Sustainability

The Swedish Corporate Sustainability Ranking

Other research at the School of Economics and Management aims to address how sustainability efforts at companies can be measured. Associate professor Susanne Arvidsson works together with newspapers Dagens Industri and Aktuell Hållbarhet in providing a ranking of the most sustainable Swedish companies.

“We want to help companies become more sustainable and transparent. But to do that, companies and investors must know what to measure. Our review and ranking can provide instruments to avoid greenwashing, bluewashing or even SDG-washing where companies pretend to be more sustainable and environmentally friendly than they really are,” says Susanne Arvidsson.

Article: Lessons from Sweden in sustainable business (theconversation.com)

Read more: A sustainable university – new demands in the light of Agenda 2030

Replacing carbon footprints with intellectual ones

At the School of Economics and Management, we work to answer the question of how we can create better conditions for sustainability, both in terms of social responsibility and with regard to the Earth’s resources. Our researchers study what works best – how we can replace carbon footprints with intellectual footprints – and provide the Government with proposals for how we should work to achieve the best and most sustainable environment.

An example of this is the recent project where our researchers developed a new method for measuring carbon emissions. Established ways of measuring carbon emissions can sometimes give misleading feedback on how national policies affect global emissions. In some cases, countries are even rewarded for policies that increase global emissions, and punished for policies that contribute to reducing them.

“Our method provides policy makers with more useful information, in order to set national targets and evaluate their climate policies,” says Astrid Kander, professor of Economic History.

Article: New carbon accounting method proposed

Social entrepreneurship for a sustainable society

“I hear many people talking about sustainability and how important it is. But many seem to lack the tools to know what to do. Is this because of something missing in our education? Have we been given the wrong tools?” says Ester Barinaga, professor in social entrepreneurship.

She works with – and does research on – social ventures. One example is Förorten i centrum, where they used the collective production of murals as a method to work with communities in the stigmatised suburbs of Sweden’s cities.

“The idea is that we have to bring the University closer to the world that we study. If we want the world to change, we need to learn together with people outside the university. Right now, I’m involved in a research project in Kenya, where we’ll be studying some of the community currencies that they already have in Mombasa and Nairobi,“ Ester Barinaga says.

Article: “The market has worked well, but it may have gone too far”

Sustainable Future Hub

At the centre of LUSEM’s ambition to contribute to a more sustainable society sits the Sustainable Future Hub. By bringing together LUSEM’s broad network within the business, student and academic communities, the School seeks to find new perspectives and solutions to today’s collective sustainability challenges and thus create positive change for people, society and the environment.

Article: Generous donation to kick off the sustainable future hub