Business Ethics & Sustainability – Maurizio Zollo, Celia Moore

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From the course by Università Bocconi

Corporate Sustainability. Understanding and Seizing the Strategic Opportunity

20 ratings

Università Bocconi

Corporate Sustainability. Understanding and Seizing the Strategic Opportunity

20 ratings

The achievement of a balanced economic, social and environmental development - as expressed in the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development - is recognized as one of the major challenges humanity is facing today. What is less clear is whether and how organizations can generate business opportunities and value for their stakeholders while tackling such challenges. In this course, thought leaders in a wide variety of management and economics fields illustrate how to assess and seize the opportunities offered by these global emergencies. They will offer new ways to understand the purpose and the logic of success of the business enterprise in this new context, providing ideas and examples on how to manage the transition process to realize the value creation potential from corporate sustainability for all involved stakeholders. Learning objectives The course will allow you to: - Understand What the macroeconomic and microeconomic consequences of both climate changes, poverty, hunger, gender or race discriminations, lack of communication between the State, Civil Societies, and businesses, etc are. - Understand Why it is important for businesses to tackle sustainability issues in order to create more and better business opportunities; - Learn How each individual, organization and system can start to analyze its behaviors and change towards more sustainable practices and models.

From the lesson

Understanding the Sustainability Challenge: the Business Level

In this section you will learn the core concepts of corporate sustainability and the key dimensions that distinguish a sustainable organization. Instructors will discuss the foundations of the stakeholder-based view of the firm, and the logic for and against the primacy of shareholder value maximization as guiding purpose for firms' existence. We will then explore sustainability challenges and opportunities for organizations across some of the key dimensions of business, and conclude with a roundtable discussion on the nature of the sustainable enterprise.

What is a Sustainable Enterprise? (part 1) – Maurizio Zollo10:06

What is a Sustainable Enterprise? (part 2) – Maurizio Zollo10:30

The Purpose of the Corporation – Nicola Misani5:52

The Stakeholder-based View of the Firm – Nicola Misani6:05

The Shareholder-Stakeholder Debate – Nicolai J. Foss, Maurizio Zollo28:14

Corporate Governance – Xing Kelly Chen4:49

Understanding the Environmental Footprints of Companies – Michael Russo11:45

Business Ethics & Sustainability – Maurizio Zollo, Celia Moore4:05

Responsible Leadership – Massimo Magni3:30

International Implementation of Sustainability – Anne Jacqueminet10:13

Roundtable on the Nature of the Sustainable Enterprise – Maurizio Zollo, Christiane Bode, Armando Cirrincione, Anne Jacqueminet, Michael Russo, Miles Bernard Gietzmann29:41

Meet the Instructors

Maurizio Zollo
Dean’s Chaired Professor in Strategy and Sustainability
Management and Technology Department

ZOLLO: I would like to welcome today my dear friend and esteemed colleague Celia Moore.

Celia is one of our experts on organizational behavior and business ethics.

And from that perspective, I would love to hear your own view on what a sustainable organization might look like

or should look like.

MOORE: Thank you for having me. The literature on sustainability and the literature on business ethics has always been

somewhat separate and done by different groups of people,

but they obviously have a lot in common in that they are both trying to both describe the world as it is

and describe the world as it ought to be.

So, sustainability has largely been focused on the organization of the firm level. Business ethics often takes the view

at the individual level, but both of them are trying to describe how we can get to a better place.

So from a business ethics perspective, I think a sustainable enterprise needs to deal with all of its stakeholders in

respectful, appropriate, honorable, and with a long-term view.

That means that all the stakeholders involved in the organization need to be treated with respect. That includes

employees, customers, clients, governments, regulators, and the media as well. ZOLLO: Celia, a tougher question here,

and question that we're all really struggling as academics as well as

practitioners, business managers. So, given what you said about what a sustainable organization should look like, how do we

think about transition towards realizing the sustainable organization, and what does it take to become one?

How do we think about it from a conceptual standpoint, but also maybe from a more practice oriented standpoint?

MOORE: So, I have to say that my interest in business ethics stems from an ongoing tension I have between my inner cynic

and my inner idealist.

So my inner cynic worries that there are always temptations to function in ways that meet our own short-term self

interest. That's true for individuals, that's true for organizations.

And that's a temptation that is very hard to overcome. That's why I think that over the long term, sustainability will

not be realized until governments are involved both on an national

and international level, because it takes bodies that are focused on the common good in order to create the incentives

necessary to force people to focus on their own long-term best interest. That said, the inner idealist in me sees lots

of examples of both entrepreneurs

and firms that really, truly want to build their enterprises around the sustainable long term. One thing that I know for

sure after studying ethics for so long is that people really, truly want to be good. They want to think of themselves as

good people, they want to think of themselves as ethical. That's really hard to do if you're behaving in your business in

a way that only functions in terms of your own short-term self-interest. That gives my inner cynic a little bit of hope.

ZOLLO: Well, thank you. That’s a great way to conclude with a ray of hope that we will be able to see that the positive side inside of all of us

emerges bit by bit. Thank you so much, Celia. MOORE: Thank you. ZOLLO: For your input.

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