CBS Sustainability

About

For more information, please contact the Group Coordinators Sarah Castaldi, sc@msc.dk or Jeremy Moon, jm.msc@cbs.dk.

See the full member list here.

Purpose

The purpose of the Sustainability Governance Group is to nurture knowledge on sustainability governance. This is accomplished principally by developing and supporting research, publication and dissemination focused on the governance of sustainability in a variety of global contexts. These activities may extend to sustainability education, fundraising, as well as outreach and egagement with policy and practice.

Areas of expertise

• Private Authority & Public Policy
• Global Value Chains
• MSIs, Partnerships, Standards
• Regulation
• Corporate Citizenship
• Political CSR
• Sustainability
• Sustainable Development Goals
• Sustainable Development
• Global Production Network
• International Supply Chains & International Trade
• Human Rights
• Labour
• Environment
• Tax & Finance
• Anti-corruption
• International Business

Research

Reflecting the imperatives for interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability, our areas of expertise span a broad range of fields from Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to international development. SGG’s shared interests lie at the intersection of the economic with the social and/or environmental. Particular strengths include governance and sustainability as related to global value chains, CSR, development, public and private regulation, human rights, power and justice, human development and capabilities, international business and the SDGs. Within these topics, research explores different approaches to governance; tensions and trade-offs; impacts, both intended and unintended; differing perspectives and viewpoints; and multi-level impacts (micro-meso-macro) of governance and their interactions.

By sustainability, we refer to economic, environmental and social criteria of well-being and justice. The SDGs provide a broad thematic framework, and SGG has a particular emphasis on SDGs 16 and 17. SGG interests explore the goals through a lens of well-being, power relations and interactions, inequalities, societal norms, and other analytical – including critical – perspectives.

By governance, we refer to how sustainability is governed and organized. This focus includes particular attention to:

• The institutions and institutional contexts which shape sustainability governance (e.g. international governmental organizations, governments and private authorities of business and civil society, areas of limited statehood),
• The normative foundations of sustainability governance (power dynamics, societal morals, organizational ethics, legal norms, principles of justice, inequality)
• The mechanisms that they deploy (e.g. rules, incentives, standards, principles, 'smart-mix' regulation, technological solutions)

Policy and practice

SGG outreaches to policymakers and practitioners to share insights, disseminate knowledge and nurture collaborative endeavours.

Group's highlights

The SGG is a newly-constitued group which bringd together researchers from CBS Sustainability and the Centre for Business and Development Studies. Recognizing their great degree of overlap in their respective but related disciplines, the Centers have chosen to merge into a joint group which aims to foster greater interdisciplinarity, explore wider collaborations and ultimately facilitate world-class research.

Jeremy Moon participated in a workshop on Interactions between Private Authority and Public Policy in Global (Business) Governance: comparative and inter-disciplinary perspectives hosted by the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. The workshop was the third of a series of workshops on this theme organized by the Private Authority and Public Policy network that Jeremy initiated in collaboration with Ben Cashore (an Adjunct Professor in Department of MSC, and about to move from Yale to the National University of Singapore). Jeremy presented a paper with Erin Leitheiser on ‘How domestic contexts shape the organization of international private governance: the case of the European Accord and American Alliance in Bangladesh’. He also contributed to a roundtable discussion on ‘Comparative Approaches to Studying Transnational Governance Systems’.