In a new study conducted ahead of GreenBiz 2024, Salesforce and GlobeScan reveal a stark reality: while an overwhelming 93% of sustainability, finance, and technology leaders consider sustainability crucial to their organizations’ success, only 37% perceive it as well-integrated across core business operations.
The report, titled “Sustainable Value Creation: Closing the Gap Between Stated Commitments and Operational Realities,” sheds light on key limitations hindering the seamless integration of sustainability into core functions: data quality, cross-functional collaboration, capital allocation, and implementation.
As the report authors explain, this is important because, “although the majority of companies have made sustainability commitments, many have yet to successfully derive value from them. Without this value creation, companies run the risk of losing resources and investment in these critical initiatives.”
“Leaders are recognizing that sustainability can be a driver of long-term business resilience and success, but there is a major gap between ambition and action,” Salesforce’s EVP and Chief Impact Officer Suzanne DiBianca said. “We must integrate sustainability into every aspect of our enterprise, leveraging technology solutions like Net Zero Cloud, to close the gap and accelerate genuine value creation for our customers, stakeholders, and the planet.”
The report, co-authored by University of Oxford Professor Robert Eccles and NYU Stern Professor Alison Taylor, surveyed over 243 professionals between November and December 2023, including 76 C-suite executives across North America, Europe, and Asia.
Of those surveyed, 160 hold sustainability roles, 21 finance, and 13 in technology; almost half of the executives surveyed are from North America while a third is from Europe and 10% from Asia.
The authors of the report identified the following four key gaps that “may be limiting companies from making meaningful progress on corporate sustainability commitments”:
I. The Data Gap
“Limited access to high-quality data is a concern”: Only 27% of respondents have access to high-quality sustainability data while 80% say this data is “very important” for making their committments count. Further, 59% of respondents believe it will be “difficult” or “very difficult” to comply with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) regulation.
II. The Integration Gap
“A lack of collaboration is limiting progress”: 86% of leaders surveyed believe finance is important when it comes to advancing corporate sustainability, and 75% believe technology is important.
However, the same percentage of leaders believe that “there is insufficient collaboration between these teams and the sustainability team,” the report found.
III. The Capital Gap
“Sustainability is of high importance but receives limited focus and capital”: While 93% of respondents consider sustainability important to commercial success, only half of leadership teams “highly focused on sustainability.”
Further, only half of those 50% are allocating the “necessary levels of capital,” the report found.
IV. The Implementation Gap
“Companies see value for their reputation, but not operations”: The respondents rated “perceptions and relationships” as the sustainability actions driving the highest value. This includes “enhancing brand and reputation,” selected by 73% of respondents, and “building stronger stakeholder relations,” selected by 67%.
Meanwhile, 50% of leaders perceived value from growing sales, 44% from ensuring a stable supply chain, and 42% from reducing costs.
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As the business world grapples with these discrepancies, the study calls for a renewed commitment to genuine cross-functional integration and improved sustainability performance metrics to ensure the impactful realization of sustainability goals.
“Our results sadly show that despite all the happy talk about the importance of sustainability, senior management teams aren’t giving it the attention and resources it needs to really contribute to value creation,” said University of Oxford Professor and Founding Chairman of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), Robert G. Eccles.
“Companies either need to dial back their claims about the benefits of their sustainability initiatives or face this challenge head-on with more senior management commitment and capital to facilitate greater cross-functional integration and improved data on sustainability performance metrics,” Eccles added.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com — Featured Photo Credit: Jovydas Dobilas.
