Imagining Corporate Sustainability as a Public Good Rather Than a Corporate Bad

August 2013
Citation:
43
ELR 10698
Issue
8
Author
Wendy E. Wagner

This Article argues that addressing corporate sustainability by putting the onus on corporations to assess the sustainability of their operations may get the solution exactly backwards, at least at this early stage in advancing sustainability. Rather than view the lack of sustainability efforts as another corporate bad that individual corporations should be required to redress, this Article suggests that corporate sustainability should be treated instead as a public good that becomes the government’s responsibility to address, at least initially, by advancing knowledge and generating baseline information.

Wendy E. Wagner is the Joe A. Worsham Centennial Professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.

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