(Finance) – Il Advise and the National Foundation of Accountants – Research they publish today the Business economics notebook “Professionals and companies in the sustainability scenario. Evolving activities and emerging skills”, which tries to provide a general reference framework in which to represent the current scenario of the elements ofthe economy of sustainability to identify and place the professional activities and functions carried out in consultancy and operational support to companies that have undertaken, wish to undertake or need to undertake a path towards sustainability.
To orient yourself in this scenario, the Notebook is developed by considering different observation points on the “field” of sustainability. In particular, in the professional perspective, the phenomena are observed under two lenses: that of the sustainability of the system and that of the sustainability of the company. We therefore find ourselves in a universe extraordinarily larger than the one from which everything originated: that of reporting. From the perspective of companies, then, to intercept those transactional or planetary geopolitical risks inherent to sustainability phenomena and scenarios, with the aim of cushioning their repercussions on economic and social relationships and to safeguard the conditions of continuity and development in a sustainability framework systemic, it is necessary to develop an approach different from the traditional one, with which to respond to the new needs of companies, which is not limited to taking ESG aspects into consideration, but allows us to strategically rethink the company and its economic-production model.
To exercise this function – we read in the text – land “traditional” professional skills may not be enough: many activities in the fields of strategic planning, finance, corporate governance, reporting itself, control, and the related skills are not yet precisely crystallized in the norm nor promptly codified in practice.
Reasoning on the relationship between the activities and functions, on the one hand, and the skills, on the other, of sustainability and in sustainability – this relationship, which in fact moves in a bidirectional way – the document intends shine the light on the relationship between professional and company so that it can consolidate on foundations also represented by the ability to spread an approach that guarantees the transition from a “professional consultancy” activity to a “corporate action” activity, where technical skills and entrepreneurial sensitivity constitute complementary elements for the purposes of effective strategic planning and management in sustainability scenarios and a growing inclusion of ESG factors and phenomena in business decisions. Ultimately, we try to provide some ideas to reflect on where all this is leading uswith regard to the development of professional skills, the use of technology and the system scenario as a whole.
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