Lecture by CB Bhattacharya, Professor of Organizations & Entrepreneurship and Marketing and Business Economics, University of Pittsburgh. Professor Bhattacharya is a world-renowned expert in business strategy innovation aimed at increasing both business and social value.

Despite the rhetoric on corporate sustainability, its report card is less than exemplary. With the last ten years being the hottest on record, emissions and water usage rising, and humanity projected to use three planets worth of resources by 2050 under the “business as usual” scenario, at this juncture, our aspiration for a sustainable future is a mirage at best. The problem is not that corporations are pursuing the wrong goals, but rather, they are going about it the wrong way.

A key stumbling block for most companies is their reluctance or inability to treat sustainability as an investment rather than a cost, and subsequently take a holistic, stakeholder-centric approach to sustainability, and rally “all hands on deck” to achieve the desired balance of people, planet and profit. This talk will unveil a purpose-driven pathway that will enable companies to integrate environmental and social concerns into all their business decisions, from the mailroom to the boardroom. Drawing on thirty years of research in this area, I shall illustrate that under a set of strategic conditions, “doing good” in terms of creating environmental and social value leads to “doing well” financially, and that progress is amplified manifold when all stakeholders are pressed into action.

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Marketing Department and the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science & Society.