NBS Launches First South American Affiliate

The Network for Business Sustainability (NBS) expands its global reach – this time to the South American continent.

“Chile is a country with pressing sustainability challenges. While our resource-intensive economy progresses, growing social movements express their discontent regarding education, inequality and concentration of power,” said Pablo Muñoz, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Sustainability at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI) Business School. As per the Memorandum of Understanding between UAI’s Centre for Business Sustainability and NBS, Muñoz also serves as Academic Director of NBS Chile.

Pablo Rodrigo, Professor of Strategy and Sustainability and Head of Research at NBS Chile, adds: “Being part of NBS represents a major opportunity to engage with firms on conducting collaborative research and disseminating knowledge on how to resolve sustainability challenges.”

NBS Chile’s Leadership Council will convene Chilean business leaders across key sectors annually to identify their sustainability challenges as an input to research. Their first meeting will take place in April 2014 at the UAI campus in Viña del Mar, Chile.

Earlier this year, NBS signed a MoU for its first-ever international affiliate in South Africa. NBS South Africa has launched its Leadership Council, a group of South African business leaders, and identified the top sustainability challenges facing South African business in 2013.

“NBS believes in the power of creating innovative and sustainable models through sourcing local knowledge and sharing it worldwide,” said Tima Bansal, Executive Director of NBS.

NBS regional affiliates facilitate collaboration between research and practice to enable sustainable business. They are managed independently but meet the rigorous content and good governance standards for which NBS is known. As NBS expands globally, regional affiliates will fulfill a critical role in convening and co-creating knowledge in a growing number of languages and contexts.