A couple of weeks ago I received a flyer of a publisher (http://www.oekom.de/) with a special focus on sustainability. I like to draw your attention to the book "Nachhaltigkeit am Finanzmarkt" ISBN 978 3865810830 by Klaus Gabriel.
This book starts with a fundamental introduction into the topic of sustainability. It describes the 3 pillars (ecology, economy, social), the difference between weak and strong sustainability, the possible roots in the west-European religions, ethical/philosophical, and psychological backgrounds and models, and it describes two different business ethical approaches/models biased by two university lecturers (Peter Ulrich and Karl Hohmann).
This book is an outcome of a dissertation Klaus Gabriel made at the University of Vienna (currently he is in the position of assistant at the institute of social ethics, Vienna). The book is written in German and covers the German speaking countries/markets Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The ethical, philosophical fundament of this research describes also the theological development on the topic sustainability over last 40 years.
I'm not aware of an upcoming translation or a similar report in English. Although it covers only 3 countries with similar societies and business models, it's a good fundament to start any discussions on sustainability as it might avoid confusion and misinterpretations of often used terminology. The second part of the book describes sustainability models at the financial services markets, but that doesn't limit the coverage of the sustainability descriptions in the first part of this book.
Possible extensions of this research into other geo-regions, cultures, business models, and languages might be extremely interesting to get a global understanding on sustainability.
If you are aware of similar research covering other countries (languages) I'm happy to get your information and feedback on that.
Kind regards
Paul
