Marc J. Epstein

Now completely updated, Making Sustainability Work is the bible for applying real metrics and best practices to the often - nebulous realm of business sustainability. Mark Epstein and Adriana Rejc Buhovac provide concrete tools for measuring and increasing social and environmental impacts in a manner that businesses can understand and put to real use.

An insiders' account of failed efforts to control corporate misconduct-and a forceful plan to do so.Nothing anyone has done in the past 50 years has stopped, or even slowed, corporate misconduct. Business schools have required courses on ethics, regulators have implemented laws and levied fines, and journalists have exposed the scandals named names, yet misconduct continues. Why? Is it simply the case of a few bad apples? Or maybe it's a bad orchard? Two pioneers in the field of business ethics and social responsibility present an insider's account examining the systematic and individual failures resulting in some of the most brazen cases of corporate misconduct. Their deep dive reveals the root of the problem and poses a bold new approach for putting a stop to it-for good.This book is a reckoning for every company, board member, and individual in a corporate leadership position.

An insiders' account of failed efforts to control corporate misconduct-and a forceful plan to do so.Nothing anyone has done in the past 50 years has stopped, or even slowed, corporate misconduct. Business schools have required courses on ethics, regulators have implemented laws and levied fines, and journalists have exposed the scandals named names, yet misconduct continues. Why? Is it simply the case of a few bad apples? Or maybe it's a bad orchard? Two pioneers in the field of business ethics and social responsibility present an insider's account examining the systematic and individual failures resulting in some of the most brazen cases of corporate misconduct. Their deep dive reveals the root of the problem and poses a bold new approach for putting a stop to it-for good.This book is a reckoning for every company, board member, and individual in a corporate leadership position.

With a strong leader at the helm, what can possibly go wrong?

It's a paradox: as big companies get better at achieving operational excellence, actual breakthroughs seem to decrease. It's the scrappy little startups, with comparatively tiny budgets, that continue to be founts of innovation. Why is it that as industry leaders get better at what they do, they get worse at innovation?By conducting deep research within companies as diverse as Apple, Google, Pfizer, General Motors, Nike, and Sony, the authors have found the answer: the very pursuit of operational excellence - that is, making one's existing business as efficient as it can be - blinds managers to the kinds of disruptive business model changes vital for innovation. These changes could threaten all that hard work. It's why Nokia famously killed its smart phone - the company was too invested in "dumb phones." Nothing less than a complete redesign and rethinking of the corporation - down to how accountants capture innovation costs and overhead - is necessary to get companies moving again. The authors' new model, "the startup corporation," marries the strengths of corporate scale to the nimbleness of entrepreneurs.For a model of the new startup corporation, the authors return again and again to Apple, which doesn't have the usual corporate structure and accounting systems. Not every company can be an Apple, but all companies can learn to break the bonds of operational thinking if they'll take the authors' lessons to heart.

Most companies today have some commitment to corporate social responsibility, but implementing these initiatives can be particularly challenging. While a lot has been written on ethical and strategic factors, there is still a dearth of information on the practical nuts and bolts. And whereas with most other organizational initiatives the sole objective is improved financial performance, sustainability broadens the focus to include social and environmental performance, which is much more difficult to measure. Now updated throughout with new examples and new research, this is a complete guide to implementing and measuring the effectiveness of sustainability initiatives. It draws on Marc Epstein's and new coauthor Adriana Rejc Buhovac's solid academic foundation and extensive consulting work and includes best practices from dozens of companies in Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Australia, and Africa. This is the ultimate how-to guide for corporate leaders, strategists, academics, sustainability consultants, and anyone else with an interest in actually putting sustainability ideas into practice and making sure they accomplish their goals.

Identifying, measuring and improving social impact is a significant challenge for corporate and private foundations, charities, NGOs and corporations. How best to balance possible social and environmental benefits (and costs) against one another? How does one bring clarity to multiple possibilities and opportunities? Based on years of work and new field studies from around the globe, the authors have written a book for managers that is grounded in the best academic and managerial research.It is a practical guide that describes the steps needed for identifying, measuring and improving social impact. This approach is useful in maximizing the impact of different types of investments, including grants and donations, impact investments, and commercial investments.With numerous examples of actual organizational approaches, research into more than fifty organizations, and extensive practical guidance and best practices, Measuring and Improving Social Impacts fills a critical gap.

The world is beset with enormous problems. And as a nonprofit, NGO, foundation, impact investor, or socially responsible company, your organization is on a mission to solve them. But what exactly should you do? And how will you know whether it's working? Too many people assume that good intentions will result in meaningful actions and leave it at that. But thanks to Marc Epstein and Kristi Yuthas, social impact can now be evaluated with the same kind of precision achieved for any other organizational function. Based on years of research and analysis of field studies from around the globe, Epstein and Yuthas offer a five-step process that will help you gain clarity about the impacts that matter most to you and will provide you with methods to measure and improve them. They outline a systematic approach to deciding what resources you should invest, what problem you should address, and which activities and organizations you should support. Once you've made those decisions, you can use their tools, frameworks, and metrics to define exactly what success looks like, even for goals like reducing global warming or poverty that are extremely difficult to measure. Then they show you how to use that data to further develop and increase your social impact. Epstein and Yuthas personally interviewed leaders at over sixty different organizations for this book and include examples from nearly a hundred more. This is unquestionably the most complete, practical, and thoroughly researched guide to taking a rigorous, data-driven approach to expanding the good you do in the world.

The ultimate "how-to-do-it" guide for corporate leaders, strategists, academics, sustainability consultants, and anyone else with an interest in actually making sustainability work for organizations. An updated edition of a landmark book at a time when a growing number of corporate leaders are asking for urgent help in "getting this done".

Every three minutes, nearly 50 children under the age of five dies. In the same three minutes, 2 mothers lose their lives in childbirth. Every year, malaria kills 655,000 people, despite the fact that it can be prevented with a mosquito net and treated for 1.41 dollar. Sadly, this list goes on and on. Millions are dying from diseases that we can easily and inexpensively prevent, diagnose, and treat. Why? Because even though we know exactly what people need, we just can't get it to them. They are dying not because we can't solve a medical problem but because we can't solve a logistics problem. In this profoundly important book, Eric Bing and Marc Epstein lay out a solution: a new kind of bottom - up health care that is delivered at the source. We need microclinics, micropharmacies, and microentrepreneurs located in the remote, hard - to - reach communities they serve. By building a new model that ''scales down'' to train and incentivize all kinds of health - care providers in their own villages and towns, we can create an army of on - site professionals who can prevent tragedy at a fraction of the cost of top - down bureaucratic programs. Bing and Epstein have seen the model work, and they provide example after example of the extraordinary results it has achieved in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. They describe the principles and practices involved in implementing it and explain how to apply it to overcome specific health challenges. This is a book about taking health care the last mile - sometimes literally - to prevent widespread, unnecessary, and easily avoided death and suffering. Pharmacy on a Bicycle shows how the same forces of innovation and entrepreneurship that work in first - world business cultures can be unleashed to save the lives of millions.

Often business executives serve (or are asked to serve) as board members of nonprofit organizations. However, without a clear understanding of how nonprofits work, service on a board can be a frustrating experience. Joining a Nonprofit Board offers an important guide to the roles and responsibilities of a nonprofit board member. Marc J. Epstein and F. Warren McFarlan provide a step-by-step guide to how board members can work with a nonprofit organization to achieve the organization’s overarching mission, attain financial sustainability, and develop and execute the systems needed to accomplish both. Based on more than 10 years of research from Rice University and Harvard Business School and filled with illustrative examples, Joining a Nonprofit Board explores the basic structure of a nonprofit, explains how to build and monitor a nonprofit’s mission, and identifies how the board performs an effective assessment of a non-profit. The book also explores the challenges posed by the duality of leadership between the unpaid volunteer non-executive chairman of the board and the CEO. Joining a Nonprofit Board includes a helpful explanation of a “board member’s life cycle.” The authors start with the decision to join a board and explain how to prepare for the first meeting. The book explores how to serve effectively the first two years and reveals what it takes to develop your ongoing role as a trustee. Finally the book describes how to transition off the board to other forms of service with the organization. Joining a Nonprofit Board is a comprehensive resource for anyone who wants to take their experience in the business world and serve a nonprofit with passion and clarity.

In 2001, we gathered a group of researchers in Nice, France to focus discussion on performance measurement and management control. Following the success of that conference, we held subsequent conferences in 2003, 2005, and 2007. This volume contains some of the exemplary papers that were presented at the most recent conference. The conference has grown in number of participants, quality of presentations, and reputation and this year attracted leading researchers in the field from North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. Though the conference has been generally focused on performance measurement and management control and has included presentations on many facets of the topic, each year we have also focused on a particular theme of current interest. This year's theme was directed at measuring and rewarding performance. This includes evaluating and rewarding the performance of organizations, units, teams, and individuals. It includes empirical, analytical and experimental research. In addition to the three plenary sessions, this volume also includes some of the other excellent papers presented at the conference. The contents of this book represent a collection of leading research in management control and performance measurement and provide a significant contribution to the growing literature in the area. This collection of papers also covers a representative set of topics, research settings, and research methods. We are hopeful that this book will continue the search for additional understanding and development in performance measurement and management control, and provide guidance for both academic researchers and managers as they work toward improving organizations.

After a decade of treating the topic of e-commerce with awe and confusion, we can now step back and analyze the subject more objectively. From launching an electronic storefront to managing complex supply chain operations, most companies have ventured into e-commerce; but even the best-run bricks-and-mortar enterprises have run into snags in the virtual world. Even mighty Wal-Mart, for example, took its website through several redesigns and sales strategies, and Borders eventually outsourced its Internet sales activites to rival, Amazon. Despite the horror stories of abysmal customer service, lost information, catastrophic meltdowns, and the excesses of the dot.com boom, the Internet is now an essential tool and medium for conducting business. Today, the key question is not whether your firm should invest in e-commerce, but how you can do so most profitably.In Implementing E-Commerce Strategies, Marc Epstein goes beyond the hype to focus on the practical angles of designing, executing, and successfully managing an e-commerce strategy that works for your company. While many books have addressed the what and why of e-commerce, Epstein zeroes in on the elusive how. Showcasing the experiences of 32 companies (both successes and failures) in a wide variety of industries, he explores such issues as corporate culture and strong leadership from the executive suite, integrating e-commerce into corporate strategy, aligning goals, accountabilities, and performance metrics to support e-commerce initiatives, and building systems that can measure the value of your e-commerce investments. No business can avoid e-commerce—and its capacity for creating spectacular opportunities or wasting precious time and resources. How your firm handles these challenges may very well determine whether or not it will survive.