Many academic institutions are putting a lot of emphasis on creating social awareness and developing social consciousness among the students and budding leaders. However, the various aspects of United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) are increasingly becoming important for the institutions of higher education to prepare skilled managers to lead firms in sustainable development.
In this interview with TheCSRUniverse, Dr. Debashish Sanyal (Director) and Dr. Sanghamitra Bhattacharyya (Professor- Organisational Behavior) from the Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon share their insight on the importance of collaboration among academic institutions, corporates and policy makers towards effectively approaching the SDG goals.
They also highlight the importance of cross-learning among corporates and need to create documented knowledge and resources for the corporates on ‘sustainable business practices’.
Scroll down to read the full interview:
Q: Great Lakes Institute of Management (GLIM) recently organised its first international conference on ‘sustainable business practices’. What are the key takeaways for corporates in India from the deliberations that the academic leaders had during the event?
A: The term sustainability is broadly used to indicate programs, initiatives and actions aimed at the preservation of a particular resource. However, it actually refers to the distinct areas of social, economic and environmental – the pillars of sustainability. An environmentally sustainable business seeks to integrate all these sustainability pillars, and to reach this aim each one needs to be treated equally. Moreover, corporates need to work in close collaboration with academia and other stakeholders to meaningfully take their sustainability mandate forward. This will require a convergence in initiatives and approaches from academia, corporates, think tanks and not for profits, governments and regulators, if we are to really take the sustainability movement to scale, and leave a cleaner and healthier world for the future generation.
Q: Sustainable business practices generally come with some kind of cost which might not be in the best interest of profitability in the short term. Why should companies adopt such practices despite the cost disadvantage?
A: Given the climate change and environmental crises being faced by humankind, adoption of sustainability practices is no longer a matter of discretion but a requirement by businesses. And while there might be short term cost disadvantages in some cases, sustainable practices have been found to contribute to long term advantages – economically, socially, environmentally, contributing to the Triple Bottom Line, which far override the short term cost disadvantages.
Q: Sustainable practices are also aimed at contributing to UN sustainable development goals. How different is corporate alignment to SDG in India vis-à-vis corporates in other parts of the world (among both developed and developing economies).
A: UN SDGs are universal mandates, relating to both developed and developing countries. Because the achievement of the SDGs proposed by the 2030 Agenda is a global imperative, firms have to direct their corporate sustainability management system towards the requirements of this global action plan for sustainability. The mandate of ESG reporting by companies has become an established practice in developed countries, while developing countries, especially Brazil, India, China, etc are fast catching up on this, driven by increasing number of firms consciously adopting the sustainability reporting route. In both developed and developing countries, firms have now introduced into their strategic management certain strategies such as “clean production” and “eco-efficiency” approaches, implying that the business contributes to environmental protection with reduced costs and firms could make more products using less natural resources.
However, rather than differentiating between developed and developing nations, it has been found that more UNSDGs exist in sustainability reporting of firms in countries with certain institutional characteristics such as higher impacts from climate change, national strategy for CSR, and policies for protection of employment, which could be across both developed and developing nations.
Q: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) laws in India are mostly aligned with UNSDG. Do you think that CSR in India is an effective way towards achieving sustainability goals for companies? Why?
A: When India enacted the Companies Act, 2013, it became one of the few countries of the world to make Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), a legal obligation for a large number of Indian companies. SDGs came into force in January 2016 across the globe when corporate social responsibility (CSR) was already legalized in India. There has been a whooping investment of approximately Rs. 15,000 crores by nearly 20,000 companies every year under CSR in the country. However, contributions to SDGs are not substantial. Schedule VII of the Companies Act consists of a list of 12 broad activities (relating to 16 of the 17 SDGs) that are covered under CSR. These activities are closely connected with the SDGs. A recent study found that a good number of Indian companies are doing exceptionally well incurring huge expenses through CSR to contribute to SDGs. However, due to the longstanding cultural ethos of the country pertaining to social responsibility, some companies have not changed their approach and are still resorting to charity and philanthropy to execute CSR. Prioritization over two or three goals and sector-level steadiness on SDG are also prevalent. Some companies have embraced to SDGs to solely fulfill their business agenda at the cost of relevant safety standards, human rights and the environment.
It is felt that CSR regulations are excessively broad and provide wide flexibilities that are possibly being misused, and hence, need legislative amendments to make them more concise, and improve accountability and transparency, and existing regulatory framework needs to be strengthened with several legislative measures such as stricter auditing and monitoring measures for third-party implementing agencies and pre-and post-project impact assessment mechanisms.
Q: India being a developing country needs support from developed economies, both financial and technological, to mitigate its carbon emission. The COP 27 could also not bring much clarity on that. Given the current scenario, how do you see India’s current journey towards achieving net zero targets by 2070.
A: In the last few years, government of India has launched various new developmental programmes (e.g the Swachh Bharat Mission, Namami Gange, Smart Cities, Jal Jeevan Mission, AMRUT, etc) targeted towards reduction of all forms of waste and GHG emissions, taken policy decisions towards ban of single-use plastic and reduction of plastic usage, introduced the EV policy, made more stringent the requirements of ESG reporting by companies, tightened pollution control rules, and launched the LIFE (Lifestyle for environment) etc, all of which are designed to take forward our country’s mandate of ‘net zero’ by the committed dates.
Q: What is the role of academia in supporting the policy makers and businesses in effectively moving forward with the sustainability agenda? What are the areas where academia can positively intervene?
A: Many scholars have suggested the UNSDGs be introduced into the curriculum of certain educational programs (e.g., MBA) of universities in order to prepare skilled managers to lead firms in sustainable development. Educational courses can play a vital role in shaping ethical principles and societal values as well as creating an appropriate system of values for tomorrow's business leaders. There is also a need to develop an interdisciplinary method to illustrate the usefulness of utilizing various perspectives of sustainability and CSR for educational purposes. In fact, the 2030 UN Agenda could create new conditions and principles for Responsible Management Education.
Academia’s major contributions would be in creating knowledge products (documentation of best practices in sustainability initiatives, critical insights from data-driven research projects on sustainability issues, which could in turn inform policy reforms and interventions, creating knowledge sharing platforms through seminars and conferences for peer learning among corporates, academia, government and regulators, etc) as well creating socially and environmentally responsible business managers through structured course content and delivery of sustainability related topics.
Q: What support and facilities do academic institutions require to become a facilitator to help industries work towards their sustainability goals?
A: Academia would need support from both corporate entities and government in terms of granting funded projects, access to data, as well as intellectual support in terms of sharing of best practices, etc.
Q: Any message to your peers to become part of your institution’s campaign to drive sustainable business practices?
A: The mandate of sustainability needs to be intersectional and cross-cutting, with contributions from all stakeholders. While we are in the process of launching a Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Business practices, it cannot serve in isolation, but will need support from other institutions, the student community, the government, the not for profit sector, think tanks etc. We have received expressions of interest from a few corporate entities and government of India to be our knowledge partner. We hope that our other corporate and other academic partners join hands with us in their capacities to take forward the sustainability mandate in a collective manner.
