Sustainable corporate management increasingly relevant

Sustainable corporate management can mean many things. In this context, sustainability rating agencies play the decisive role as an influencing force, whereas the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are currently still of little significance for most companies.

The Impact Study was conducted in partnership with the PRI (Principles of Responsible Investment) among nearly 500 companies worldwide.

Drivers for more sustainability in corporate management

In general, there is great unanimity in the assessment of the topic of sustainability on the corporate side. More than 90 percent assign it a high to very high importance. The strongest drivers for increased awareness and commitment on the part of companies are the sustainability rating agencies with their inquiries and analyses:

61.3 percent of the companies state that they were motivated to deal with sustainability aspects - exactly the same value as four years ago. In second place with 60.3 percent are the requirements and expectations of customers.

Over 36 percent of companies - almost four percentage points more than four years ago - also confirm that the requirements of sustainability analysts have an influence on their fundamental business strategy. This development is becoming increasingly relevant against the background that a large proportion of companies want to be attractive to investors and are therefore intensifying their sustainability performance.

The benefits of sustainability ratings for companies

For almost 80 percent, being listed in sustainability funds and indices is an important goal. Accordingly, almost two thirds (62.2 percent) of the companies already integrate information about sustainability management into their general financial market communication. Almost all companies (93.1 percent) assume that communication with financial market players who act sustainably will become more important in the future.

More than 70 per cent also stated that they regularly use sustainability ratings to benchmark themselves against their competitors. According to oekom research, sustainability ratings have a very high leverage effect. However, this high status is equally associated with a great responsibility, which must be reflected in a distinctive quality management system in the agencies.

 The complete study is available here for download ready.

UN Sustainable Development Goals unfortunately without label

The UN Sustainable Development Goals have been created as a reference framework for unified sustainability objectives. However, the results of this study show that assistance and guidance are still needed in order to understand how they work and to be able to act in accordance with them. Only 17.4 percent of companies are already actively aligning their sustainability-related management systems with the UN SDGs. For 15 percent, the SDGs are at least an aid for their own sustainability reporting. However, a slight majority of companies (58 percent) would be motivated to improve their sustainability performance and increase their commitment to implementing the SDGs if there were an SDG label to guide investors in their decisions.