Don’t Confuse Sustainability with CSR | Ivey Business Journal

Don’t Confuse Sustainability with CSR | Ivey Business Journal:

Definition of sustainability -- essentially not imposing additional costs on the future -- is quite different from Corporate Social Responsibility, which looks at balancing the needs of all current constituents.

This is a very cool article that addresses the key issues that differentiate sustainability from CSR. Even though sustainability is overused and frequently missuses, it is a better term to use and a better utopia to aim for.

"It is time for organizational leaders to stop confusing responsibility with sustainability, which hinders businesses from thinking deeply enough about the inequities created by their actions over time. Simply put, some activities are either responsible or they are sustainable, not both."

The article talks about resources, but does not frame things in terms of the process of resource depletion, like the consumption of fossil fuels. Sustainability identifies the issue. CSR aims to offer some restitution, kind of. Neither really addresses the issues of non-sustainable natural resource consumption well.

Unintended consequences happen with CSR, with sustainability, and especially with non-sustainable activities. Lot's of unintended consequences happen with non-sustainable actions.

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