must have a strategy to deal with sustainability and, like any strategy, this involves making choices.

Strategy and Sustainability encourages its readers to filter out the noise and make those choices in a hard-nosed and clear-eyed way. Rosenberg's nuanced and fact-based point of view recognizes the complexity of the issues at hand and the strategic choices businesses must make. He blends the work of some of the leading academic thinkers in the field with practical examples from a variety of business sectors and geographies and offers a framework with which Senior Management might engage with the topic, not (just) to save the planet but to fulfil their short, medium, and long-term responsibilities to shareholders and other stakeholders.<

Mike Rosenberg is an Assistant Professor at IESE Business School. Professor Rosenberg joined the faculty at IESE after working for more than 15 years as a Management Consultant for companies such as Arthur D. Little, A.T. Kearney, and Heidrich & Struggles working in Europe, North America, and Asia.

Professor Rosenberg lectures on Strategy, Globalization, and Sustainability in IESE's MBA and executive programs. He is also Academic Director of a number of the school's top-ranked executive education programs. In addition to his academic work, Professor Rosenberg routinely consults with leading international companies and is asked to speak on topics relating to scenario planning, sustainability, and managing global firms.