Profitability and Sustainability

Back then in 2022 when I took a Corporate Sustainability course from Said Business School, the explanation from The Program Lead during the course opening, Prof. Richard Barker, convinced me that this is the right course for me to take. Considering my current job industry (where 90% of my work is with private sector/corporate) and the intersection of where I want to lend my expertise further in the near future, I can no longer afford to not know on how to balance profitability and sustainability.

He said:

“Sustainability at heart is about the maintenance of capital in such a state that it’s able to continuously provide a flow of income where three different types of capital is at play: natural capital, social capital, and financial capital.”

So, corporate runs on at least those three types of capital:

• natural
• social
• financial

One can not stand alone so it has to cohesively work together to make the company stays strong and exist.

Financial capital is the value, the stakeholder’s stake, the profit & loss number that we can find on the financial reports and such.

Natural capital is a capital that corporate gets to run its business, be it agricultural results, mining products, gasoline to transport companies’ products/outputs, even as ‘mundane’ as papers and waters.

Social capital is the social construct where companies won’t likely be able to operate unless there are capable workforces, good law regulations, stable political climate and all.

Without those three companies can not operate.

Shortly, in order to maintain consistent flow of profit, companies need to maintain, need to tend to its capital — that is sustainability.

My focus when writing this is in the maintenance of natural capital.

While climate crisis in unfolding right before our eyes, the notion is clear:

Without capital, there is no profit.

Without nature, there is no us.

I hope this short article helps you to connect the dots between keeping our earth habitable at the same time aiming for profitability in corporate context.

We all need to start somewhere.

Today.