Alan S. Gutterman

This article provides a comprehensive exploration of the vital role that nonprofit and community organizations play in challenging and dismantling ableism-both at the individual and structural levels. Grounded in a detailed analysis of ableism's pervasive impacts on people with disabilities, their families, and society at large, the article emphasi...

In Human Rights of Persons with Disabilities, renowned legal scholar Alan S. Gutterman offers a profound and comprehensive exploration of one of the most urgent and often overlooked dimensions of global human rights. This essential volume traces the evolution of the disability rights movement, critically examines the international legal frameworks...

In Businesses and Human Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Alan Gutterman provides a compelling and timely roadmap for how businesses of all sizes and sectors can actively promote and protect the human rights of persons with disabilities. Drawing on principles from international human rights law, corporate social responsibility, and disability ju...

Governmental financial support and direct intervention in providing goods and services for people with disabilities is an essential, and arguably irreplaceable, contribution to realization of their human rights for members of that group. It has been estimated that public spending on disability-related programs averages 2.0% of GDP among OECD countr...

This article explores the critical role of businesses in combating ableism, a pervasive societal issue that devalues individuals with disabilities through structural, attitudinal, and systemic discrimination. It first defines ableism and its wide-ranging negative impacts, including poorer health outcomes, limited educational and employment opportun...

This article explores the multifaceted and indispensable role that businesses can play in supporting the realization of legal and political rights for people with disabilities. While State actors, such as national governments, remain the primary duty-bearers for ensuring access to justice and inclusive political participation, the article argues th...

Everyone, including people with disabilities, has the right to a basic standard of living adequate for their own health and well-being and for their families including access to adequate food (freedom from hunger and access to nutritious food); clothing; clean water and sanitation (essential for health and hygiene), secure housing (safe, habitable...

This article explores the role of businesses in promoting access to adequate housing for people with disabilities, emphasizing the challenges faced by this demographic, including physical inaccessibility, discrimination, and financial barriers. It highlights international human rights frameworks, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons w...

Social entrepreneurship has been defined as an innovative, social value creating business activity that can occur within or across the non-profit, business, or government sectors, and the leaders of those enterprises, the “social entrepreneurs”, have been characterized as being primarily interested in improving society rather than maximizing profit...

Organizations are structured groups of individuals collaborating to achieve shared goals and create value. They vary in size and purpose, addressing diverse needs such as security, spirituality, social support, consumer demands, and societal challenges. Organizations evolve to remain relevant as initial needs change or diminish. This article focuse...

Effective management of venture capital ("VC") investments hinges on establishing clear strategies for monitoring portfolio companies. This involves setting expectations for regular communication and information flow from founders, which is crucial for informed decision-making. VCs must understand the company's business, products, and industry dyna...

This article explores the importance of benchmarking and reporting in assessing businesses' efforts to support the human and legal rights of people with disabilities. It outlines key strategies and metrics for measuring the effectiveness of disability inclusion initiatives, including workforce metrics, employee engagement, training and awareness, a...

All persons with disabilities, regardless of their age and impairment, are entitled to live independently and be included in the community under Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ("CRPD"), which provides that States must "take effective and appropriate measures to facilitate full enjoyment by persons with di...

Estimates generally agree that about one in five adults in the US-and 1 in 6 people globally-are living with mobility, cognitive, hearing, vision and other impairments that may impact their ability to engage with businesses, either in person or by accessing their websites. People with disabilities can play several roles in the marketplace including...

This article explores how businesses can support access to education for people with disabilities. It begins by outlining the international legal framework for inclusive education and the challenges faced by people with disabilities in accessing education. States have the primary responsibility for achieving equal and full educational opportunities...

Over 1.3 billion people worldwide live with some form of disability, and many of them must continuously cope with persistent challenges in ensuring their right to the highest attainable standard of health. Despite the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and efforts by the World Health Organization, disabled individuals continue...

Women with disabilities experience compounded discrimination due to both their gender and disability, leading to increased marginalization and fewer opportunities. They face economic exclusion, challenges in accessing education and healthcare, and a higher risk of gender-based violence. Socially, they are often excluded from decision-making process...

The World Health Organization has reported that approximately 16% of the global population, over 1.3 billion people worldwide, had some form of disability, and that an additional 190 million people (3.8% of people over 15 years of age) experience serious difficulties in functioning normally on a daily basis. In the US, 61 million, or 26% of, adult...

The World Health Organization has reported that approximately 16% of the global population, over 1.3 billion people worldwide, had some form of disability, and that an additional 190 million people (3.8% of people over 15 years of age) experience serious difficulties in functioning normally daily. In the US, 61 million, or 26% of, adult Americans h...

The right to work for persons with disabilities has been enshrined in various human rights instruments and legal frameworks to protect and promote the employment rights of individuals with disabilities can be found across the globe; however, meaningful progress on disability inclusion in the workplace has been frustratingly slow. Persistent barrier...

The World Health Organization (“WHO”) has reported that approximately 16% of the global population, over 1.3 billion people worldwide, had some form of disability, and that an additional 190 million people (3.8% of people over 15 years of age) experience serious difficulties in functioning normally on a daily basis. While the number of persons with...

The right of all persons to access financial services and economic resources is rooted in fundamental human rights principles that emphasize equality, non-discrimination and the ability to pursue a life of dignity and well-being. The very first of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (“SDGs”) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted b...

Recognized international human rights have traditionally been framed as creating duties and obligations for states under treaties and other instruments and elements of international human rights law and relatively little attention, if any, has been paid to businesses’ responsibility for human rights. Many clung to the argument that states had the e...

Several definitions of organizational culture have been offered; however, if managers and employees are consulted, they may simply respond that culture is “how we do things around here”. Experts in management science and organizational behavior and communication see organizational culture as an explicit product of the choices that a group of people...

The complexity of organizational culture makes it impossible to identify with certainty all of the factors that determine the culture of a particular organization; however, it is likely that organizational culture is heavily influenced by such things as the personal and professional characteristics of the organizational members, particularly the fo...

Attempts have been made to identify categories of organizational culture as a means for describing certain aggregates of cultural characteristics and facilitating comparisons among organizations. The simplest typology of organizational culture relies on classification on a continuum from "strong" to "weak" and a key determinant of where an organiza...

Several definitions of organizational culture have been offered; however, if managers and employees are consulted, they may simply respond that culture is "how we do things around here". While it may be difficult to describe with certainty the basic assumptions underlying an organization's culture, researchers have argued that culture leads to obse...

The "dimensions approach" to organizational culture focuses on measuring organizational culture empirically along scales, in some cases bipolar, which can be related to other, most dependent, variables of interest. A wide range of models of dimensions of organizational cultures have been proposed, often accompanied by suggestions on how organizatio...

Financing is an essential element for establishing a new business, launching a new product or service, or expanding an existing business through internal growth or acquisition. It is likely that sustainable entrepreneurs will, regardless of the size of their businesses, need to venture into the world of finance several times over the life cycle of...

In addition to their formal structure and the rules and standard operating procedures used to support and operate the structure, organizations also rely heavily on their organizational culture as an important tool in controlling and coordinating the activities of their members (e.g., executive, managers and employees), formulating communications am...

Success for projects and teams requires skillful management to facilitate collaboration and communication. This book provides a practical introduction to the art and science of project and team management and lays out the tools necessary to get things done with groups.

Sustainable finance is a long-term approach to finance and investing, emphasizing long-term thinking, decision-making and value creation that considers environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) issues. Sustainable finance has emerged in parallel to aggressive policy initiatives such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris climate...

Entrepreneurs, and the new ventures they lead, have been recognized as major engines for the creation of sustainable products and processes that can be used to solve many difficult social and environmental problems. Since venture capitalists focus on nurturing entrepreneurship and new ventures, they have an important role in the development, growth...

Impact investing is aimed directly at creating a positive environmental or social impact by identifying and solving a particular environmental or social problem. In contrast to the efforts of traditional philanthropy to generate positive, measurable social and environmental impact, impact investors also seek a financial return. Impact investment is...

In addition to their formal structure and the rules and standard operating procedures used to support and operate the structure, organizations also rely heavily on their organizational culture as an important tool in controlling and coordinating the activities of their members (e.g., executive, managers and employees), formulating communications am...

An organization does not simply appear on its own; in fact, organizations are contrived social systems that are created by like-minded groups of persons in order to pursue and hopefully achieve a stated goal or purpose. Organizational design is concerned with the factors and issues that must be considered, and the rules and processes that must be i...

Organizational structure is the way in which the members of the organization and their job responsibilities are arranged. The organizational structure typically consists of various business units formed around functions (e.g., research and development, manufacturing, sales and marketing, finance, human resources, etc.), products, markets or custome...

The human resources function is at the forefront of a company’s efforts with respect to two of the key elements of organizational design—people and organizational structure. While human resources practices differ around the world, it would seem to be universally true that for companies to successfully achieve their strategic goals and objectives th...

This book is intended to provide information and resources that entrepreneurs can use to navigate the challenging waters of managing and growing an emerging company. The book begins with a survey of emerging company growth models based on theoretical and empirical research that has been conducted over the course of the last several decades. The res...

It is believed that the term “stakeholder” in relation to organizations has been used since the 1930s, when it was first suggested that businesses had at least four major groups of stakeholders: shareowners, employees, customers and the general public. Decades later, as interest in corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) has increased, one of the f...

Leadership is a universal phenomenon that has preoccupied scholars, politicians and others for centuries. In the management context leadership has been consistently identified as playing a critical role in the success or failure of organizations and some surveys have pegged almost half of an organization’s performance on the quality and effectivene...

The success of an impact investor depends on its ability to access and participate in deals that allow them to deploy their capital with social enterprises that can deliver the financial and impact returns that the investor expects. As discussed in the previous chapter, fund managers must be able to demonstrate to prospective investors that they wi...

There is a wide range of impact investors and each of them has their own unique set of investment and impact goals. In addition, institutions and other organizational forms which assume responsibility for investing the assets of others, such as foundations, endowments and investment funds, have legal responsibilities as fiduciaries of the ultimate...

Impact investors pursue their investment and impact goals through the decisions they make regarding the impact investing products that will be included in their portfolios. These decisions should be guided by the investor’s governance documents (i.e., the impact investment statement and impact policy statement) and products may be selected from amo...

Sustainable finance has been explained to be a long-term approach to finance and investing, emphasizing long-term thinking, decision-making and value creation, and has also been described as the interrelationships that exist between environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) issues on the one hand, and financing, lending and investment decisions,...

Impact investing requires an intention to generate social and environmental impact alongside a financial return, which means that impact investors must have a means for identifying, managing and measuring “impact” and reporting on the results of their efforts to the ultimate owners of the assets that are being invested. One of the challenges with t...

Although corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) has been adopted by many companies, few of them are practicing it with any formal strategy, and the common situation seems to be a portfolio of disparate CSR programs and initiatives, some of which support core strategy and others of which appear adjacent and discretionary. The diversity of potential...

Corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) is like any other important management initiative and requires proactive leadership from the top of the organization. In fact, it is clear that the “tone at the top” is an important factor in the success or failure of any CSR initiative and that the directors, executive officers and senior managers of the org...

In recent years governments have debated and established ambitious public policy initiatives such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its broad range of Sustainable Development Goals including reducing poverty worldwide and promoting sustainable economic growth, and the Paris climate agreement of 2015. Funding these initiatives would...

Entrepreneurs, and the new ventures they lead, have been recognized as major engines for the creation of sustainable products and processes that can be used to solve many difficult social and environmental problems. Since venture capitalists focus on nurturing entrepreneurship and new ventures, they have an important role in the development, growth...

Sustainable entrepreneurship is the continuing commitment by businesses to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce, their families, the local and global community as well as future generations. This definition recognizes several different stakeholder groups, not just shareholders,...

The right to work is a fundamental human right that is universally recognized as an inherent part of human dignity for all persons and essential for the realization of other human rights. It is clear under various human rights standards that steps need to be taken by States and businesses to promote and protect core labor rights such as the right t...

One of most controversial issues in the human rights arena is the extent to which businesses can or should be expected to incur the traditional duties of the State and how much responsibility should a company assume for the environmental and social practices and impacts of other companies in supply chains to which it may belong. The increasing conn...

Delivery of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (“SDGs”) in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development should be important to businesses that realize that they will not be able to achieve sustainable success in a world of poverty, inequality, unrest and environmental stress. As such, companies should contribute to the SDGs by upholding recognized...

Sustainability should be at the core of the purpose and activities of the business launched by the sustainability entrepreneur and planning for embedding sustainability into the entire organization, including sustainability reporting, should begin even before the business “goes live”. Early planning allows for integrating sustainability into the bu...

Academics, policymakers, businesspeople, members of civil society and individuals have all recognized the significant effect the activities of the private sector have on employees, customers, communities, the environment, competitors, business partners, investors, shareholders, governments, and others. It is also becoming increasingly clear that fi...

To know whether sustainability initiatives and their related commitments are improving the company’s performance it is necessary to have in place procedures for “communicating with stakeholders about a firm’s economic, environmental and social management and performance”. These communications take the form of “sustainability reporting”, which is th...

Like any other important strategic initiative, sustainability should be carried out pursuant to a formal management system and process that includes due diligence, development and implementation of strategic and operational goals and plans, and monitoring and assessment of impacts, all overseen by the members of the governing body of the organizati...

Many of the topics generally included within the general subject of sustainability and corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) have traditionally been addressed to some degree in domestic regulations issued by governmental bodies covering labor rights, environmental and consumer protection, anti-discrimination, and anti-bribery. However, the law ha...

The World Health Organization has reported that approximately 16% of the global population, over 1.3 billion people worldwide, had some form of disability, and that an additional 190 million people (3.8% of people over 15 years of age) experience serious difficulties in functioning normally on a daily basis. In the US, 61 million, or 26% of, adult...

Caregiving includes activities undertaken by others to ensure that those with a significant ongoing loss of physical or mental capacity can maintain a level of ability to be and to do what they have reason to value and involves a variety of services provided in a number of places and by different groups of caregivers ranging from care in the home f...

23% of the persons in the US who were age 65 and over in 2017 (11.8 million) were members of racial or ethnic minority populations—9% were African Americans (not Hispanic), 4% were Asian (not Hispanic), 0.5% were American Indian and Alaska Native (not Hispanic), 0.1% were Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, (not Hispanic) and 0.8% of persons age 65 a...

Emergencies, whether caused by conflict or natural disaster (e.g., cyclones, tornados, hurricanes, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, forest fires, chemical spills or climate change-induced drought, famine, rainfall variation and shrinkage of water supplies), lead to catastrophic suffering, misery and humanitarian crises and invaria...

Discrimination based on race is a fundamental human rights issue. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and that everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set out therein, without distinction of any kind as to race, color or national origin. Unfortunately...

Many companies have looked to sustainability and corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) initiatives of governmental or intergovernmental bodies as the foundation for creating their own sustainability and CSR commitments. The instruments that have been developed and promoted by the United Nations and the other entities are widely recognized as legi...

Lawyers and their law firms are engaged in a wide range of business activities on a day-to-day basis as they provide services and advice to their clients, employ personnel to assist them in their assignments, and purchase goods and services from a variety of vendors. It has always been clear that lawyers are expected to conduct themselves in a mann...

Companies cannot engage in effective and authentic advocacy for social change unless diversity, equity, and inclusion ("DEI") are embedded and valued within their own organization, and the process of embedding DEI must be purposeful and carefully planned. However, while DEI plans are obviously important internal roadmaps for the company; the compan...

Whether or not to take a public stance on political or social issues or on events such as those that played out following the death of George Floyd is often a difficult decision for companies, many of whom are concerned about alienating certain groups of customers by associating their brands with "controversial" positions on sensitive issues that a...

While many of the steps that companies should and can take relating to diversity and inclusion are largely internal, they can also take actions to address systematic racism in the external business and social contexts in which they operate. Companies should commit to advocating for good, supporting employees in their interests in getting involved i...

Effective and authentic advocacy for social change cannot occur unless the company has embedded diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) into its operations, decision making and organizational culture and made those values and norms part of the company’s DNA and the guiding principles for the company’s employment and other business relationships. I...

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food has defined the right to food as “the right to have regular, permanent and unrestricted access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and...

Financial equity and security means eliminating wealth gaps between individuals and groups within society and ensuring that everyone has equal access to financial opportunities and resources and enough money to cover the day-to-day expenses of living, recover from financing setbacks, and save to provide a better future for themselves and their fami...

Products and services can perpetuate racial and ethnic biases, which can adversely impact society and communities in which a business operates, but at the same time it is possible to leverage products and services to combat bias and promote racial equity. Studies confirm that companies could gain a competitive advantage, and promote racial equity,...

Discrimination based on race or ethnicity is a fundamental human rights issue. The principle of non-discrimination against all peoples, including racial and ethnic minorities, is present in all major international and regional human rights treaties and provides the central theme of some specialized international human rights instruments such as the...

Good governance and effective management is the responsibility of organizational leaders. While all leaders should have a vision and desire to inspire their followers to take collective action to make it happen, sustainability leaders can be distinguished as people who inspire and support action to identify and develop innovative sustainable soluti...

Ethics and ethical behavior has always been a concern for managers; however, ethical issues have become even more important over the years beginning in the early 2000s when news of corporate scandals based on fraud, financial dishonesty and personal greed of senior executives emerged from major US corporations. It is now clear that it is imperative...

Due to the onset of chronic conditions that occur as people age, as well as illnesses such as dementia and cancer, older people often need more assistance with the basic and essential activities of daily living. In their 2020 report on caregiving in the US, AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving reported that more than 1 in 5 Americans (21.3...

In the US, the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on residents and staff members of nursing homes and assisted living and long-term care facilities, as well as calls for addressing injustices throughout society, has led to a growing consensus that changes need to be made in how the nation supports the human rights of older persons and othe...

Nursing homes rose from the almshouses in England and America that cared for the poor, and the federal government began providing money to the states to care for the elderly with the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935. Decades later, funding for nursing homes was expanded by Medicare, turning them into the preferred, if not exclusive, finan...

Once the ideas for new products have been identified and vetted and the product development process is largely completed, the full attention of the company should be focused on the activities directly related to promoting and selling the products and tending to the post-sale needs of customers with respect to service and support. In the initial sta...

This book discusses marketing and public relations activities for sustainable entrepreneurs and emerging growth companies, an area that is concerned with supporting the efforts of the sales group to promote the company’s products to prospective customers, collecting and analyzing information regarding the requirements of customers and their percept...