Meta invites the academic community to attend Symposium: Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) and Firm Value: A Multi-Stakeholder Approach, hosted by our partners at IE University in Madrid on October 28, 2022. Those interested can register at the link below:

This workshop launches IE University’s initiative on sustainability in the digital economy — an issue that will be explored over the course of several events in the coming year. This event brings together a group of renowned experts to discuss ESG and firm value, with emphasis on multi-stakeholder engagement. The workshop will lay the foundation for a cumulative set of policy roundtables in 2023, determining the key questions that policymakers, practitioners, and researchers should consider as issues of sustainability become more pressing.

The October 28, 2022, event will comprise several sessions throughout the day:

• Three moderated discussions on ESG firm performance as it relates to environmental taxes and corporate benchmarks, green loans versus sustainable loans, and discussions of climate change in corporate earnings calls
• A policy, academic, and industry panel weighing the opportunities and challenges of ESG and firm value

This event brings together voices from academia, industry, and policy, including Meta’s own Aïda Ndiaye, Head of Public Policy, and Julius Kusuma, Research Scientist with Meta Physical Modeling. The event is organized and moderated by IE entrepreneurship experts Antonio De Vito, Juan-Pedro Gomez, and Julio de Castro.

This is the fourth in a series of workshops that are all part of the IE University Research Initiative on Policy Management in the Digital Economy, sponsored by Meta. The theme of the first workshop was innovation, the second ecosystem governance, and the third entrepreneurship and the digital economy.

Mission and vision

Academics, small-business owners, policymakers, and the general public all have a stake in understanding how digital technologies and efforts to promote sustainability are linked to our everyday lives. Rapid changes in the digital ecosystem and new trade-offs with respect to sustainability require new scholarship and understanding. The mission of this initiative is to provide a European-based beachhead for the rigorous examination of sustainability in the digital economy. More immediately, the goal is to create a forum that bridges academic research and public understanding of these issues in a manner that enhances policy discussions in Europe. With its focus on creating links with practitioners, IE Business School is the perfect partner to launch this discussion.

What’s next

In 2023, we anticipate four more related workshops. The first will examine how sustainability initiatives shape relationships between managers and employees within firms. The second will center on how sustainability efforts affect for-profit business models. The third will address links between social entrepreneurship and the environment, and the final symposium will summarize this series on sustainability.