Sustainability is garnering ever-greater public attention and debate. The subject ranks high on the legislative agendas of most governments; media coverage of the topic has proliferated; and sustainability issues are of increasing concern to humankind.
Key Findings
REVISED AGENDA
The survey revealed a strong consensus that sustainability is having — and will continue to have — a material impact on how companies think and act.
- More than 92% of survey respondents said that their company was addressing sustainability.
DOWNTURN?
Sustainability is surviving the downturn.
- Fewer than 25% of survey respondents said that their company had decreased its commitment to sustainability during the downturn.
BUT ACTION LAGS
Although almost all the executives in the survey thought that sustainability would have an impact on their business and were trying to address this topic, the majority also said that their companies were not acting decisively to fully exploit the opportunities and mitigate the risks that sustainability presents.
- The majority of sustainability actions undertaken to date appear to be limited to those necessary to meet regulatory requirements.
- Almost 70% of survey respondents said that their company has not developed a clear business case for sustainability.
AGGRESSIVE ACTION YIELDING REWARDS
A small number of companies, however, are acting aggressively on sustainability — and reaping substantial rewards.
- Examples of leading companies offer some helpful ideas on how to proceed.
- Once companies begin to act aggressively, they tend to discover more opportunity, not less, than they expected to find.
However, the business implications of sustainability merit greater scrutiny — and scrutiny of a different kind than the “green”-oriented focus that’s most common. Will sustainability change the competitive landscape and reshape the opportunities and threats that companies face? If so, how? How worried are executives and other stakeholders about the impact of sustainability efforts on the corporate bottom line? What — if anything — are companies doing now to capitalize on sustainability-driven changes? And what strategies are they pursuing to position themselves competitively for the future?
To begin answering those questions, we conducted a year-long inquiry that involved in-depth interviews with more than 50 global thought leaders, followed by the Business of Sustainability Survey of more than 1,500 worldwide executives and managers about their perspectives on the intersection of sustainability and business strategy, including their assessments of how their own companies are acting on
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