English 
Vietnamese The phrase “corporate sustainability” remains open for definition. While some organizations appear more concerned with hashing out its meaning and relevance, others are moving forward with sustainability initiatives designed to satisfy stakeholders, cut costs, and, in a growing number of cases, generate shareholder value.
“A major part of our sustainability effort is to support our sales and marketing team in gaining access to new market segments, reinforcing our pricing strategies, and improving our customer mix so that there is a strong fit between our product offer and what different segments of the market value,” notes Lyn Brown, vice president corporate relations and social responsibility of Catalyst Paper.
A new report jointly produced by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA), and UK-based Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) sheds light on current sustainability practices. The 24-page report, “Evolution of Corporate Sustainability Practices,” suggests that corporate finance can and/or should play a central role in these efforts.
“Accuracy in measurement is an essential first step in the sustainability process,” says Steve Leffin, director of global sustainability for UPS. “In the short term, this accuracy enables you to understand if you are acting and reporting appropriately. Over the long term, customers, governments, and agencies are going to ask you for your sustainability numbers – via an accepted protocol and verified by third parties.”
The report presents a snapshot of current sustainability drivers and strategy; sustainability programs and their scope; measurement approaches; and the finance function’s involvement in corporate sustainability.
Although compliance with regulatory requirements remains the most common driver of business sustainability, profitability and other strategic factors also feature as primary motivators. The report findings (only a fraction of which follow here) suggest that there may be a sustainability gap between large and small companies:
• 79 percent of larger companies surveyed currently have a formal sustainability strategy;
• 33 percent of smaller companies surveyed currently have a strategy (however, an additional 23 percent have plans to formulate a strategy within the next 2 years);
• 56 percent of respondents said that finance plays a role in business case/ investment analysis in relation to sustainability programs; and
• 33 percent of respondents are tracking sustainability-related performance measures.
Also, UK-based organizations appear to be ahead of the curve in terms of implementing sustainability practices and finance function involvement compared to North American organizations. I may be biased about the report’s quality (I assisted with the field research component), but, objectively speaking, the findings represent an excellent benchmarking source for corporate sustainability – and finance –executives
Source:Finance Blog Author: Eric Krell
