Tag Archives: Climate
In this third installment of our series, we consider how a materiality analysis can leapfrog companies over common roadblocks to developing a sustainable business strategy—and position them for integrated financial and sustainability reporting.
Crafting a comprehensive sustainability strategy isn’t easy (indeed, to quote Ken Frietas of the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship: “It’s a long, hard, slog!”) Companies face several challenges to successfully incorporating sustainability risks and opportunities into their business strategies, including:
Information overload: the sustainability “umbrella” encompasses a huge array of potential social, environmental, and economic issues.
Squeaky wheels: the most vocal stakeholders may be focused on issues of relatively minor importance
Limited resources: organizations must choose carefully where to allocate scarce resources
Turf wars: there may be internal conflicts over the importance of specific sustainability issues
A materiality analysis is useful in addressing all of these challenges. It provides… More
Following the news from the Copenhagen climate summit has nearly become a full time job. Observing the chaotic deliberations, I am reminded of Adam Kahane’s comments on solving complex sustainability problems via a stakeholder inclusive approach, delivered during this fall’s BSR conference.
What sticks in my head the most is how relevant each of the three “complexity parameters” are to the climate debates :
1) Systemic complexity, whereby cause and effect are far apart in space and time (the generational issue in climate change)
2) Social complexity, whereby each actor has a fundamentally different worldview and perspective (developed vs developing nations, anyone?)
3) Generative complexity, whereby we are dealing with situations that have never occurred before (when was the last time we had to put together a truly global, multilateral, mutually acceptable, binding agreement on anything?)
Adam’s approach… More
