The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu The leading online blog in the fields of corporate governance and financial regulation. Mon, 20 Jul 2026 20:07:07 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.8 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/cropped-photography-4-e1706898544564-1-32x32.png Charting a Path to Sustainability Leadership – The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu 32 32 Charting a Path to Sustainability Leadership https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/12/13/charting-a-path-to-sustainability-leadership/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=charting-a-path-to-sustainability-leadership https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/12/13/charting-a-path-to-sustainability-leadership/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 14:02:59 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/?p=37137?d=20150113134523EST Posted by Matteo Tonello, The Conference Board, on Thursday, December 13, 2012
Editor's Note:

Matteo Tonello is managing director of corporate leadership at the Conference Board. This post is based on an issue of the Conference Board’s Director Notes series by James Cerruti, senior partner of strategy and research at Brandlogic Corp. This Director Note is based on an article written by Mr. Cerruti; the full publication is available here.

Operational sustainability performance is becoming increasingly important to corporations and their stakeholders, but operational performance is not the only measure that matters. There is also considerable value in communicating the corporate sustainability story. This report looks at the potential benefits to corporations of demonstrating good environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and discusses five common characteristics of sustainability “leaders”—companies that excel in both the operational and communication dimensions of sustainability.

As economic and societal priorities change over time, so do the criteria that define corporate leadership. The world’s “best” organizations have, at various times, been identified as those that excel in research and development and new product development, those that display excellence in operational and process reengineering, or those best able to focus on core competencies. More recently, the yardstick has been the ill-defined term “innovation”—the ability to be a game changer via breakthrough products or business models.

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