Sustainable change in business hampered by desire for quick gains - Expert poll

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE

A survey conducted in December 2011 by  GlobeScan and SustainAbility of attitudes across businesses, NGOs, academia and government, has revealed the clamour for short term financial gain as a major obstacle to sustainable change in business.

Otherwise referred to as financial short-termism, 88% of the 642 experts polled said they see pressure for short-term financial results as a barrier to businesses becoming more sustainable.

The latest wave of The Sustainability Survey, a regular survey conducted by GlobeScan, an international opinion research consultancy with a network across over 50 countries and SustainAbility, a think tank and strategy consultancy working to inspire transformative business leadership on the sustainability agenda, asked experts to say whether they considered a range of factors as being barriers to increased sustainability by businesses.

Although most of those polled identified multiple barriers, financial short-termism was seen as the most significant by some distance. 

The next most significant barriers were inappropriate regulations and low awareness of the business imperative, both cited by 65% of respondents.  On the other hand, low consumer demand was identified by 57% of respondents, followed by the lack of effective management tools (45%) and the lack of international standards (50%).

While financial short-termism was consistently identified as a barrier by large majorities of all groups, the survey revealed that experts’ views differed on the importance of other factors according to their sector.

For instance, 56% experts working in academia identified the lack of international standards as a barrier, while 43% of those working in corporations saw it as such. Experts within academia were also more likely to blame low awareness of the business imperative for sustainability among business leaders (71%) than their corporate counterparts were (58%).

In contrast, experts within corporations were more likely to identify lack of consumer demand for green business practices, products and services as a barrier to sustainable transformation (66%) than other groups of experts, particularly those within NGOs (46%).

According to a press release from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), these latest survey findings will be featured in a forthcoming UNEP report on the business case for the Green Economy, to be published later this year.

Commenting on the findings, Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director, said: "The Green Economy analysis by UNEP and partners clearly outlines pathways towards growing the global economy, generating employment and combating poverty, while keeping humanity's footprint within ecological boundaries.”

"This survey underlines that governments must play their part, national and internationally, in setting the standards and backing the smart policies needed to promote sustainability over extraction and degradation of the world's natural resource base. It is happening, but not fast enough. Rio+20 in June offers an opportunity for governments to accelerate and to scale-up a better future for seven billion people," he added.

For his part, GlobeScan President, Chris Coulter, said: "Clearly, more work needs to be done to help business find ways to overcome financial short-termism as a barrier to corporate sustainability. It may be timely for a multi-stakeholder initiative to explore new thinking to tackle this major obstacle to facilitate the transition to sustainability."

Adding his voice, Jeff Erikson, Senior Vice-President at SustainAbility commented: “The experts in our poll are telling us that of the many factors that make a transition to sustainability difficult, impatience from shareholders is the most important.  This implies that understanding and communicating the business case is critical.  We are excited to be working with UNEP once again on their upcoming report, which will provide further support to the business community to make the case.”