Executive Afternoon Brief: Corporate Sustainability in Crisis

Although corporate sustainability has progressed throughout the last decade, there is currently a backlash characterised by increasing deregulation in both the U.S. and EU. Some companies have begun to scale back their ESG targets and efforts – raising questions about the future of responsible business. In this Executive Afternoon Brief, CBS Professor and Associate Dean Andreas Rasche discussed how companies should respond to this backlash with Georg Kell, Founding Executive Director of the UN Global Compact and Chairman of Anglo-German asset manager, Arabesque Partners.

Mette Amdi

Program Manager

Introduction

Among several important topics raised, the discussion focused in particular on three key questions:

  1. How should companies analyze the current situation, where progress in some sustainability contexts meets backlash in other contexts?

  2. Which response strategies can companies formulate to address the sustainability backlash?

  3. What kind of mindset should leaders embrace to steer through this phase of radical sustainability uncertainty?

Guest Speaker: Georg Kell

Georg Kell is chairman of Arabesque, a technology company that uses AI and big data to mainstream sustainable investing. He is also the founding director of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative. Georg also oversaw the conception and launch of the UNGC’s sister initiatives, the Principles for Responsible Investing (PRI), the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), and the Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE).

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