Yes, sustainability is high on the agenda of most managers and directors. But how serious and concrete is it? By expressing social and ecological issues financially, their size and importance become more visible and they can become central to the business strategy.

There is an urgency to incorporate human rights policy into your business operations, as stated by Yulia Levashova, Assistant professor at Nyenrode Business Universiteit. Besides a moral duty to take good care of your employees and ensure that your company respect human rights, it also makes a ‘good business sense.’

Today, René Orij was appointed as Professor of Corporate Sustainability Reporting at Nyenrode Business University. "With my future research, I want to hold up a mirror to companies and accountants: think about the importance of transparency about sustainability."

ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) dominates discussions in the boardroom. The reason for the growing importance attached to ESG is that it will significantly affect the landscape in which companies and boards operate.

Is the recently updated corporate governance code still relevant and future-proof? According to Jeroen Veldman, Professor of Corporate Governance at Nyenrode Business University, this discussion calls for a strong plea: let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Read the full essay in Management Scope (in Dutch).

Not just companies, but governments and citizens too have a responsibility in making global value chains more sustainable. That is what Désirée van Gorp, professor of International Business at Nyenrode Business University, firmly believes. Global value chains represent processes in which goods and services are produced, processed, and delivered in different countries. Van Gorp: “Making these chains sustainable means, above all, taking solidarity as a starting point. What is good for us must also be good for people in the countries where we move our activities to, such as production processes.”

Major social issues continue to have an increasing impact, also on the business community. And these issues increasingly require corporate involvement. Remko Renes (member of the Nyenrode Corporate Governance Institute) and Auke de Bos (associated with the EUR and EY) elaborate on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors. They think about the meaning and the importance of ESG, and the influence of this topic’s focus and transparency on organizations and directors and the roles of supervisors and audits. Based on their insights, they give recommendations to directors, supervisory directors, advisers and accountants.

It is taking too long for companies to put well-being before profit. That is why a social duty of care must be enshrined in law. This is what Leen Paape says in his farewell speech as Professor of Corporate Governance at Nyenrode.