What do we need? What do we have? How do we ensure an alignment (or realignment) between what we have and what we need? This doctoral dissertation, concerned with how to tackle global environmental imperatives in company law, seeks to address these three questions.
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The thesis is anchored both in law and in management. As such, it focuses not only on legal but also on strategic business considerations in an integrated manner. It adopts a broad approach, looking at developments in corporate governance as well as sustainable finance. Although the legal discussions use Swiss law as a reference point, they are developed in an international context with extensive analyses of EU law, UK law, and national European legislation. The monograph first discusses the concepts of corporate governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) and provides a novel analytical tool to deal with these issues in the context of sustainability. It then explores the requirements of 'an end state of global sustainability' and subsequently moves to a detailed assessment of the current governance regime, delving in particular into the CSR-related liabilities and incentives at stake for both corporations and their directors and managers. It concludes with the proposal of a roadmap suggesting that there are four distinct av­enues, each underpinned by a specific normative philosophy, for addressing environmental - and by extension social - imperatives in company law and corporate governance. This aims to foster reflection on how to tackle the 'potentiality for a sustainability gap' in corporate governance and corporate social responsibility.
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As well as theoretical considerations, the author discusses practical economic realities and incentives both at the policy and the corporate levels.