**2. Corporate sustainability**

According to the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, sustainability is defined as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The practice of sustainability recognizes the ability to support as well as integrate economic development, social development, and environmental protection with the assumption of having limited resources and employing them conservatively and wisely with a careful view to long-term priorities and consequences of how to use these resources. Business sustainability also known as corporate sustainability is the management and coordination of environmental, social and financial demands, and concerns to ensure responsible, ethical, and ongoing success. In today's rapidly changing world and considering a values-driven approach, it is very important to incorporate sustainability when developing business strategies because it is vital to a company's longterm success. A lot of organizations are integrating sustainability into their business strategy. In a recent McKinsey survey, 70% of respondents said their companies have a formal governance of sustainability in place. Spiliakos [16] shows that the goal of a sustainable business strategy is to make a positive impact on environment, society, and economy. These organizations monitor the impact of their operations to ensure that short-term profits don't turn into long-term liabilities. Many successful organizations participate in sustainable business practices such as optimizing supply chains to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, relying on renewable energy sources to power facilities, using sustainable materials in the manufacturing process, etc.

The UN-level Sustainable Development Goals (2015–2030) address the global challenges, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace, and justice. Beyond helping curb global challenges, sustainability can drive business success. Several investors today use environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics to analyze an organization's ethical impact and sustainability practices. Yilmaz [17] shows that as firms perform better in the pillars of sustainability, they have a lower perceived riskiness resulting in a lower cost of capital. Eliwa et. al. [18] show the evidence of lending institutions rewarding firms in 15 EU countries for their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and disclosure in terms of lowering their cost of debt capital. Sze et. al. [19] empirically examine the financial impact of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices on firms in emerging markets. Their results confirm (1) sound ESG practices by corporates could have a long-term cost reduction effect on their debt funding; (2) the effect on cost reduction is more evident for firms in high greenhouse gas emission sectors and during market turbulence; and (3) the country-level ESG performance plays a role only since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015. Their findings and evidences highlight the role of capital providers in encouraging firms to engage in a holistic approach to sustainability, and firms should actively engage in environmental and social initiatives and improve their governance mechanisms. However, it is worth to mention that in time of economic policy uncertainty (EPU), firms with high corporate innovation are likely to face a pronounced increase in cost of financing, which leads to reduce firm value. Hall and Lerner [20] suggest that in the time of EPU, financing corporate innovation tends to be costlier because of the high uncertainty of investment outcomes. Denlertchaikul et. at. [21] show empirical evidence that in times of greater uncertainty, it is more difficult to value corporation innovation.

However, the future direction of sustainable business concerns economic values, environmental policy, and stakeholder engagement for business opportunities.

Therefore, many companies invest billions of dollars every year in sustainability activities. According to Morningstar Direct dated in June, 2019, US sustainable funds attract 8.9 billion US dollars, which is greater than the value of inflows for the whole of 2018 at 5.5 billion US dollars. Many large mutual funds and ETFs, commanding billions of dollars, exercise investments strategies based on sustainability. More recently, according to Morningstar during 2021's First, Second, and Third quarters, sustainable fund flows keep reaching New and New Heights. Stankiewicz [22] says that most of the new options available to investors were launched with sustainability mandates, but firms also occasionally change the investment strategies of existing funds to target sustainability. Murugaboopathy and Maan [23, 24] report that an increase in the number of sustainable products across the globe, market appreciation, and positive inflows continued to drive global sustainable fund assets upward. Thus, the importance of sustainability cannot be overemphasized. Nevertheless, it is still vital that integration of sustainability into functional work doubles the likelihood that a company will report financial value from these efforts. The idea of sustainability is often broken down into three pillars: economic (profits), environmental (planet), and social (people). In business, sustainability refers to doing business without negatively impacting those areas as a whole. As environmental, social, and governance issues have become ever more important influencers of customer and employee expectations, many companies have tightened their embrace of the sustainability programs that address those issues. The online McKinsey Global Survey in 2017 concludes that nearly 90% of participants representing the full range of regions, industries, tenures, company sizes, and functional specialties say that their companies are pursuing sustainability programs as well as elevating the importance of diversity and inclusion. While the first top reason for implementing a sustainability agenda is better alignment between an organization's practices and its goals, missions, or values, the second top reason is to build, maintain, and improve firm's reputation.

In addition, the survey also looks at the influence of key trends on the organizations' commitment to sustainability. Those respondents indicate that advances in sustainability-related technologies, as well as safety and security concerns, are the top reasons these organizations have increased their commitment. Business sustainability strategies can involve in the following examples such recycle technologies, big data and advance analytics, and renewable sources of energy. From the surveys, the top of wider adoption of sustainability-related technologies is for those companies that have greatly increased their use of energy-efficient equipment, and more innovative ones, such as digital platforms for stakeholder engagement. Therefore, it is worthwhile to highlight the importance that the company innovates considering the three dimensions of sustainability - social, environmental, and economic along with well-designed financial planning through the lens of sustainability and with a deeper knowledge of financial analysis, financing, valuation, risk assessment, and sustainable investments.
