I need to start this post with a bit of light fangirling. I’ve wanted to interview Andreas Rasche for a long time. He (via his LinkedIn profile) is the source of many of my favorite ESG and sustainability-related resources, and he’s the person I repost on social media most often—by a significant margin. I don’t know anyone who is better at making the case for why ESG standards and regulations matter in the real world.

Andreas has many strings on his professional bow. He is a professor of business in society at the Centre for Sustainability at Copenhagen Business School and the associate dean of its full-time MBA program. His research and teaching examine the intersection of corporate sustainability, politics, and strategic management in the governance of contested global issues. 

Our conversation explores Andreas’s current research, how he thinks about his substantial social media following, and how evolving ESG regulations are transforming the landscape of sustainability communications. Our discussion has been edited for length and clarity.

Katie: I’m a fellow standards and regulations geek, but some might say that those aren’t—at least on the face of it—the sexiest topics. How did you end up working is this area?

Andreas: In the early 2000s, I was studying for a PhD in strategic management, and I wanted to focus my research in an area where I thought I could have a real impact. The landscape of ESG standards was still embryonic, but I believed from the beginning that standards and regulation could transform the corporate environment. My PhD supervisor told me I’d never find a job, but I went ahead anyway. I found a lot of strategy discussions really abstract, and looking at standards and regulations allowed me to undertake empirical work on what was actually happening on the ground inside corporations.

Katie: The most recent iteration of your research focuses on sustainability in the EU. Why that topic?

Andreas: Sustainability teams are getting better and better over time as they build up more competencies. Increasingly, therefore, the main barrier to progress is at the top. It’s with the executives and boards, who are generally aware of some of the issues related to sustainability but haven’t integrated them into their discussions. There’s no magic bullet solution, but my findings suggest that boards are more likely to take sustainability seriously where they see ESG issues as strategic rather than a question of mere compliance. Board meetings tend to be fairly short, so sustainability teams can help by preparing thoroughly for meetings, including connecting the dots as to how action on sustainability can mitigate risk and build business value. Directors will also need to develop board-specific sustainability competencies so that they can better engage in ESG-related discussions and fulfil their oversight tasks.

Katie: Isn’t this just a demographics issue that will eventually solve itself? 

Andreas: It’s true that in many countries, boards are still predominantly made up of old white men who tend to bring industry expertise but may have little sustainability expertise. In the medium to long term, there may be lots of good candidates who have both, but we can’t afford to wait. We only really have until 2030 to get the world onto a much better climate footing. After that point, it’ll be very difficult to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.

Katie: Was it that sense of urgency that motivated you to intentionally build a career that targets lots of different audiences—including your students, fellow academics, practitioners, and the general public on social media—or did that come about more organically?

Andreas: I didn’t have a grand plan. As a university employee, the academic audience and students are more or less built in. Those are close relationships that I value a lot. I recently got an email from a student I taught a decade ago who said my course had influenced him to become a sustainability director. That’s really rewarding.

As for the other audiences, my research has meant that I naturally developed close relationships with practitioners and policymakers. My social media presence came about more recently. I’ve learned a lot on platforms like LinkedIn, and they’re also great places to spark discussion, test new ideas, and promote my work. Communicating on social media has been a steep learning curve. As an academic, you’re trained to go deep on nuance, but few on LinkedIn will read a post that’s more than 150 words. Explaining complex topics within those limited parameters requires a whole different set of skills. And this is a challenge I like.

Katie: You’ve got a substantial LinkedIn following. Are you intentional about how you build and engage that audience? 

Andreas: Yes, in the limited sense that I post regularly. One post every two weeks simply isn’t enough to maintain momentum. But my posts are really just things—articles, research, graphics—that come across my desk, which means that sometimes I will go silent for a few days. I post only things that I find genuinely useful and insightful, and when I am confident in the source.

Katie: Can you generally tell what content is going to resonate with your audience?

Andreas: Some types of content are always popular. The sustainability field is complex, so any sort of overview that helps people create order from chaos tends to go down well. The performance of other types of content is harder to predict. On New Year’s Day last year, I reposted a Financial Times article bashing the UN Sustainable Development Goals. I hadn’t thought it would do especially well, but people loved it … though that may just have been because I caught people when they were bored or hungover! On the other end of the spectrum, I recently posted about how US boards deprioritize ESG discussions, with less than half of boards discussing it regularly. That’s quite surprising and actually worrying, and I hadn’t seen it discussed anywhere else, but the reaction was only average. That unpredictability is part of what makes social media exciting.

Katie: We’ve gone deep on various bits of your work, but what’s the ultimate aim that motivates all the different strands of your professional life?

Andreas: I want to influence others to up their game on sustainability and give them the tools to do so. Success, in the end, isn’t about being able to say that you’ve written 10 books, or whatever. It’s about having an impact.

Katie: I’m going to shift gears a bit because it’s not often that I get the chance to geek out on sustainability standards. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) represents a profound shake-up in ESG reporting. How will it change the way companies talk about sustainability?

Andreas: It’s going to be a huge shift. Benchmarking will become easier, and CSRD data needs to be audited, which will increase companies’ confidence in what they are publishing. Over time, we’ll see a lot more substantive communication. EU companies also engage in greenwashing 20 percent less than firms in the US and UK, and regulation explains at least part of that.  

The real risk with CSRD is that companies see it merely as a compliance exercise—data for the sake of data—but the early signals I’m seeing make me optimistic. Companies are becoming much more reflective about both their sustainability performance and how they talk about that. The CSRD process can really help companies with the enormous task of defining their core sustainability narrative, and that has the potential to be a huge win.

Katie: And do you think the “Brussels effect” will apply related to ESG regulation, or do you expect that the European Green Deal is going to fade away?

Andreas: The Green Deal is here to stay, as the recent European elections demonstrated. What will change is the framing. The Draghi Report is clear—and right—that we need to remain competitive if we are to keep selling our products on the world market. These competitiveness concerns will be central to how the EU thinks about sustainability moving forward. The new EU Commission is already talking about the Green Industrial Deal, which looks to enhance the competitiveness of Europe’s net-zero industry. We should expect to see much more investment and subsidies for green technologies such as electric vehicles, for example. We need to bring down the cost of sustainable products if we want them to become mainstream.

Katie: Yet another new sustainability-related initiative from the EU! Is the EU standards regime related to sustainability too complex?

Andreas: The so-called alphabet soup is inevitable because sustainability is a layered, multidimensional topic area with an enormous number of stakeholders. It is very difficult—and generally ineffective—to have a standardized response to a complex problem. Financial reporting and auditing are similarly awash with acronyms, but nobody complains because that ecosystem grew up more naturally over time. In contrast, more than 150 sustainability regulations have emerged in Europe alone in the past five to six years. That’s a lot, but it’s also necessary.

Katie: Do you expect the coming years to bring a consolidation in ESG standards at the global level?

Andreas: This sort of consolidation is on the agenda of policymakers, but it will be a long-term process. The issue is overshadowed by other problems, including economic downturns and geopolitical conflict. But I expect we will eventually coalesce around two sets of standards: CSRD and the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards, which are developed by the International Sustainability Standards Board. The two have a different understanding of materiality but also some overlap. More work needs to be done to increase the interoperability between them.

Katie: What’s the problem that keeps you up at night, and do you feel optimistic about humanity’s ability to solve it?

Andreas: I generally sleep pretty well! But the question that is always with me is what life will look like in the future. We’re putting huge pressure on all planetary boundaries, and we don’t have much time left to mitigate that impact. Corporate sustainability is, of course, just one part of that puzzle.

I’m both an optimist and a pragmatist. We can have an impact, and we are. Some businesses really do make a difference, and these effects will hopefully get stronger and more widespread over time. But is it enough to address our serious social, economic, and environmental problems? Is it enough to counteract the effects of our systemic overproduction and overconsumption? I expect that we’ll look back at 2024 from the vantage point of 2050 and realize we didn’t move nearly fast enough.

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Behind the scenes

This interview is part of LEFF’s Into the Weeds interview series—a series that amplifies individuals whose work contributes to the achievement of the SDGs at every level. We’ll bring you insights from renowned experts and the leaders of global organizations and innovative local businesses. Clair Myatt (she/her) is the manager of LEFF Sustainability Group, for which Katie Parry (she/her) is the director.

^{Comments and opinions expressed by interviewees are their own and do not represent or reflect the opinions, policies, or positions of LEFF or have its endorsement.}