MMTC Research Seminar presented by Guénola Nonet & Dinara Tokbaeva.

Guénola & Dinara are presenting their research titled as “A journey towards sustainability: Theoretical and empirical perspectives”.

Although sustainability reporting is increasing, policies and reporting standards are currently focusing mainly on organisations’ carbon emissions. Carbon emissions represents only one of the nine planetary boundaries (Stockholm Resilience Centre, 2023). Simultaneously to this increase of corporate sustainability reporting, we also witness an unsustainable increase of carbon emissions, acceleration of the destruction of Earth’s biosphere, massive pollution of our waters and air quality, and extensive soil depletion. Corporations will not achieve an embedded environmental sustainability without a more advanced understanding of the embedded nature of corporations and how to assess organisations’ impact on their ecosystems, including Earth. What economic perspectives and managerial practices could help improve the impact of businesses on Earth’s living system? We suggest new managerial evaluation principles embedded in our planetary boundaries and designed for just and safe societies. To explore how to support organisations to remain within our planetary boundaries, we discuss three perspectives: (1) An embedded perspective: grounded in new economics frameworks such as the doughnut economics framework we review how economic principles can support an approach embedded in Earth’s planetary boundaries. (2) An organisational sustainability journey presenting the various sustainability phases for organisations. (3) An individual perspective looking at the role of individuals and their needed expertise and skills to support the transition of organisations and help remain within our planetary boundaries.

Authors would like to acknowledge Associate Professor Mark Edwards for his contribution. 

The paper is in the early stage of development.