Originally published in the Accounting Times newsletter.
Professor Jeff Hales heads Texas McCombs recently created Global Sustainability Leadership Institute (GSLI). We asked him about these efforts as well as what sustainability means for accounting.
TELL US ABOUT GSLI AND HOW IT CAME ABOUT.
The GSLI is an institute housed in McCombs and in partnership with the Moody College of Communication is dedicated to addressing the critical sustainability challenges of the 21st century through research, education, and industry collaboration. The roots of the GSLI started from student interest in programs and curricula that would help them understand how business activities intersect with society and the environment. That demand was initially met through an initiative that began back in 2017, which fellow accounting professor, Steve Limberg, helped to oversee. With help of a generous donation, we were able to launch the GSLI in the fall of 2021.
WHAT DO YOU HOPE THE INSTITUTE WILL ACCOMPLISH?
By leveraging the expertise of our faculty and corporate partners, my hope is that the Institute will play an integral role in UT’s mission by helping to develop the next generation of business leaders and changemakers. Businesses need to be resilient and adaptive and we need our students to be ready for the challenges and opportunities that will create for them in their future careers.
HOW ARE YOU INCORPORATING GSLI’S WORK INTO OUR TEXAS
McCOMBS CLASSROOMS?
I have recently developed two accounting electives related to sustainability. The first, Corporate Sustainability, is a graduate level course for MPA and MBA students that focuses on sustainability disclosure standards, rules, and regulation. The second, Global Business Sustainability, is one of the core courses in the GSLI’s new Global Sustainability Minor, which is a 17-hour minor open to undergraduates across campus. I teach both through the lens of accounting.
WHY IS SUSTAINABILITY IMPORTANT TO STUDENTS STUDYING
ACCOUNTING?
Lots of reasons! With increasing demand for companies to adopt sustainable practices and report on their sustainability performance, accountants will need to have the skills and knowledge to measure and report on the sustainability metrics that companies will be expected to disclose. More generally, to truly understand a company’s sustainability issues, you have to know more about what the company actually does to make money. Tech companies, food retailers, and pharmaceuticals all have revenues, but the ways in which they generate those revenues are very different and so are associated with very different sustainability challenges. Sustainability accounting forces students to make closer and deeper connections between the financial performance of a company and the operational activities that drove that performance. But the most important reason for bringing sustainability into our curriculum is students today are genuinely interested in knowing more about how businesses affect our broader society and our planet.
Interested in learning more about Jeffrey Hales and his Corporate Sustainability course at UT Austin? Read Accounting for a Better Future
