@March Audio , is sustainability about political views?
An attempt to bring the debate under scrutiny by means of scientific rhetoric is this paper by professor Serafeim:
https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/deliver...0004125117006093026120074030116072119&EXT=pdf
From the abstract:
«We explore the extent of adoption of sustainability practices over time and the implications for firm performance. We find that for almost all industries, sustainability practices converge within an industry over time, implying that they spread as common practices. We also find that the extent of convergence across industries is associated with the adoption of sustainability by the industry’s market leaders and the relative importance of environmental and social issues compared to governance issues. Further, we distinguish between a set of sustainability practices on which companies converge within an industry, which we term “common practices,” and a set on which they do not, which we term “strategic.” We subsequently explore performance implications and find that the adoption of strategic sustainability practices is significantly and positively associated with both return on capital and expectations of future performance as reflected in price to book valuation multiples, whereas the adoption of common sustainability practices is reliably correlated only with expectations of future performance. Overall, we provide evidence about the role of sustainability as a long- term corporate strategy and as a common practice».
My advice to you was to define for yourself what you think is «common practices» and what is «strategic» in terms of sustainability.
I am not of the opinion that sustainability is only about one’s political views. Isn’t sustainability more about short-termism vs long-termism?
However, I agree that this debate is larger than
@March Audio and thus would better be served in a designated thread.
Take a look at the Harvard paper and tell me what you think. Are such thoughts of relevance for
@March Audio ?