Simon Zadek is a writer and advisor focused on business and sustainability. He is the Co-Director of the UNEP Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System.
Background
Zadek grew up in London, later attending Bristol University. He has a PhD in Economics from Brunel University. He reports that the dissertation topic was rejected by potential supervisors at the University of Oxford and LSE, before he enrolled at Brunel. Most recently he has lived in China and Geneva.
Career
Zadek has held a number of positions broadly concerned with supporting alternative economic development and sustainable business activity. He is Co-Director of the UNEP Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System, which started in 2014 in Geneva. From 1979 to 1981 he was an economic planner for the Government of St Lucia, followed by a period of consulting with Coopers and Lybrand. In 1992 he joined the New Economics Foundation, becoming its Development Director and leading its work on corporate social responsibility. He helped to found AccountAbility in 1995, acting as its CEO from 2002 to 2009, and was Founding Chair of the Ethical Trading Initiative. Positions in academic institutions have included:
Zadek's early interests were in alternative, utopian, and Buddhist economics. But he became interested in the corporate social responsibility movement and particularity the development of social auditing techniques, when working at the New Economics Foundation and then as founder and CEO of AccountAbility. Latterly he has worked on promoting green and responsible financial policies across the banking, insurance and investment sectors. He has developed environmental and social risk policies for banks and corporate clients, and argues insurers need to report their exposure to climate risks and their strategies for resilience.
Recognition
In 2003 he was named as one of the World Economic Forum's 'Global Leaders of Tomorrow'. Zadek's book, The Civil Corporation: the New Economy of Corporate Citizenship received the Academy of Management's Best Book Social Issues Award in 2006 and has been called one of the most influential books on sustainability, by the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership.
Writings
Books
Simon Zadek. 2015. Eco-China Inc. Routledge, London.
Simon Zadek. 2001/2007. The Civil Corporation: the New Economy of Corporate Citizenship, Earthscan, London
Simon Zadek, Peter Raynard. 2006. Tomorrow’s History: Selected Writings of Simon Zadek: 1994-2003. Earthscan, London..
, Perspectives on the New Economy of Corporate Citizenship, The Copenhagen Centre, Copenhagen
Mediating Sustainability from the Grassroots, Kumarian, Hartford CT
Building Corporate Accountability: Emerging Practices in Social and Ethical Accounting and Auditing. Earthscan, London
Thake, Stephen and Simon Zadek Practical People, Noble Causes: How to Support Community Social Entrepreneurs, New Economics Foundation, London
An Economics of Utopia: the Democratisation of Scarcity. Avebury, Aldershot
Selected articles and working papers
Zadek, Simon. Partnership alchemy: engagement, innovation and governance. In Perspectives on corporate citizenship edited by Jörg Andriof and Malcolm McIntosh. London: Routledge.
Zadek, Simon, Maya Forstater and Kelly Yu The Political Economy of Responsible Business in China, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, July 2012
Zadek, Simon Civil Society and Market Transformation, in Michael Edwards, The Oxford Handbook of Civil Society. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, Oxford*Zadek, Simon, “Beyond Climate Finance: From Accountability to Productivity in Addressing the Climate Challenge”, Climate Policy, Volume 11, Issue 3, June 2011: 1058-1068
Zadek, Simon “Emerging Nations and Sustainability: Chimera or Leadership?”, Politeia, XXVI, 98, 2010. ISSN 1128-2401 pp. 153-167
Zadek, Simon “Corporate Responsibility and Competitiveness at the Macro Level”, Corporate Governance: Vol 6, No 4., 2006: 334-348
Zadek, Simon and Sasha Radovich Governing Collaborative Governance: Enhancing Development Outcomes by Improving Partnership Governance and Accountability, Working Paper 23, Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, Mass.
Zadek, Simon The Logic of Collaborative Governance: Corporate Responsibility, Accountability, and the Social Contract, Working Paper 17, Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, Mass.
Zadek, Simon , Harvard Business Review, December 2004
