Why It’s Time to Finally Worry about ESG

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2019

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

Robert Eccles, a visiting professor of management practice at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, says that the global investment community's interest in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues has finally reached a tipping point. Large asset management firms and pensions funds are now pressuring corporate leaders to improve sustainability practices in material ways that both benefit their firms' bottom line and create broader impact. They're also advocating for more uniform metrics and industry standards. Eccles is the author of the HBR article “The Investor Revolution."

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do you navigate gender in your workplace?
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0:15.0	Women at Work, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Allison Beard.
0:36.0	What issues to the world's largest equity investors care about most right now?
0:48.0	What do the big asset management firms and government pension funds want to see from their portfolio companies.
0:54.0	According to research conducted by our guests today, there's one area that's top of mind
0:57.9	for everyone and it may surprise you.
1:01.0	Investors want business leaders to focus on ESG or environmental, social, and governance metrics.
1:07.0	That means progress on ESG isn't just a nice to have anymore.
1:11.0	It's something shareholders will demand because they believe
1:13.8	it's going to drive everything else they care about. Growth, market share,
1:16.9	profitability. So for any company keen to attract capital, sustainability has to
1:22.0	become a focus.
1:23.5	Robert Eccles is a visiting professor of management
1:26.0	at Saeed Business School at the University of Oxford.
1:28.9	He's a co-author of the HPR article,
1:30.8	The Investor Revolution. Robert, welcome to the show. Thank you very much nice to be here. So you say at the start of the article that a lot of business leaders seem to think
1:49.0	that ESG issues still aren't totally mainstream.
1:53.1	Why do you think that is?
1:54.6	You know, I think there's a couple of things that go into it.
	...

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