Sustainability

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2024-07-26 Sylvie Goulard, Francesco Perrini, Stefano Pogutz

To Be or Not to Be: Sustainability Between Strategy, ESG, and Reporting

Driven by a series of institutional and political pressures—from Climate Conferences to the Green Deal, from Non-Financial Reporting and Sustainable Finance Directives to those on transparency and greenwashing—the debate on corporate sustainability has often become muddled and highly ideological in recent years. With over three decades of experience in sustainability management, and having observed and studied the actions of many managers and organizations, we aim to clarify what corporate sustainability truly is and what it is not. The roots of corporate sustainability lie in corporate responsibility ...

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2024-05-27 Sylvie Goulard

Beyond illusions, within limits: business and the sustainability challenge

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, we have drawn on natural resources as if they were limitless. The air and water, the soil, the fish and the trees, all living things seemed at our disposal. Economic science has long suggested that wealth results from the combination of only two factors of production: capital and labor. As Jean-Baptiste Say wrote in 1803 in his book on Political Economy: “Natural resources are inexhaustible, because otherwise we would not obtain them for free. Since they cannot be multiplied or exhausted, they are not the subject of economic sciences”. We have ...

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2024-04-16 Sylvie Goulard, Francesco Perrini, Stefano Pogutz

Research, Sharing, and Impact to Address the Sustainability Challenge

Excellence in Sustainability and Governance - eSG Knowledge Platform is the name of the SDA Bocconi platform that brings together and coordinates all research activities on these increasingly urgent topics. Sustainability, understood in an integrated and cross-cutting way, is studied starting from global challenges on environmental, social, and governance issues that lead companies, international organizations, public, and governmental institutions to rethink their future. In this perspective, the eSG Platform proposes innovative and pragmatic solutions through research activities and analysis ...