Business plays an increasingly important role in the pressing sustainability challenges we face. These grand challenges range from climate change to biodiversity, and from pandemics to armed conflict. Business organizations have implemented and integrated several environmental and social programs into their everyday business activities and some aim to transform markets towards sustainability, in collaboration with governments and civil society. These sustainability transformations will change how we move, eat, heat our houses, and ultimately behave. While progress has been made, important challenges remain and, in many cases, we see things getting worse. We explore the responsibilities of business in relation to other societal actors (government and civil society) and define the appropriate roles businesses can and are taking to tackle these challenges. To examine business roles and responsibilities in sustainability, we emphasize the role of context and combine business and management studies with interdisciplinary approaches and insights. 

Prof. A. Kourula, professor of Business & Sustainability: The Roles and Responsibilities of Business in Sustainability.

You can watch this inaugural lecture here.