Sustainability in the C-Suite

It’s almost 25 years since we launched SustainAbility, building on the work done by Gro Harlem Brundtland and her World Commission on Environment and Development. At times it seemed as if we were making little progress, or – as today with climate change and the Deepwater Horizon spill – moving backwards. But there is growing evidence that the sustainability agenda is penetrating the C-Suite, a trend that Charmian Love and I took a look at earlier in the year in a series of blogs for Fast Company.

Now a new study fills in some more of the detail. Today’s CEOs are more committed than ever to creating sustainable businesses, according to a new report by Accenture for the UN Global Compact. “Yet the motivator is no longer just social responsibility,” it concludes, but also now “equally about achieving high performance measured in terms such as lower costs, stronger customer relationships and increased revenues. This relentless business focus is a key characteristic of a ‘new era of sustainability,’ one in which environmental, social and corporate governance issues are embedded throughout operations, the supply chain and subsidiaries.”

The conclusions are based on a global survey of more than 750 CEOs and in-depth interviews with 50 of the world’s foremost CEOs in a range of industries and geographies. Among other insights, the survey – largest CEO-based study on sustainability of its kind to date – include the following:

• 93 percent of Global Compact CEOs see sustainability as important to their future success.
• Performance gaps exist between those who agree with the importance of embedding sustainability into the business and those who report success with that objective. Execution is key.
• Re-establishing consumer trust is the immediate issue. Seventy-two percent of executives cite “strengthening brand, trust and reputation” as the strongest motivator for taking action on sustainability issues.
•  Technology, collaboration and a deeper understanding of consumer desires are critical success factors in the coming years.
• The investment community must more effectively factor progress toward sustainability into valuation models.
• CEOs believe that we are moving toward an era in which businesses will no longer focus purely on profit and loss as the primary means of valuation, but rather take into account also the positive and negative impacts on society and the environment.