Business Transformation for a Sustainable Future

Interconnecting the concepts of sustainability, innovation and transformation, this book explains how organizations have successfully transformed themselves and wider society to foster a more sustainable future, and identifies the difficulties and challenges along the way. Part of the Principle of Responsible Management Education (PRME) series, the book promotes a strong voice for meeting sustainability challenges for transformative change in a globalized world through business education and practice.

A transition to a more sustainable way of doing business can only be attained by combining technology with profound system innovations and lifestyle changes. The chapters in the book, each written by a strong and well-recognized team of researchers in the field, open up the discussion about a new partnership between sustainability, innovation, and transformation that includes the global society (big world), the biosphere (small planet), and also requires a deep mind shift. The book presents cases from business (including Ikea and Eataly) and other service networks including the Base of the Pyramid (BoP), and illustrates how these organizations have transformed themselves for a sustainable future. The research perspectives are macro (policies and legislation), meso (institutional practices) and micro (business practices and individual behavior). This book is where research meets real-world business and societal practice. The chapters are grounded in business research, specifically the interdependencies between sustainability, innovation, and transformation, which makes for a robust basis for describing, explaining, and understanding the complex challenges faced by business and society in the 21st century.

The book is intended for graduate- and postgraduate-level students and executive education with implications for practitioners. Furthermore, it contributes to multidisciplinary research in the field of interaction between business and society with a view to extending the firm-centric view to encompass a broader, systemic, and dynamic understanding of business and societal transformation.

Samuel Petros Sebhatu is Assistant Professor in Business Administration, at Karlstad Business School and researcher at Service Research Center (CTF), Karlstad University, Sweden. His research focuses on management, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, business models and sustainability in different contexts of service research. He is a co-founder of CTF/SAMOT Service Innovation Lab at Karlstad Innovation Park.

Bo Enquist is Senior Professor of Business Administration and research fellow at Service Research Centre (CTF) at Karlstad University since April 2017. Since 2006, he has been a member of the executive team and Deputy Director of the Vinn Excellent Center, Service and Market Oriented Transport research (SAMOT). He used to work for more than 20 years in different businesses at the management and executive levels before embarking on his academic career.

Bo Edvardsson is Professor of Business Administration, founder of CTF-Service Research Centre and former Vice Rector, Karlstad University, Sweden. He is also Professor 2 at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences. He has received the RESER Award for lifetime achievement to scholarship from The European Association for Service Research and the AMA Career Contributions to the Services Discipline Award. Formerly editor of the Journal of Service Management, he is on the editorial advisory boards of seven service and marketing journals.