2.18.2011

Integrated Reporting – What’s Your EHS and Sustainability Department’s Role?

An evolving component of sustainability management is the use of integrated reports that capture an organization’s financial, environmental, social, and governance performance in one document. A seminal event on this was held last October (2010) at Harvard Business School (HBS).

The event, “A Workshop on Integrated Reporting: Framework and Action Plan,” was sponsored by HBS’s Business & Environment Initiative. After the event, HBS published an e-book of the proceedings, a beefy publication with 64 chapters that cover a wide range of integrated and sustainability reporting topics. Read More

Posted By | in Auditing & Metrics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Emerging Issues, Sustainability | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »

4.29.2010

The Sustainability Gap

McKinsey & Company recently published findings from its February 2010 survey, “How Companies Manage Sustainability.” Nearly 2,000 executives from a wide range of industries and regions participated. The survey concluded that “most companies are not actively managing sustainability, even though executives think it’s important to a variety of corporate activities.”

This gap is attributed to no clear definition of what sustainability means, and as a result, only 30 percent of the respondents indicated that they “actively seek opportunities to invest in sustainability or embed it in their practices.”

The survey found that respondents framed sustainability in the following way:  55 percent as an environmental management issue; 48 percent as a governance issue; 41 percent as a societal issue; and 56 percent indicated they define sustainability in two or more ways. Only 6 percent said that sustainability is both a C-Suite priority and that it was formally and effectively embedded in its business practices. Read More

Posted By | in Corporate Social Responsibility, Emerging Issues, Risk Management, Sustainability | Tags: , , , , , | No Comments »