Harvard Business School is holding a conference on "Understanding and Overcoming the Roadblocks to Sustainability" that will meet on June 14, 2018. The meeting organizers write:
Over the past several decades, a vibrant scholarly community has generated thousands of empirical and conceptual studies on the complex relationship between business and the natural environment. At the same time, many large corporations have created positions of Corporate Sustainability Officer with the goal of achieving steady improvements in their sustainability performance. Despite substantial academic research and management attention, complex ecological challenges continue to grow. This unfortunate disconnect between aspirations and reality has begun to provoke some self-reflection in the business and natural environment literature concerning its impact and relevance. . . . Recent empirical business history research appears to show that profits and sustainability have been hard to reconcile throughout history. . . . This conference will focus on the roadblocks to sustainability since the 1960s and develop a research agenda for scholars seeking to overcome those roadblocks. In addition to offering a retrospective analysis of where corporate sustainability has fallen short, the conference will explore the incentives, organizational designs, and institutional systems that would allow sustainability to take hold.The list of speakers and schedule are now available on the conference website, as well as information about lodging and registration. Note that the registration deadline is June 5, 2018.