How Georgetown Became A Leader In Sustainability

‘YOU’VE GOT TO MAKE THE CALL’

Sustainability, says Prashant Malaviya, is a critical aspect of business now. “All CEOs are talking about it, and it is clear in talking to the senior leaders about sustainable business issues that they’re genuinely trying to learn,” he says. “They’re trying to figure out, ‘How does this apply?’ The most common thing you hear is, sustainability used to be compliance, ‘It was part of the legal department, and we just wanted to make sure we were not doing anything wrong’ — which is a good starting point. But what is clear is that sustainability and sustainable business practices have tremendous opportunity for innovation and creating competitive advantage, rather than making sure, ‘Let’s not break any laws.'”

Some companies are way ahead of others, others are just trying to figure out. Same for B-schools. The moral case is incontrovertible; the business case, Malaviya says, is increasingly so.

“It’s not just about feeling good about ourselves,” he says. “There are people who are making the case that there is a reason why we should think about this as the right thing to do rather than as the most smart thing to do from a business perspective.

“More and more people are saying it, and they’re also actually, at the end of the day, making a business case — but what they’re doing is, they are making a long-term business case. They’re saying, ‘Thank you for getting out of your quarterly problems. Thank you for thinking of it in the next year, two years, three years,’ and now you see the business case. But what if you were to think of the next 50 years? If you think of it from that perspective, it’s really hard to make a business case, but I think we can see the logic that says these are the right things to do.”

That’s an argument that carries more weight at Georgetown, he says.

“It plays into the whole idea that there is ethics in business, and you need to be following ethical business practices,” he says. “Some of these ethical discussions are difficult, because there isn’t hard data, but there is a logic that you can see playing out that should inform you. And at some point in time, the leadership question is, you’ve got to make the call.”

DON’T MISS THE BUSINESS SCHOOL PUTTING SUSTAINABILITY AT THE CENTER OF ITS MBA and FOR A B-SCHOOL THAT IS ALREADY A LEADER IN THE SPACE, A NEW MAJOR INVESTMENT IN SUSTAINABILITY

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