Happy Summer everyone! Summer in the MAC Program

Author: Jared

It seems that I am making a blog comeback, which is to say that I really never left, but a comeback sounds nice. In sports they give out awards for these sorts of things, so perhaps the blogosphere will take notice.

I am currently enrolled in and attending my last two master’s classes, one of which is taught by Professor Scott Showalter, with whom you will be taking Advanced Auditing (and perhaps the Accounting and Tax Research class) when you arrive to the MAC program. The title of the class is Sustainability and Business, which is a telling fact in and of itself on the traction that sustainability has gained in the business world in the last few years. To borrow from Scott, sustainability and business used to not even walk on the same side of the street.

Now, I can imagine that in a group of about 120 incoming MAC students, some of you read about a class called Sustainability and Business and you scoff at it as faddish and a waste of time: “We as accountants are interested in numbers and bottom lines, and in the accuracy of them! That’s it!”

Okay, that’s fair. I understand. But did you know that a man named John Elkington, one of the fathers of the sustainability movement, created what’s called the Triple Bottom Line? That’s more bottom lines than my accounting brain knows what to do with. And it is an indication that sustainability and business, once bitter enemies, are now Facebook official. Married even.

All joking aside, this class is really interesting. We have learned already, in just three days of class, that not only are sustainable strategies and good business sense compatible, they are inseparable. When you move past all the rhetoric and posturing that exists on the topic, you find that sustainable businesses are profitable businesses. More profitable than non-sustainable businesses.

And that’s something my accounting brain knows how to handle.

As always, feel free to comment! And thanks so much for reading!