New rules and regulations based on a tripartite guardianship system need to be designed in order to ... social performance (Savitz and Weber, 2006). A sustainable ... dividends is reinvested in the company, environmental efforts, or employees ... that sustainable business practices tend to pay for themselves and frequently.
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Driving Sustainable Business Implementation through Tripartite Guardianship Frédéric Narbel and Katrin Muff Business School Lausanne, Switzerland
This essay looks at the financial markets as the main driver behind today’s corporate behavior and suggests regulating them in order to promote and support the implementation of sustainable business practices. Despite the adoption of sustainable business practices and the growing knowledge on the topic, the change toward a sustainable and socially just world is happening too slowly. In order to ensure a faster transition from business-as-usual to sustainable business practices, laws, norms and markets need to be reviewed. New rules and regulations based on a tripartite guardianship system need to be designed in order to influence decision-makers on a global scale to quicken the transition and create a future where business, the environment and society thrive on their interconnectedness. This essay argues that the conventional focus in the regulatory systems on shareholder profits has a negative impact on sustainability efforts and suggests that most mainstream corporations engage in sustainable business practices only when they appear to create immediate financial benefits. As such, a shift from business-as-usual to sustainable business practices will require challenging the current form of corporate structure. There is a need for further research on the relationship between the regulation of the financial industry, the role to be played by a tripartite guardianship system and its potential to be the driver for the adoption of sustainable business practices.
A Swiss and Finnish citizen, Frédéric Narbel started his career in Kazakhstan in the real estate industry. Joining Alcoa, he was assigned to Russia as Project Manager and then Strategic Marketing Manager and was nominated to Alcoa’s talent acquisition program. After completing his EMBA, he returned to Switzerland and worked in the dental and orthopedic industries holding the position of Director of sales and operation. He now works in Geneva, Switzerland in the food industry for a US company as Sales Manager for Europe and Africa.
