What a social business sustainability index is and why we need one
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 12:00PM Companies that report on sustainability and their efforts toward it should be applauded because it could augur the beginnings of change within a corporation’s behaviour. But it is comical that anyone should take them seriously enough to give them awards. Anyone knows that the executives running most companies are in denial about the negative environmental consequences – as economists would depict them, the “externalities” – created by their actions. Most corporate decision makers would be unhappy for those consequences of their decisions to be made public. And telling porkies on paper will always be cheaper than confessing to and fixing a significant externality within any reasonable time frame. Shareholders are complicit in such arrangements.
