Operationalizing Sustainability [Hardcover]

This book focuses on the emergence of the science of sustainability and the key concepts in making sustainability operational in an organization.

The authors discuss the methods, techniques and tools needed to manage the impact of sustainability and how these can be reformulated into business models and solutions for new growth and applications. They then move onto the reformulation of future thinking processes before ending by looking towards an approach for the measurement of sustainability and competitiveness.

Note to all Contributors xv

Note to the Reader xvii

List of Acronyms xxi

Introduction xxvii

Part 1. Sustainability: Toward the Unification of Some Underlying Principles and Mechanisms 1

Chapter 1. Toward a Sustainability Science 3

1.1. Introduction 3

1.2. What does unification mean? 4

1.3. Coming back to sustainability: how many “sustainabilities”? 7

1.4. Sustainability: what kind of unification? An integration issue? 10

1.5. What kind of paradigm do we have to integrate? 12

1.6. The issue and the implementation of a new dimension 14

1.6.1. Preamble: code of matter, power of laws and balance of powers 14

1.6.2. The addition of a new dimension: gimmick or necessity? 16

1.6.3. Integration of time and dynamics 17

1.6.4. Application 19

1.7. Extensions of the concept 20

1.7.1. Comments 20

1.7.2. Life sciences: power laws, evolution, life and death phenomena 21

1.7.3. The power laws 24

Chapter 2. Sustainability in Complex Systems 29

2.1. Preamble: tlă>