What Every Executive Needs to Know About Sustainability: Insights from Human and Artificial Experts

Abstract

As sustainability becomes an increasingly critical issue for businesses and society, executives need reliable, current resources to understand the issues and adopt sustainable business practices. Unfortunately, existing sustainability-related literature reviews normally cater to academics rather than executives. This forces executives to understand the impact of sustainability on and by their business, and their business response to it, on their own. This domain is often unfamiliar, and one in which they normally have but limited expertise.

This study bridges the gap and informs executives by leveraging both human expertise and artificial intelligence to identify key sustainability readings appropriate for executives at different stages in their sustainability journeys. I surveyed sustainability scholars from AACSB-accredited institutions and the Academy of Management to gather their literature recommendations. Additionally, I tested the ability of ChatGPT to generate reading recommendations and compared its selections to those of the human experts.

While the human experts provided a wide range of recommendations with limited consensus on specific readings (only 9 books or articles were recommended more than once), several central themes emerged. In contrast, ChatGPT’s recommendations, while sometimes insightful, included instances of hallucination and citations to apparently non-existent sources. This study emphasizes the importance of human expertise while exploring the potential use and limitations of AI-generated recommendations. Ultimately, the results offer guidance for business leaders seeking to deepen their sustainability knowledge while cautioning against the validity and reliability of Artificial Intelligence.