Simon Zadek | |
|---|---|
 Zadek in 2019 | |
| Born | 16 July 1957 London, England |
| Citizenship | British |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Sustainability Economics Corporate responsibility Green growth |
Simon Zadek (born 16 July 1957) is a writer and advisor, focused on business and sustainability. He is the Co-CEO of NatureFinance, a non-profit organization aiming to align global finance with nature positive outcomes. [1]
Zadek grew up in London, later attending Bristol University (BSc Economics, 1979), he also has a PhD in Economics from Brunel University (An economics of Utopia: the democratisation of scarcity, 1992). He reports that the dissertation topic was rejected by potential supervisors at the University of Oxford and LSE, before he enrolled at Brunel. [2] Most recently he has lived in China and Geneva.
Zadek has held a number of positions broadly concerned with supporting alternative economic development and sustainable business activity. Together with Julie McCarthy he currently serves as Co-CEO of NatureFinance. Before, he was Co-Director of the UNEP Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System, which started in 2014 in Geneva. [3]
From 1979 to 1981 he was an economic planner for the Government of St Lucia, followed by a period of consulting with Coopers and Lybrand. In 1992 he joined the New Economics Foundation, becoming its Development Director and leading its work on corporate social responsibility. He helped to found AccountAbility in 1995, acting as its CEO from 2002 to 2009, and was Founding Chair of the Ethical Trading Initiative. [4]
Positions in academic institutions have included:
He is also been an advisor to several green and business initiatives, including the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), the World Economic Forum, and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). [6]
Zadek's early interests were in alternative, utopian, and Buddhist economics. But he became interested in the corporate social responsibility movement and particularity the development of social auditing techniques, when working at the New Economics Foundation (1992–1999) [7] and then as founder and CEO of AccountAbility (1995–2009). [8] Latterly he has worked on promoting green and responsible financial policies across the banking, insurance and investment sectors. He has developed environmental and social risk policies for banks and corporate clients, and argues insurers need to report their exposure to climate risks and their strategies for resilience. [9]
In 2003 he was named as one of the World Economic Forum's 'Global Leaders of Tomorrow'. [10]
Zadek's book, The Civil Corporation: the New Economy of Corporate Citizenship (2001/2007) [11] received the Academy of Management's Best Book Social Issues Award in 2006 and has been called one of the most influential books on sustainability, by the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership. [12]
The Guardian articles
Business ethics is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics, that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of business conduct and is relevant to the conduct of individuals and entire organizations. These ethics originate from individuals, organizational statements or the legal system. These norms, values, ethical, and unethical practices are the principles that guide a business.
Corporate governance refers to the mechanisms, processes, practices, and relations by which corporations are controlled and operated by their boards of directors, managers, shareholders, and stakeholders.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) or corporate social impact is a form of international private business self-regulation which aims to contribute to societal goals of a philanthropic, activist, or charitable nature by engaging in, with, or supporting professional service volunteering through pro bono programs, community development, administering monetary grants to non-profit organizations for the public benefit, or to conduct ethically oriented business and investment practices. While once it was possible to describe CSR as an internal organizational policy or a corporate ethic strategy similar to what is now known today as Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG); that time has passed as various companies have pledged to go beyond that or have been mandated or incentivized by governments to have a better impact on the surrounding community. In addition, national and international standards, laws, and business models have been developed to facilitate and incentivize this phenomenon. Various organizations have used their authority to push it beyond individual or industry-wide initiatives. In contrast, it has been considered a form of corporate self-regulation for some time, over the last decade or so it has moved considerably from voluntary decisions at the level of individual organizations to mandatory schemes at regional, national, and international levels. Moreover, scholars and firms are using the term "creating shared value", an extension of corporate social responsibility, to explain ways of doing business in a socially responsible way while making profits.
The United Nations Global Compact is a non-binding United Nations pact to get businesses and firms worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies, and to report on their implementation. The UN Global Compact is the world's largest corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility initiative, with more than 20,000 corporate participants and other stakeholders in over 167 countries. The organization consists of a global agency, and local "networks" or agencies for each participating country. Under the Global Compact, companies are brought together with UN agencies, labour groups and civil society.
Social responsibility is an ethical concept in which a person works and cooperates with other people and organizations for the benefit of the community.
The Global Reporting Initiative is an international independent standards organization that helps businesses, governments, and other organizations understand and communicate their impacts on issues such as climate change, human rights, and corruption.
Mahmoud Mohieldin, is an economist with more than 30 years of experience in international finance and development. He is the UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for Egypt. He is an Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund. He has been the United Nations Special Envoy on Financing the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda since February 2020. He was the Minister of Investment of Egypt from 2004-2010, and most recently, served as the World Bank Group Senior Vice President for the 2030 Development Agenda, United Nations Relations and Partnerships. His roles at the World Bank also included Managing Director, responsible for Human Development, Sustainable Development, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management, Finance and Private Sector Development, and the World Bank Institute; World Bank President's Special Envoy on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the Post-2015 Development Agenda, and Financing for Development; and Corporate Secretary and Executive Secretary to the Development Committee of the World Bank Group's Board of Governors. Dr Mohieldin also served on several Boards of Directors in the Central Bank of Egypt and the corporate sector. He was a member of the Commission on Growth and Development and was selected for the Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in 2005. His professional experience extends into the academic arena as a Professor of Economics and Finance at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University and as a visiting professor at several renowned Universities in Egypt, Korea, the UAE, the UK and the USA. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of Durham University Business School. He also holds leading positions in national, regional and international research centres and associations. He has authored numerous publications and articles in leading journals in the fields of economics, finance and development.
John Elkington is an author, advisor and serial entrepreneur. He is an authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development. He has written and co-authored 20 books, including the Green Consumer Guide, Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business, The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World, and The Breakthrough Challenge: 10 Ways to Connect Tomorrow's Profits with Tomorrow's Bottom Line.
Klaus M. Leisinger is a social scientist and economist. He is founder and president of the Global Values Alliance in Basel. Until 2012 he was managing director and chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Novartis Foundation in Basel, Switzerland.
Tim Jackson is a British ecological economist and professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey. He is the director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), a multi-disciplinary, international research consortium which aims to understand the economic, social and political dimensions of sustainable prosperity. Tim Jackson is the author of Prosperity Without Growth and Material Concerns (1996). In 2016, he received the Hillary Laureate for exceptional mid-career Leadership. His most recent book Post Growth—Life After Capitalism was published in March 2021 by Polity Press.
Pavan Sukhdev is an Indian environmental economist whose field of studies include green economy and international finance. He was the Special Adviser and Head of UNEP's Green Economy Initiative, a major UN project suite to demonstrate that greening of economies is not a burden on growth but rather a new engine for growing wealth, increasing decent employment, and reducing persistent poverty. Pavan was also the Study Leader for the ground breaking TEEB study commissioned by G8+5 and hosted by UNEP. Under his leadership, TEEB sized the global problem of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation in economic and human welfare terms, and proposed solutions targeted at policy-makers, administrators, businesses and citizens. TEEB presented its widely acclaimed Final Report suite at the UN meeting by Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan.
Wayne Visser is a writer, speaker, film producer, academic, editor of poetry, social entrepreneur and futurist focused on sustainable development, corporate social responsibility and creating integrated value.
Multistakeholder governance is a practice of governance that employs bringing multiple stakeholders together to participate in dialogue, decision making, and implementation of responses to jointly perceived problems. The principle behind such a structure is that if enough input is provided by multiple types of actors involved in a question, the eventual consensual decision gains more legitimacy, and can be more effectively implemented than a traditional state-based response. While the evolution of multistakeholder governance is occurring principally at the international level, public-private partnerships (PPPs) are domestic analogues.
Peter Mark Pruzan is a Danish organizational theorist, management consultant, and Emeritus Professor of Systems Science at the Department of Management, Politics & Philosophy at the Copenhagen Business School (CBS) in Denmark. Pruzan is known for work on corporate governance and values-based leadership. He became a naturalized Danish citizen in 1973.
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William Lazonick is an economist who studies innovation and competition in the global economy.
Mark Esposito is an American-based Swiss economist, social scientist, public policy advisor, speaker, and academic. Esposito holds appointments at Harvard University, Hult International Business School, Georgetown University. Esposito taught at Arizona State University, and at Cambridge Judge Business School. At Harvard, he serves as a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and the Center for International Development. Esposito is Adjunct Professor of Strategy, Economics & Policy at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Esposito also holds positions at the University of Cambridge as a research fellow at Judge Business School and as a senior associate for the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. He is also a global expert for the World Economic Forum and advises governments in the GCC and Eurasia regions. Esposito is known for co-developing the concept of "Fast-Expanding Markets" (FEMs), a framework for identifying untapped growth opportunities that challenge traditional market classifications, and for his research on governance, emerging economies, and sustainable development. He has co-founded ventures in AI and edtech. Esposito is also credited with co-developing the "More 3P AI Transformation Framework," which focuses on enhancing business processes through precision, personalization, and predictive capabilities. He is also known for his work on "design activism," advocating for intentional system redesign to address global challenges such as climate change and cybersecurity while promoting equity and sustainability.
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Context-Based Sustainability (CBS) – also known as Context-Based Accounting – is an open-source, triple/multi-bottom-line, integrated accounting methodology for measuring, managing, assessing and reporting the performance of organizations relative to upper and lower limits in, and demands for, vital resources in the world. As such, CBS is a performance accounting system that interprets performance through a sustainability lens, according to which impacts are sustainable if and only if, when generalized to a broader/responsible population, they would have the effect of preserving, producing and/or maintaining vital capitals at levels required to ensure human well-being. Impacts that would have the opposite effect are unsustainable, as are the activities that produce them.
Maya Forstater is a British gender-critical activist who was the claimant in Forstater v Centre for Global Development Europe. The case established that gender critical views are protected as a belief under the Equality Act 2010, while stating that the judgment does not permit misgendering transgender people with impunity. At a subsequent full merits hearing, the Employment Tribunal upheld Forstater's case, concluding that she had suffered direct discrimination on the basis of her gender critical beliefs. In a judgement for remedies handed down in June 2023, Forstater was awarded compensation of £91,500 for loss of earnings, injury to feelings and aggravated damages, with an additional £14,900 added as interest.
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