Living Above the Store is a guide to building a restorative, eco-centric business based on the case study of the author’s company. Though the book talks about a single company, it translates the experience into a model applicable across the board.
The journey toward a restorative business entails five stages – recovery, restraint, synthesis, covenantal action, and congruence – each of which, in turn, comprises a number of processes and principles. Every aspect of business receives detailed treatment: Melaver leaves no stone unturned within a company structure.
More than a mere application of sustainable practices, building a restorative business is a transformation of business as such. It rests on a well-defined philosophical foundation – “business where human-made and natural environments are in harmony” – and works toward a living, integrative system in which doing well and doing good are inseparable. A restorative business serves its people and place, not, as is traditionally the case, the other way around.
Living Above the Store may have invented its own genre: combination memoir, manifesto, case study and business guide. The personal part of the book offers insight into one (business)man’s mind, the professional part outlines the mind’s expression through creating and managing a restorative corporation. Being a “business book written through storytelling” makes for a slower read, but that fits the type of company described here and the process of building it: deceleration, mindfulness, and restraint inform the creation of a restorative business.
***
Martin Melaver, Living Above the Store: Building a Business That Creates Value, Inspires Change, and Restores Land and Community, White River Junction: Chelsea Green, 2009.
Disclosure: I received Living Above the Store as a review copy from Chelsea Green.
Publishers: Please email me to discuss reviews of your new offerings in sustainable business.
