Profits and Sustainability

G.  Jones

Book | 2017

Profits and Sustainability: A History of Green Entrepreneurship

Abstract

This book explores whether profits and environmental sustainability are compatible through the lens of a global history of green entrepreneurship between the nineteenth century and today. It tells the story of the extraordinary and often eccentric men and women who defied convention and imagined that business could help save the planet rather than consume it. The social and religious beliefs that drove many of these individuals are explored as the book explores how they overcame huge obstacles to execute their strategies in industries as diverse as renewable energy, organic food, natural beauty, eco-tourism, recycling, architecture, and finance. The pioneering efforts to build certification schemes and environmental reporting are examined, alongside the contested relationship between green business and governments. The struggles of entrepreneurial pioneers have rarely proved profitable, as they were forced to compete with conventional businesses that ignored negative environmental externalities and were often subsidized by governments in the United States and elsewhere. Yet the book shows that these entrepreneurs contributed significantly to the growth of environmental awareness among consumers, business leaders, and others. However the Earth's environmental health has continued to deteriorate. If combining profits and sustainability has proved challenging in the past, and remains so today, the book argues that one reason was how they have both been defined.

Keywords: Environmental Entrepreneurship; business history; Green Business; sustainability; Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Business History; Religion; Environmental Sustainability; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Banking Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Alternative Energy Industry; Financial Services Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Green Technology Industry; Tourism Industry; Africa; Asia; Europe; Latin America; North and Central America; Oceania;

Format: Print

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Jones, G. Profits and Sustainability: A History of Green Entrepreneurship. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Considers the strategy of U.S.-owned IBM, then a manufacturer of punch cards, in Nazi Germany before 1937. Opens with IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson meeting Adolf Hitler in his capacity as President of the International Chamber of Commerce. IBM had acquired a German company in 1922 and, like other American companies, found itself operating after 1933 in a country whose government violently suppressed political dissent and engaged in intimidation and discrimination against Jews. Explores the tensions between IBM's German affiliate and its parent and provides an opportunity to explore the options and responsibilities of multinationals with investments in politically reprehensible regimes.

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Profits and Sustainability: A History of Green Entrepreneurship

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