Survival of the Fittest: From ESG to Competitive Sustainability
18 September 2024 – It is time to move on from trying to put ‘sustainability thinking’ into business and instead start putting ‘business thinking’ into sustainability. In our latest report, CISL Interim CEO Lindsay Hooper and CISL Fellow Paul Gilding argue for the need to shift to an agenda of competitive sustainability.
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About
It is time to revisit the fundamentals of business and sustainability. Despite decades of corporate commitments and innovation, the massive flow of capital into clean technologies, and the significant and growing body of evidence of the economic benefits of swift action, the sustainability crisis is deepening. Business is failing to keep pace with the scale of the problem and trends on climate and nature continue to head in the wrong direction. It is time to recognise that the market has failed to deliver at the pace required and there is no realistic prospect that, without much deeper structural changes, market forces will ‘bend the curve’ and protect the social and environmental foundations on which society - and businesses - depend.
Given this, it is time we questioned the founding ideas and dominant approaches in the corporate sustainability movement. CISL has a particular responsibility to do this, because as a leading education provider, convenor and thought leader, we must constantly challenge ourselves to be at the cutting edge. Difficult questions arise, including: Is there something profoundly wrong with our collective approach? Why did we not see this failure earlier? Do we need to question the very idea of market-driven change?
In this report, we make the case for the business leadership agenda going beyond setting targets and making commitments for individual company change – and instead focus on a ‘whole of economy’ transition, with a strategy to compete and win within that transition. We examine the interventions and strategies needed from business leaders and policy makers to avoid a truly existential crisis and achieve long-term prosperity and resilience. For this to occur, we argue that:
Business needs policy to design out the conflict between long-term sustainability and short-term commerciality;
Corporate leaders need to build social engagement and buy in for transition;
Business needs to compete aggressively on superior sustainability performance.
It is time to move on from trying to put ‘sustainability thinking’ into business and instead start putting ‘business thinking’ into sustainability. We need to shift to an agenda of competitive sustainability.
Citing this report
Hooper, Lindsay; Gilding, Paul (2024). Survival of the Fittest: From ESG to Competitive Sustainability. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership