Piet Sanders Lecture: Keynote by Robert G. Eccles

Robert G. Eccles is a leading authority on corporate purpose and sustainability from both a corporate and investor perspective. He is Visiting Professor of Management Practice at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and was previously a tenured professor at Harvard Business School. He is the Founding Chairman of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and one of the founders of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC).

Focus on the most important questions of today in the world of corporate sustainability

In the Piet Sanders Lecture, Professor Eccles will discuss the increasingly heated debate about the concept of ESG (environment, social, and governance). The term now means very different things to people of very different ideologies, raising the question of whether it’s still a useful concept. This debate about ESG, essentially a debate about the role of the corporation in society, is being reflected in the efforts of the IFRS Foundation’s International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), the EU’s European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) being developed by the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG), and the U.S. SEC’s proposed rule on climate reporting. Eccles will discuss a new initiative of his to try to bridge the ideological divide. He will also provide some perspective on the future evolution of sustainability reporting standards drawing on lessons from financial reporting.

About the Piet Sanders Lecture series

The Piet Sanders Lecture series is named after Civil Law Professor Piet Sanders, who founded Erasmus School of Law in 1963. The lecture was established in 2021. It honours the academic achievements of Erasmus School of Law and highlights accomplished and respected scholars and their intellectual and academic contributions in the field of law. In 2021, Katharina Pistor, Professor at Columbia University, gave the first Piet Sanders lecture and hosted several workshops.