Business And Impact: Three Ways To Be Profitable And Sustainable
- Media Manager
- Jan 21, 2024
- 2 min read
Forbes
Written By: Paul Klein
Published: January 21st, 2024
Photo Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain
The opportunity for corporations to make the world a better place and also be more profitable has never been more contradictory. On the one hand, there’s ample evidence that corporations can benefit from helping to solve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. On the other hand, ESG has become a flashpoint for politicians and investors who believe that mitigating climate risk and solving social problems is a distraction from delivering value to shareholders.
Making decisions in this context isn’t easy. For example, the private sector is under growing pressure to close the growing emissions gap and help meet the goal of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Yet, despite the fact that Fortune Global 500 companies without a Chief Sustainability Officer saw emissions increase 3% in the past year, more than half of the world’s largest companies still do not have a CSO.
More than ever, employees, community stakeholders, and investors expect that corporations will use their resources to help to solve our most pressing social problems. But today’s polarized political context is has created a situation where the implications of taking action in this space may, or may not, be in their best interests of corporate leaders. In a Pew survey last year, 78 percent of American workers who identified as Democrats agreed that it is good for companies to focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, while just 30 percent of Republican workers thought the same. Despite this finding, in a survey of 194 chief human resource officers published by the Conference Board, none of the respondents said they planned to scale back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
