Corporate Governance of Sustainability - 9781847202284

Bleischwitz (Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Germany) and his research team test the thesis that governance of sustainable development must go beyond state-centered policy making to allow for corporate incentives for innovations that generate positive externalities while generating profits in competitive markets. Responsible corporate governance, then, is the pursuit of innovation and profit that will relieve environmental pressure and internalize some externalities and thereby transform areas previously perceived as public domains into new markets for sustainable development, while the state retains the responsibility for reforming the framework conditions, for monitoring public concerns, and for innovation-inducing regulation, especially at lower levels of policy making such as that characterized by the European Union principle of subsidiarity (this twin process is the "co-evolution" found in the title). They take an interdisciplinary approach to the topic, integrating economics findings on firms, market failures, and regulatory theories and political science analyses of the role of the state and public administrations. The chapters examine the role of networks and explore illustrative European case studies of interacting political and corporate governance of resource management, eco-efficiency, and energy, where corporate action is a strong driving force in each case. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)