Question

The most recent UN Global Compact-Accenture poll of 1,000 CEOs of major companies was released in 2013. Forty-five percent of the CEOs said that they regarded sustainability as “very important” to future business success—down from 54 percent in 2010. Nearly 70 percent thought that business was not doing enough to address sustainability challenges, and yet 76 percent felt that their companies were moving quickly and efficiently enough to handle those challenges.* How would you account for these numbers—both the contradictions and, perhaps more importantly, the apparent drop off in concern for sustainability challenges?

Answer 1

The major reasons for this drop to concern about sustainability issues are lack of government interventions to curb malpractices of institutions, sustainability as a topic of discussion only in workshops, conferences and academic activities, huge competition across the globe for getting market share or earning a profit due to recession or other economic challenges, maximum countries fail to meet the half of the sustainable development goals till date etc.

The global leadership forum and institutions of importance should come forward and set some yardstick to mitigate the challenges of sustainability at workplace and increased operations of business related to achieving sophisticated level of sustainability management. The need of the hour is to promote sustainability both in inhouse activities of an organization as well as an integrated approach to the external business environment . A joint effort will produce synergy among companies and sustainable development goals can be easily achieved.