To Make Companies Understand It, Sustainability Must Speak Their Language

“So what did you find out?” asked my friend while picking up his pint and taking a generous, hard-earned sip after a long working day. He is a Metals & Mining Asset Manager in a large and well-known investment bank. I am a Ph.D. candidate studying how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters can be integrated into mainstream business strategy.  He was asking about my three-year research project on sustainability reporting and companies’ decision-making processes. “Is anybody actually using that sort of data? And if so, how?”

Sceptical curiosity is the most frequent reaction I get when I describe my research interests. Whomever I speak to, be they professionals, consultants, investors, academics, or managers, cannot help themselves from raising an eyebrow when I claim that collecting and disclosing ESG performance should be more a matter of effective management rather than one of compliance, reputation and corporate social responsibility (CSR). To put it simply, I believe that sustainability reporting should have nothing to do with CSR: it is a management tool (as I have already pointed out here http://www.csrwire.com/blog/posts/1496-sustainability-reports-should-have-nothing-to-do-with-csr).

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Dr. Donato Calace is a Ph.D. student in the international program “The Economics and Management of Natural Resources” jointly developed by the LUM Jean Monnet University - Italy, Megatrend University, Belgrad (Serbia), China Three Gorges University (CTGU) - China, Louisiana Tech  University - USA and Saint Petersburg State Forest Technical University (SPbSFTU) – Russia. He has been working in the sustainability reporting field for 2 years, analyzing the relationship between non-financial disclosure and environmental performance, reporting and market value, national culture and sustainability reporting. He presented the results of his studies in international conferences such as the OFEL International Conference, the IFKAD International Conference, the CSR Trends International Conference. He published on the International Journal of Business Administration and he is serving as Associate Editor for the EMNR Working Paper Series of the LUM University Ph.D. program.