About the book:

Sustainable development has a long history with many different roots. The most widely agreed upon definition, ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’, includes the three main pillars of economic growth, environmental protection and social equality. Recognizing the tradeoffs and the difficulties in operationalizing the definition, the different chapters in this volume reflect different aspects of the pillars. The twelve chapters, illustrating different roots in research on sustainable development and business, can all be connected to an interpretation of the seminal modern definition.

What if economic growth is inherently unsustainable? What if economic growth, as hitherto defined, is not possible while respecting planetary boundaries and the social capacity of human beings? And what if further economic growth is not achievable under any circumstances, at least in the affluent parts of the world? Moreover, as many sustainability researchers have posited, there may be inherent conflict between development in the socioeconomic and natural worlds.

We do not claim to know exactly how to answer these observations from the outset. However, we do claim that in our times it would seem wise to maintain an open mind about most things, including how the production of goods and services for human consumption may be organized while leaving the planet in (at least) habitable condition for future generations. ‘Business as usual’ in the legacy of Adam Smith’s benefits of the ‘invisible hand’ may not be a wise choice in a world of refugee crises, climate change, biodiversity loss and persistent poverty among a growing world population. We suggest that ultimately neither ‘citizenship as usual’ nor ‘research as usual’ are viable options.

Editors of this years book are Lin Lerpold and Marcus Kallifatides

Misum authors are:

Svenne Junker (together with Staffan Furusten): Hybrid organization and social responsibility - does the organizational form matter?

Örjan Sjöberg and Lars Gunnar-Mattsson: Market practice, policy practice: The quest for urban sustainability

Clara My Lernborg (together with Christine Alamaa and Chloé Le Coq): Collaboration and Economic performance: The case of social entrepreneurs in Sweden

Max Jerneck: How do low-carbon industries emerge? The evolution of solar photovoltaics in the United States and Japan, 1973-2005

Marijane Luistro Johnson (together with Emre Yildiz and Sofia Altafi): A postcolonial critique of the Base-of-the Pyramid discourse

Lin Lerpold (together with Ursula Tengelin): The fundrasing manager´s dilemma: Balancing diverse stakeholder images

Tina Sendlhofer and Clara My Lernborg: The case of (partial) organising for CSR: Bridging the responsibility gap for SMEs

Other SSE authors are:

Mats Jutterström: Sustainability - a popular management idea

Markus Kallifatides and Anna Larsson: Neoliberal "sustainability" in the UK: The case of regulating domestic pension funds

Ingalill Holmberg and Pernilla Petrelius Karlberg: Sustainable business in a stakeholder society - a relational leadership approach

Sophie Nachemson-Ekwall: Swedish institutional investors as large stake owners: Enchancing sustainable stakeholder capitalism

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