In this week’s Ethicast, Tensie Whelan, Clinical Professor of Business and Society and Director, Center for Sustainable Business, NYU Stern School of Business discusses why sustainability matters and what investors should expect in 2017 and beyond. More on Whelan here. Click here to download a full transcript of this episode.
Highlights from the interview:
Ethisphere: How would you define sustainable business?
Whelan: Sustainability for business is a journey so we are all learning along the way this is about redesign. It’s hard to say that any business is fully sustainable right now. But the way that I would define it is a sustainable business at minimum is having no negative impact on material, environmental, social and governance factors in its business.
Ethisphere: Any thoughts on CSR and sustainability function separately?
Whelan: Originally CSR just meant, 20-30 years ago when Milton Friedman was writing about it, it was basically employee relations and community relations. Today, some people talk about CSR that way and some people talk about it as embedding the core tenants of a sustainable business which are environmental, social and governance into their core business strategy.
