Place Based Approaches to Sustainability : Ethical and Spiritual Foundations of Sustainability

Without respecting and nurturing ‘place’ we cannot achieve a state of ecological sustainability. Place-based organizations are not run on a purely materialistic basis. The non-materialistic features of a place, its aesthetics, cultural heritage, community feelings, transcendence, should be integrated into sustainability management. This far-reaching two-volume work breaks with the economic logic of efficiency and profit maximization, and suggests that organizations should inform their sustainability by encompassing feelings of identity with and attachment to place.

According to this vision, the editors have compiled scholarly contributions aimed to support the ecological transformation of humankind by exploring both theoretical and practical models that integrate the sense of the place, ethics and spirituality in new ways of organizing of economic and social life. This first volume sets the theoretical direction of the volumes, asking broad aesthetic questions around the ethical and spiritual foundations of sustainability. It will be of interest to scholars, practitioners and students of sustainability, business ethics and spirituality.

Mara Del Baldo is Associate Professor of Accounting and Business Administration, Economics of Sustainability and Accountability at the University of Urbino, Italy, Department of Economics, Society and Politics. Her research interests include entrepreneurship and SMEs, CSR and business ethics, governance, non financial and integrated reporting, and benefit corporation. She has published widely in journals and books around these topics, and she leads several initiatives aimed at raising awareness of these topics among students, businesses and institutions, partnering with several scientific networks.

Maria-Gabriella Baldarelli is Associate Professor of Accounting, University of Bologna, Department of Management, Rimini Campus, Italy. Her research interests include accountability and gambling enterprises, corporate social responsibility, Economy of Communion Enterprises, ethical, social and environmental accounting and accountability.

Elisabetta Righini is Full Professor of Commercial Law and Law of Trade and Financial Markets at the School of Law and the School of Economics of University of Urbino, Italy. She is author of several books and articles in the fields of commercial law, financial markets law, behavioural law and economics. She is director of the Yunus Social Business Center, Urbino, a research centre on microfinance, social business, corporate social responsibility and sustainability, and of the project 'Enterprise and Culture', promoting connections between cultural initiatives and economic activities in the context of a 'spiritual economy'.