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Sustainable Sustainability

Why ESG is not enough

Rajeev Peshawaria
Buying Options
Paperback / Hardback

The good news is that everyone is talking about ESG.
The bad news is that everyone is talking about ESG.

The cry for a more inclusive form of capitalism is growing. But the irony is we are using the same tools that caused the excesses of shareholder capitalism—incentives and regulations—to drive responsible behaviour.

Eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith propagated profit maximization as the incentive for businesses to create goods and services that society needs. He argued that free-market competition would ensure consumers get the best quality product at the cheapest price.

200 years later, Milton Friedman agreed in his seminal 1970 New York Times op-ed that the sole responsibility of business is to maximize profits ‘so long as it stays within the rules of the game’. Incentives coupled with some regulations were to henceforth safeguard societal interests.

Instead, incentives created bad behaviour. Regulations were routinely bypassed with intelligent loopholes. Despite this—to encourage sustainability today—we are again using incentives and regulations. That’s predominantly what the ESG framework focuses on. And what do we see? Rampant greenwashing and box-ticking.

To address today’s existential challenges, we need innovation of the highest order. Innovation can neither be legislated nor driven by extrinsic incentives alone. We need a values-driven revolution. We need steward leadership—the ability to create a win-win-win future for stakeholders, society, and the environment. ESG must upgrade to ESL, where the ‘L’ stands for Steward Leadership. In ESL, ‘G’ is a subset of ‘L’.

Sustainable Sustainability lays out a practical, step-by-step playbook for any commercial entity that wants to succeed at marrying profit and purpose.

https://www.sustainable-sustainability.com

Published: Nov/2023

ISBN: 9789815144574

Length: 312 Pages

Sustainable Sustainability

Why ESG is not enough

Rajeev Peshawaria

The good news is that everyone is talking about ESG.
The bad news is that everyone is talking about ESG.

The cry for a more inclusive form of capitalism is growing. But the irony is we are using the same tools that caused the excesses of shareholder capitalism—incentives and regulations—to drive responsible behaviour.

Eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith propagated profit maximization as the incentive for businesses to create goods and services that society needs. He argued that free-market competition would ensure consumers get the best quality product at the cheapest price.

200 years later, Milton Friedman agreed in his seminal 1970 New York Times op-ed that the sole responsibility of business is to maximize profits ‘so long as it stays within the rules of the game’. Incentives coupled with some regulations were to henceforth safeguard societal interests.

Instead, incentives created bad behaviour. Regulations were routinely bypassed with intelligent loopholes. Despite this—to encourage sustainability today—we are again using incentives and regulations. That’s predominantly what the ESG framework focuses on. And what do we see? Rampant greenwashing and box-ticking.

To address today’s existential challenges, we need innovation of the highest order. Innovation can neither be legislated nor driven by extrinsic incentives alone. We need a values-driven revolution. We need steward leadership—the ability to create a win-win-win future for stakeholders, society, and the environment. ESG must upgrade to ESL, where the ‘L’ stands for Steward Leadership. In ESL, ‘G’ is a subset of ‘L’.

Sustainable Sustainability lays out a practical, step-by-step playbook for any commercial entity that wants to succeed at marrying profit and purpose.

https://www.sustainable-sustainability.com

Buying Options
Paperback / Hardback

Rajeev Peshawaria

Rajeev Peshawaria is the CEO of Stewardship Asia Centre in Singapore and Founder President of the Leadership Energy Consulting Company in Seattle, WA. He served as Chief Learning Officer of Coca-Cola and Morgan Stanley and has held senior positions at American Express, HSBC, and Goldman Sachs, where he helped found the leadership academy Pine Street.

Rajeev’s clients include Allianz, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Great Eastern, HSBC, Indian Railways, Johnson & Johnson, MetLife, Mitsubishi, Maybank, Mohammad bin Rashid School of Government Dubai, Nike, Nestle, Permata Bank Indonesia, PwC, Prudential, Sinarmas Indonesia, US Treasury, US Securities & Exchange Commission, Zurich Insurance and many more. He also serves as guest faculty at leading business schools in the US, Europe and Asia.

In 2014 and 2017 he was named one of Top 100 Global Thought Leaders for Trustworthy Business by ‘Trust Across America.’

He is the author of Wall Street Journal and Amazon bestseller Open Source Leadership (McGraw Hill 2017), Too Many Bosses, Too Few Leaders (Simon & Schuster 2011), and co-author of Be the Change (McGraw Hill 2014).

He currently splits his time between Singapore and USA.