BEIJING, China — As businesses across Greater China navigate a changing sustainability and ESG reporting environment, a fundamental question is gaining importance: can efforts to address social and environmental challenges become a source of sustainable commercial value?
A new book from Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB) explores that question, proposing a model in which social impact is incorporated directly into the way companies create and capture value.
Turning Business Responsibility Into Business Strategy
Business for Good: The Power to Create Change, written by Rui (Juliet) Zhu, Professor of Marketing and Director of CKGSB’s Research Department on ESG and Social Innovation, presents the concept of Business for Good as an approach that connects an organization’s existing strengths with opportunities to create social value.
Rather than positioning corporate responsibility as an activity that takes place after a company has generated profits, the book argues that businesses can incorporate solutions to real-world social problems into their core operations.
The approach is based on Professor Zhu’s decade of teaching and research at CKGSB and draws on more than 2,300 alumni projects carried out within their respective companies.
The book translates that research into two practical frameworks.
The Business for Good Triangle Theory combines three elements: a co-benefit philosophy, institutional safeguards and strategic integration.
The accompanying Action Map identifies 35 potential entry points across environmental, social and governance areas, providing organizations of different sizes with possible starting points for developing their own business-for-good initiatives.
Moving Beyond ESG Compliance
For companies, the distinction between compliance and value creation is central to the book’s argument.
ESG reporting requirements can establish what businesses need to disclose, but disclosure alone does not necessarily determine how sustainability becomes embedded in business strategy.
“Business for Good is not about choosing between profit and purpose, but about integrating social value into what a company already does well, so that solving real problems can also create commercial value. The challenge for companies today is to move beyond compliance and build systems in which doing good becomes part of how the business succeeds,” noted Professor Zhu.
The book therefore presents sustainability not simply as an external obligation, but as something that can be incorporated into products, operations, customer relationships and broader business models.
Lessons From Chinese and Global Companies
The book also provides international readers with examples of business-for-good practices emerging from China, a perspective that remains relatively less represented in English-language ESG literature.
Zhu examines both international and Chinese businesses, including Patagonia and LEGO, alongside Chinese companies such as Haidilao and recommerce platform ATRENEW.
Rather than presenting these companies solely as success stories, the book examines their experiences through examples of achievements, setbacks and strategic adjustments.
The underlying argument is that responsible business initiatives are more likely to endure when they are designed around the realities of how people actually behave.
Drawing on behavioral psychology, Zhu examines situations in which sustainability programs fail because they require people to consistently behave in ways that are inconvenient or inconsistent with existing habits.
Changing the design of the system, she argues, can make responsible behavior easier to choose and maintain.
From Purpose to Practical Implementation
The Business for Good approach ultimately focuses on the connection between purpose and execution.
For organizations beginning their ESG or social-impact journey, the frameworks in the book are intended to provide practical ways to identify where social value can intersect with existing capabilities and commercial activities.
That could allow companies to
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