Too Much to Read…

It’s great to have all this free time.  For the past year, I’ve have been eyeball deep in my textbooks.  I haven’t had the chance to read just for the heck of it.  But with all this leisure time on my hands, I plan to attack that stack of books and magazines that’s been pilling since summer.  The first book I started reading is the one pictured above.  This book was recommend to me by a guest speaker who presented in my Business Ethics class this fall.  The speaker was from the organization The Natural Step.  Her presentation was about how sustainability was becoming a big part of the business world.  Organizations like Nike are changing their processes in order to better achieve the “triple bottom-line” or the “3 Ps”: People, Planet, Profit.  Written by Bob Willard, a former IBM executive, The Sustainability Advantage presents seven sustainable strategies that would allow companies to reap bottom-line, social and environmental benefits.  This looks like a book that would be a required reading for one of my university classes…lol  However, the Business Ethics course I took in the Fall really struck a cord in me.  I do believe corporations need to act more responsibly socially and environmentally.  This was a major theme in that class.  But the professor pointed out that corporations often face difficult decisions when it wants to act responsibly (a quick search of the issue of child labour reveals that this problem is not as simple to resolve at first glance).

The complexity involved in achieving a sustainable organization led me to buy the book and delve deeper into how companies can achieve this… But…

After reading the first few chapters, I received my weekly copy of The Economist.  This week, the magazine was accompanied by their annual The World in 2009 report.

This report contains over 50 forward looking articles addressing issues that will be important in the upcoming year.  There are so many articles that interest me that Bob Willard’s book is now playing second fiddle to The Economist’s report.

This highlights one of my faults.  My bookcase is filled with books and magazines that I’ve partially read.  They are partially read not because they are not interesting, but because some other book, magazine or topic always seems to grab my attention away.  I always seem to come across some great article, book or magazine that appeals to me more than the topic of my current reading.

Thus, let it be known to all that read this blog: from now on, I will finish my current reading before moving on to the next book or magazine.  I’ll start this right after I finish The World in 2009 report…lol

~ by gabvoie on December 18, 2008.