The report is titled "Doing Good: Business and the sustainability challenge".
It summarises interviews with more than 1,200 executives from around the world, 26% of them CEOs, across a range of industries. Twenty eight in depth interviews were also carried out with executives and leaders from consultancy, NGOs and academia. This was supplemented with desk research.
The key findings include:
- Grasping the nature and scope of the sustainability challenge, and what constitutes best practice, "is of immense importance to the corporate community", but companies are at an early stage of understanding how to address it
- Sustainability is not a checklist of activities - it is a change in attitude that aligns financial, social and environmental goals
- Sustainability pays:
More than half the executives said that the benefits of pursuing sustainable practices outweighed the costs
- Sustainable practices can specifically help to: reduce costs; open up new markets; improve reputation
- GE's Ecomagination products added US$12bn to its bottom line in 2006
- There is a link between strong corporate sustainability and strong share price performance
- Companies rating themselves high on CSR saw profit growth of 16% and share price increases of 45% over the past three years. Companies rating their CSR performance low grew profits by 7% and share price by 12% over the same period.
- "Four key areas currently receiving too little attention" are: strong senior-management leadership on sustainability; supply chain relationships; reporting and metrics; and the transformation of sustainability values into structures, processes and incentives
- Ninety percent of the executives surveyed said additional regulation to tackle social and environmental challenges was either "necessary" or "may be required in some areas"
- Addressing this is likely to involve a redefining of the relationship between business and society, and companies must at the very least be part of that debate, if not drive it
This report, published in February 2008, is a good snapshot of Why companies need to become a "force for good", What they have done so far, and How they need to move forward.
The report can be downloaded from the Economist Intelligence Unit,
here.