Andrew J. Hoffman – författare

The intellectual foundation for the next generation of business leadersToday's business schools were designed for a world that no longer exists. Capitalism raised the standard of living for billions of people over the past 150 years, but is now causing systemic challenges it is unable to address, including climate change and inequality. And yet, business schools continue to teach ideas that are making things worse: elevating the primacy of shareholder profits above the interests of employees, the environment, and society; viewing government as an intrusion on the free market rather than an arbiter of its proper functioning; and promoting unlimited economic growth despite the devastating environmental and social consequences. Business schools cannot simply drop an elective into their curriculum to address these challenges. We must rethink the faulty foundations.Business School and the Noble Purpose of the Market explains the intellectual foundation MBA students, faculty, and administrators need to reform capitalism and restore its noble purpose for the 21st century. Many business students are in fact seeking this kind of education and frustrated that they are not getting it from their professors. This book will fill in gaps in their education, equipping them with the models and mindset to rethink shareholder capitalism and serve society's needs. Business faculty and administrators will find a practical program for amending curriculum and pedagogy, changing student and faculty rewards, and bringing a new spirit and sensibility to the business school.

Environmental issues now loom large on the social, political, and business agenda. Over the past four decades, "corporate environmentalism" has emerged and been constantly redefined, from regulatory compliance to more recent management conceptions such as "pollution prevention", "total quality environmental management", "industrial ecology", "life cycle analysis", "environmental strategy", "environmental justice," and, most recently, "sustainable development." As a result, understanding the intersection of business activity and environmental protection has become increasingly complex, and there has emerged a focus in academic research on business decision-making, firm behavior, and the protection of the natural environment. This Handbook reviews the state of the field as it grows into a mature area of study within management science, its achievements, and its future avenues of research. It brings together original contributions in the field along several lines of enquiry. The first six focus on disciplines as delineated in contemporary business schools: business strategy; policy and non-market strategies; organizational theory and behavior; operations and technology; marketing; and accounting and finance. The seventh section reviews emergent and associated perspectives, whilst a concluding section, written by long-standing leaders in the field, discusses the future outlook for research.

Environmental issues now loom large on the social, political, and business agenda. Over the past four decades, "corporate environmentalism" has emerged and been constantly redefined, from regulatory compliance to more recent management conceptions such as pollution prevention, total quality environmental management, industrial ecology, life cycle analysis, environmental strategy, environmental justice, and, most recently, sustainable development.As a result, understanding the intersection of business activity and environmental protection has become increasingly complex, and there has emerged a focus in academic research on business decision-making, firm behavior, and the protection of the natural environment. This handbook reviews the state of the field as it grows into a mature area of study within management science, its achievements, and its future avenues of research. It brings together original contributions in the field along several lines of enquiry. The first six focus on disciplines as delineated in contemporary business schools: business strategy; policy and non-market strategies; organizational theory and behavior; operations and technology; marketing; and accounting and finance. The seventh section reviews emergent and associated perspectives, whilst a concluding section, written by long-standing leaders in the field, discusses the future outlook for research.

This book brings together emerging perspectives from organization theory and management, environmental sociology, international regime studies, and the social studies of science and technology to provide a starting point for discipline-based studies of environmental policy and corporate environmental behavior. Reflecting the book's theoretical and empirical focus, the audience is two-fold: organizational scholars working within the institutional tradition, and environmental scholars interested in management and policy. Together this mix forms a creative synthesis for both sets of readers, analyzing how environmental policy and organizational practices are shaped, spread and contested.

This is a pathbreaking account of how the environmental movement has led to profound changes in the perceptions and practices of large-scale corporations, as shown here in the chemical and petroleum industries. The book traces how market, social, and political pressures drive corporations to respond to environmental issues, analyzes the cultural frames that organizations use to come to terms with these external influences, and describes the resulting changes in organizational culture and structure. For this expanded edition, the author has written a new chapter that brings his original assessment up to date, expands and modifies the model and data used in the original edition, and offers a broad picture of the current state of corporate environmentalism and where it is going.

Flourishing: A Frank Conversation about Sustainability invites you into a conversation between a teacher, John R. Ehrenfeld, and his former student now professor, Andrew J. Hoffman, as they discuss how to create a sustainable world. Unlike virtually all other books about sustainability, this one goes beyond the typical stories that we tell ourselves about repairing the environmental damages of human progress. Through their dialogue and essays that open each section, the authors uncover two core facets of our culture that drive the unsustainable, unsatisfying, and unfair social and economic machines that dominate our lives. First, our collective model of the way the world works cannot cope with the inherent complexity of today's highly connected, high-speed reality. Second, our understanding of human behavior is rooted in this outdated model. Driven by the old guard, sustainability has become little more than a fashionable idea. As a result, both business and government are following the wrong path-at best applying temporary, less unsustainable solutions that will fail to leave future generations in better shape.To shift the pendulum, this book tells a new story, driven by being and caring, as opposed to having and needing, rooted in the beauty of complexity and arguing for the transformative cultural shift that we can make based on our collective wisdom and lived experiences. Then, the authors sketch out the road to a flourishing future, a change in our consumption and a new approach to understanding and acting. There is no middle ground; without a sea change at the most basic level, we will continue to head down a faulty path. Indeed, this book is a clarion call to action. Candid and insightful, it leaves readers with cautious hope.

Flourishing: A Frank Conversation about Sustainability invites you into a conversation between a teacher, John R. Ehrenfeld, and his former student now professor, Andrew J. Hoffman, as they discuss how to create a sustainable world. Unlike virtually all other books about sustainability, this one goes beyond the typical stories that we tell ourselves about repairing the environmental damages of human progress. Through their dialogue and essays that open each section, the authors uncover two core facets of our culture that drive the unsustainable, unsatisfying, and unfair social and economic machines that dominate our lives. First, our collective model of the way the world works cannot cope with the inherent complexity of today's highly connected, high-speed reality. Second, our understanding of human behavior is rooted in this outdated model. Driven by the old guard, sustainability has become little more than a fashionable idea. As a result, both business and government are following the wrong path-at best applying temporary, less unsustainable solutions that will fail to leave future generations in better shape.To shift the pendulum, this book tells a new story, driven by being and caring, as opposed to having and needing, rooted in the beauty of complexity and arguing for the transformative cultural shift that we can make based on our collective wisdom and lived experiences. Then, the authors sketch out the road to a flourishing future, a change in our consumption and a new approach to understanding and acting. There is no middle ground; without a sea change at the most basic level, we will continue to head down a faulty path. Indeed, this book is a clarion call to action. Candid and insightful, it leaves readers with cautious hope.

Though the scientific community largely agrees that climate change is underway, debates about this issue remain fiercely polarized. These conversations have become a rhetorical contest, one where opposing sides try to achieve victory through playing on fear, distrust, and intolerance. At its heart, this split no longer concerns carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, or climate modeling; rather, it is the product of contrasting, deeply entrenched worldviews. This brief examines what causes people to reject or accept the scientific consensus on climate change. Synthesizing evidence from sociology, psychology, and political science, Andrew J. Hoffman lays bare the opposing cultural lenses through which science is interpreted. He then extracts lessons from major cultural shifts in the past to engender a better understanding of the problem and motivate the public to take action. How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate makes a powerful case for a more scientifically literate public, a more socially engaged scientific community, and a more thoughtful mode of public discourse.

Re-engaging with Sustainability in the Anthropocene Era applies organization theory to a grand challenge: our entry into the Anthropocene era, a period marked not only by human impact on climate change, but on chemical waste, habitat destruction, and despeciation. It focuses on institutional theory, modified by political readings of organizations, as one approach that can help us navigate a new course. Besides offering mechanisms, such as institutional entrepreneurship, social movements, and policy shifts, the institutional-political variant developed here helps analysts understand the framing of scientific facts, the counter-mobilization of skeptics, and the creation of archetypes as new social orders.

Society and democracy are ever threatened by the fall of fact. Rigorous analysis of facts, the hard boundary between truth and opinion, and fidelity to reputable sources of factual information are all in alarming decline. A 2018 report published by the RAND Corporation labeled this problem "truth decay" and Andrew J. Hoffman lays the challenge of fixing it at the door of the academy. But, as he points out, academia is prevented from carrying this out due to its own existential crisis—a crisis of relevance. Scholarship rarely moves very far beyond the walls of the academy and is certainly not accessing the primarily civic spaces it needs to reach in order to mitigate truth corruption. In this brief but compelling book, Hoffman draws upon existing literature and personal experience to bring attention to the problem of academic insularity—where it comes from and where, if left to grow unchecked, it will go—and argues for the emergence of a more publicly and politically engaged scholar. This book is a call to make that path toward public engagement more acceptable and legitimate for those who do it; to enlarge the tent to be inclusive of multiple ways that one enacts the role of academic scholar in today's world.

Business leaders have tremendous power to influence our society, how it operates, whether it is fair, and the extent to which it impacts the environment. And yet, we do not recognize or call out the responsibility that comes with that power. This book is meant to challenge future business leaders to think differently about their career, its purpose, and its value as a calling or vocation, one that is in service to society. Its message is for current and prospective business students, business leaders thinking anew about the role of business in society, and the business educators that train all these people.We face great challenges as a society today, from environmental problems like climate change and habitat destruction, to social problems like income inequality, unemployment, lack of a living wage, and poor access to affordable health care and education. Solutions to these challenges must come from the market (as comprised of corporations, the government, and nongovernmental organizations, as well as the many stakeholders in market transaction, such as the consumers, suppliers, buyers, insurance companies, and banks), the most powerful institution on earth, and from business, which is the most powerful entity within it. Though government is an important and vital arbiter of the market, business is the force that transcends national boundaries, possessing resources that exceed those of many nations. Business is responsible for producing the buildings that we live and work in, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the forms of mobility we employ, and the energy that propels us. This does not mean that only business can generate solutions or that there is no role for government, but with its unmatched powers of ideation, production, and distribution, business is positioned to bring the change we need at the scale we need it. Without business, the solutions will remain elusive. Indeed, if there are no solutions coming from the market, there will be no solutions. And without visionary and service-oriented leaders, business will never even try to find them.

What is the role of the academic scholar within the discussions of the global challenges that are relevant to society, such as sustainability, health care, gun control, fiscal policy, and international affairs? How do scholars engage in a world in which knowledge is becoming democratized through social media and the proliferation of knowledge sources (both credible and biased) clouds public debate? What are the social, professional and institutional obstacles to such engagement? Should junior faculty do this? Should this vary by discipline, and by school? Should all academics do this? Does this redefine the role of the senior scholar? To answer these questions and many more, the University of Michigan hosted a Michigan Meeting that involved over 40 speakers, including 4 University Presidents, and 225 registrants. This report summarizes that three-day meeting with a focus on four key themes. First, what is engagement and should we do it? Second, what are the ground rules for public and political engagement? Third, what are some models that have worked and what can we learn from them? Fourth and finally, what are the obstacles to engagement and how can they be overcome?

This book offers a glimpse into the future. The companies it describes are pioneers, the first-movers in market shifts that will eventually become mainstream. These "hybrid organizations" – or what others call "values-driven" or "mission-driven" organizations – operate in the blurry space between the for-profit and non-profit worlds. They are redefining their supply chains, their sources of capital, their very purpose for being; and in the process they are changing the market for others.  Using a combination of high-level survey analysis and, more importantly, in-depth executive interviews, the book helps fill the present gap in literature on environmentally focused and financially driven for-profit businesses. Moreover, it highlights key trends and critical themes that enable this new wave of socially conscious and fiscally minded enterprises to be successful in meeting both sets of goals. The takeaway for readers of this book is not only an appreciation for common business practices that hybrid organizations adopt, but also an understanding of the complexity of the integration of such adoption that allows them to successfully achieve both mission- and market-driven goals.  The book begins with key definitions to establish the scope of this new sector, including explicit definitions for hybrid organizations, environmental sustainability missions, as well as specific criteria to create useful boundaries for the field of hybrid organizations. Building on prior work conducted by researchers on corporate social responsibility, sustainable entrepreneurship, and social enterprise, the book catalogues the best practices within this growing sector, helping others to learn from both the successes and failures of those that are choosing this strategy.  The core of the book is built on an analysis of survey data from 47 hybrid organizations, investigating their business models and strategies, finances, organizational structures, processes, metrics, and innovations. The organizations represent a cross-section of size, age, industry, and geography, although the sample set is biased towards young, small, U.S.-based hybrids. Based on analysis of the survey data, five best-in-class companies were selected for in-depth case studies in order to provide instructive lessons for hybrid practitioners and researchers alike.  In short, this book presents research that shows hybrid organizations to be a practical and feasible organizational model for contributing solutions to global environmental issues. The lessons in this book will help other social entrepreneurs, business managers, non-profit leaders, or students interested in careers that fuse profitability and responsibility do it even better.

This astonishing book invites you into a conversation between a teacher, John R. Ehrenfeld, and his former student now professor, Andrew J. Hoffman, as they discuss how to create a sustainable world. Unlike virtually all other books about sustainability, this one goes beyond the typical stories that we tell ourselves about repairing the environmental damages of human progress. Through their dialogue and essays that open each section, the authors uncover two core facets of our culture that drive the unsustainable, unsatisfying, and unfair social and economic machines that dominate our lives. First, our collective model of the way the world works cannot cope with the inherent complexity of today's highly connected, high-speed reality. Second, our understanding of human behavior is rooted in this outdated model. Driven by the old guard, sustainability has become little more than a fashionable idea. As a result, both business and government are following the wrong path – at best applying temporary, less unsustainable solutions that will fail to leave future generations in better shape. To shift the pendulum, this book tells a new story, driven by being and caring, as opposed to having and needing, rooted in the beauty of complexity and arguing for the transformative cultural shift that we can make based on our collective wisdom and lived experiences. Then, the authors sketch out the road to a flourishing future, a change in our consumption and a new approach to understanding and acting. There is no middle ground; without serious change at the most basic level, we will continue to head down a false path. Indeed, this book is a clarion call to action. Candid and insightful, it leaves readers with cautious hope.

Winner of the 2000 Rachel Carson Prize awarded by the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Rated one of the top 10 books on business and the environment by TOMORROW magazine, December 1998. Few contemporary movements illustrate the dynamics of institutional change quite as dramatically as that of corporate environmentalism. From Heresy to Dogma takes an in-depth look at the evolution of corporate environmentalism for a unique perspective: that of industry itself. Here is an analysis of corporate change in the U. S. chemical and petroleum industry drawn not from law or economics, but rather from the realm of organizational behavior, an area of academic research all too absent from the debate over this socially important issue. Scholarly, accessible, and engaging, From Heresy to Dogma provides the type of rigorous academic analysis critical in an era when "political correctness" can cloud the logic of rational discourse. More important, it draws from that analysis to present a compelling—and sometimes controversial—prognosis for the future of corporate environmentalism. This is history as only an accomplished organizational theorist could present it, filled with provocative new insights into the collective psyche of corporate America.