• A Critical Examination of Corporate Environmental and Social Impact Measurement and Valuation

    Can measuring and valuing the impact of business on society and the planet lead to a more environmentally and socially oriented style of capitalism? This is the main hope and assertion of corporate environmental and social impact measurement and valuation (IMV), which calls on organizations to measure their positive and negative impacts on their stakeholders and the environment and to subsequently translate them into monetary units. This curated dialog critically examines the components of this concept—environmental and social impact, its measurement, and its monetary valuation—by bringing together leading experts in the field who discuss the opportunities and risks of IMV. The purpose of this article is to place IMV under deep investigation and envision new ways that work with, complement, or replace organizations’ desire for management via quantification and financialization.

    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10564926251330815

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  • Is ESG Investing Impactful And / Or Profitable?

    There is a strong appetite in the investment community right now for sustainable funds to invest in but does that investment lead to sustainable outcomes, and also important – is it a sound investment?

    I read a couple of fascinating articles recently by Ken Pucker which addresses these questions so I invited him to come on the podcast to talk this through. Ken is the former COO of Timberland, is an Advisory Director at Berkshire Partners, and is a Senior Lecturer at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

    The two articles of Ken’s that I read were:

    1. The Trillion Dollar Fantasy: Linking ESG Investing with Planetary Impact and
    2. Heroic Accounting

    You should check them out.

    This was a truly fascinating episode of the podcast and as always, I learned loads, I hope you do too.

    https://www.audible.com/pd/Is-ESG-Investing-Impactful-And-Or-Profitable-A-Chat-With-Ken-Pucker-Podcast/B09GRGKBB2

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  • Heroic Accounting – New proposals for monetizing corporate planetary impacts are alluring, impossible and perilous

    Stanford Social Innovation Review

    By Andrew A. King & Kenneth P. Pucker Sep. 20, 2021

    Heroic Accounting - Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR)
    Illustration by Andrea D’Aquino

    As concerns mount about social and environmental sustainability, an unlikely planetary hero has emerged: the accountant. A growing collection of investors, academics, and business leaders have proposed that better accounting practices can overthrow what Financier Ronald Cohen calls “the tyranny of profit” and set capitalism on a more sustainable track. This new “Impact Accounting” promises to tabulate every way that individual companies influence planetary welfare—including economic profit, employment, social equity, biodiversity, and climate—and translate all of them into a single measure of impact, represented in dollars and cents. According to Cohen and Harvard Professor George Serafeim, the resulting “impact transparency will reshape capitalism…it will redefine success, so that its measure is not just money, but the positive impact we make during our lives.” Another Harvard Professor, Rebecca Henderson, expresses the plan concisely: “Accountants hold the key to the salvation of civilization.”

    Read the full article:  https://ssir.org/articles/entry/heroic_accounting

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  • Can Accountants Save the Planet

    Are you familiar with sustainable finance? ESG investing? Impact accounting? No? That’s ok, neither were we – that is until we met Ken Pucker. Ken is the Advisory Director at Berkshire Partners and a Senior Lecturer at the Fletcher School at Tufts University – he is also the former COO of Timberland. In today’s episode, Ken helps pull back the curtain on sustainability reporting, the myth of sustainable fashion, and how accounts just might be the unlikely heroes in giving our world a fighting chance at a more sustainable future. Read more from Ken Pucker on HBR: https://hbr.org/search?term=kenneth%20p.%20pucker Break Some Dishes is an Imagine a Place Production, presented by OFS: https://ofs.com/imagine-a-place

     

    https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/81365e3f-0c57-42c3-b9f4-b692170482ec/episodes/038b34c3-0ffe-4726-a158-8ca3daa4dfe7/break-some-dishes-can-accountants-save-the-planet

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