Book reviews: Ethics, Equity, and Social Impact
Topics: Inclusive communication, DEI, risk/crisis communication, AI governance, and societal implications.
Sustainability Metrics and Management: The Path from Innovation to Routine
Steven Cohen, William Eimicke, and Guo Dong. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. 2026. 234 pages, including index.
Index Terms — Business, metrics, sustainability
Reviewed by Alisa Bonsignore, Clarifying Complex Ideas, LLC (hello@ClarifyingComplexIdeas.com).
Review posted June 17, 2026
How do we know if a business is operating sustainably? How can we measure it? And why does it matter?
Written for practitioners, students, and managers, Sustainability Metrics and Management: The Path from Innovation to Routine is a comprehensive guide that introduces readers to key concepts and techniques in business and sustainability metrics. The authors contextualize the emerging prevalence of sustainability reporting by building on the familiar business framework of performance measurement and management. “We believe that sustainability metrics are a new and vital element of every organization’s key performance indicators” (p. 165).
Performance management techniques — widely credited to management consultant Peter Drucker — were actually developed in the 1930s by Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon and his mentor, Clarence Ridley, to assess government effectiveness. Simon and Ridley believed that stakeholders (the public) should be held accountable through regular reporting that uses understandable, consistent language. This expanded into the world of business and laid the foundation for internal measurement and external reporting that we know today.
While performance management has long been an accepted part of doing business, sustainability management is a newer endeavor. Originally developed for measuring greenhouse gas emissions, the scope has broadened to include social and business goals. Given that sustainability, at its heart, is about operating in balanced ways without depleting resources, it makes sense that this would be a metric that could have both financial and operational benefits. Organizations that operate with a more holistic view of success beyond short-term profit will be more resilient and better positioned for positive long-term outcomes.
Practically speaking, what does this look like?
There are two primary ways to look at sustainability from a business perspective. The first, in the spirit of performance management, involves how organizations improve their sustainability: individuals’ goals, departmental objectives, and key performance indicators. The second is how they communicate that continuous improvement to the broader world of investors and community stakeholders. Will organizations be able to manage risk and demonstrate long-term resilience?
Currently, the world of sustainability reporting is fragmented and separate from financial reports. This book discusses the various methodologies for sustainability reporting: the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework; Integrated Reporting (IR); the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB); the balanced scorecard method; Value-Based Management (VBM) enhanced with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors; Social Return on Investment (SROI); natural capital accounting; and life cycle assessment (LCA). However, the obvious challenge remains that there is no single standard by which all organizations are measured, leading to inconsistencies and difficulties in comparing organizations.
It’s easy to understand how problems arise when the standards aren’t standardized. Unregulated and inconsistent sustainability management is reminiscent of the state of U.S. corporate financial reporting in the 1920s, before the stock market crash of 1929 that plunged the country into the Great Depression. An improved, regulated financial reporting system provided investors with confidence in their investments. “The metrics chosen, how they are reported, and how they are used to manage the organization are among the most important decisions a leadership team can make,” the authors assert. “To be successful, organizations must ensure that their performance metrics not only focus on financial success but also address environmental stewardship, social equity, and long-term viability” (pp. 8, 23).
Why do we need to measure both? Why aren’t financial reports good enough?
Traditional financial accounting ignores externalities. For example, most businesses take external resources for granted. We expect that fresh water will be widely available and cheap until a drought or a data center comes along to limit that supply, or until a neighboring business poisons the streams or groundwater with runoff. We expect that the diesel fuel powering our logistics systems or the petrochemicals used in our plastics will be cheap and plentiful, until a war disrupts tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. We expect that electricity will be provided without interruption, until wildfires or storms cause precautionary brownouts or widescale blackouts. All these business issues are also sustainability issues.
Sustainable business practices are often better for the bottom line. “[C]ompanies are trying to reduce their environmental risk and move toward renewable energy because they correctly believe that it will enhance their profits” (p. 32). For example, renewable energy beats other forms of energy on price, convenience, and efficiency. “When Walmart puts a solar array on the roof of their store and cuts their electricity bill by 75 per cent, the green principle they are following looks more like a dollar than a tree” (p. 35). Energy inefficiency is financial waste, and most sustainability stories are hiding behind financial wins.
But of course, other forms of waste come into play. Anything that can’t be reduced, reused, or recycled is waste, whether we’re talking about carbon emissions, packaging disposal, or chemical byproducts. Costs of waste disposal are increasing. Reducing waste reduces operational costs.
“Sustainability management is simply an effort to develop analytic methods and organizational practices designed to succeed in a more technologically complex, crowded world of finite resources” (p. 167) When individual departments can find ways to do more with less, there are improved economic outcomes for the business as a whole.
Being able to track these sustainability metrics — metrics that address material risks to the business — brings transparency for institutional investors, the source of operating capital. A comprehensive understanding of an organization’s big picture unlocks capital flows.
And while sustainability has been derided as politically undesirable, the underlying principles connect soundly to economic benefits. “Sustainability management is not an ideological position;” say the authors. “It is a new and more comprehensive approach to management effectiveness” (p. 119).
The more these metrics can be integrated into a coherent whole, the less likely it will be for an organization to manipulate any single element without detection. “There can be no true sustainability management without sustainability metrics,” the authors say (p. 38).
Ultimately, integrating the two types of management metrics will help organizations and their investors to see one holistic perspective that allows them to assess performance, risk, and long-term potential.
The Last Human Job: Seeing Each Other in an Age of Automation
Allison J. Pugh. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2026. 394 pages, including index.
Index Terms — AI, artificial intelligence, automation, human job
Reviewed by Jeanette Evans, Associate Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication (jeanettepevans@gmail.com).
Due to the development of AI and technologies such as the ones that replace humans at automated factories and self-checkouts, Allison Pugh addresses in The Last Human Job: Seeing Each Other in an Age of Automation issues such as what can AI and technology not replace. For example, is it possible to effectively automate jobs such as physician, teacher, therapist, caregiver, and hairdresser? These jobs rely on empathy and should be done by human beings as what people do for each other in certain jobs is valuable and cannot be effectively automated. Pugh reaches this conclusion after conducting interviews with people in a range of professions that require empathy and other human contact that she argues cannot be automated though Big Tech is often trying. She also shows how some organizations effectively tap into this need for human beings to do certain jobs with examples being health care and counseling.
In her introduction to this 2026 edition, Pugh notes that since the original 2024 edition, Big Tech has “doubled down on the automation” (p. x) of what she calls socio-emotional work being work once done by humans. There is an impact from AI and technologies not only on business and productivity but also on how millions of people have their own AI companions with companies that offer chatbots for medical opinions, therapy, coaching, and counseling. Pugh asks the question what if we need not just to be seen but to be seen by another human being? She also connects the current loneliness epidemic to reliance on technology instead of human beings. This makes me agree with her idea that what we need are actual human beings to continue to do jobs, such as therapy, coaching, providing medical care, and counseling.
Pugh interviewed people whose work involves human interaction as she argues that protection of these human connections is important and only possible with real human beings, not AI or other technologies. Examples of whom she interviewed are teachers, nurses, mental health therapists, and others in healthcare (including physicians, caregivers, and chaplains), service industries, and the general workforce. It is easy to see why these jobs should be done by human beings, but also easy to see how Big Tech would attempt to automate the jobs. Of special note are interviews Pugh conducted with chaplains and how their work with the families of a deceased loved one clearly shows the value of a human connection.
A simple, but insightful, example on the importance of a human connection is Martha, a Texan postal worker. Martha developed a human connection with many customers. These customers gave her a going-away party with cards and gifts including their phone numbers asking Martha to stay in touch. This was so moving that it made her cry. A chatbot could never have such a customer connection. Here, and throughout The Last Human Job, Pugh clearly shows how human connection enriches the lives of real people. It even binds communities together, which is a good thing.
Both practitioners and those in academia will find something of value in The Last Human Job. Practitioners in a human connections-related field will find arguments against automation. Practitioners wanting to automate an endeavor with human connections will find information that may caution against automation. Teachers will find great food for thought for their classes, whether the classes be for fields with strong human connections or classes for those going into the automation field. Students will find ideas of interest concerning the automation of jobs that require high human connections. For a wide audience, The Last Human Job argues effectively about the value of human work as we live more in a world that is disconnected and automated.