Case Studies on Trade-Offs in Corporate Sustainability

For today’s manager, sustainability is not just another business issue. Perpetual pressure from corporate stakeholders to incorporate sustainability has created pervasive changes to what is becoming an increasingly complex and challenging decision context for organizational decision makers. Managing sustainability requires fundamentally new skills from managers and students of business, including the ability to carefully assess trade-offs and reach compromise decisions, for instance, between serving the company and serving society. This special issue offers five teaching cases that put students in the shoes of managers that have to deal with the full complexity of sustainability. The aim of the teaching cases is to serve as learning tools to help train students to make trade-offs in ways that deliberately evaluate and satisfice economic, social and environmental objectives at corporate, societal and environmental levels, and that allow them to reach decisions that take into account both short- and long-term issues.

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