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Blog | Thursday November 30, 2017

The Sustainability Reporting Landscape: Q&A with GRI and SASB

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We recently interviewed Tim Mohin, chief executive of GRI, and Jean Rogers, chair of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), about the relationship between the organizations’ standards and how they can be used in combination.

Dunstan Allison-Hope: You both recently stated that “rather than being in competition, GRI and SASB are designed to fulfill different purposes for different audiences. For companies, it’s about choosing the right tool for the job.” Can you share what you mean by this?

Tim Mohin: The GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards (GRI Standards) and the SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards are designed for different, but complementary, purposes. Stated simply, GRI looks at the company’s impacts on the world and the SASB looks at the world’s impacts on the company.

We believe both frameworks can work together to give companies and their stakeholders a comprehensive view of how businesses can create shareholder value, but, importantly, also help create the conditions for sustainable development. The GRI framework focuses on a company’s impacts on the broader economy, environment, and society to determine its material issues.

Jean Rogers: The key difference between the approach we take at the SASB and what GRI does stems from the specific audiences we’re trying to serve. At the SASB, that audience is financially motivated mainstream investors who are seeking access to standardized performance information on the small handful of sustainability factors that are reasonably likely to materially affect the financial condition or operating performance of their portfolio companies. The SASB serves the unique needs of the investment community, but this is not mutually exclusive with the type of reporting that GRI facilitates for a broader set of stakeholders. Rather, we like to say they are complementary and “mutually supportive.”

Companies now realize that they have a broad set of stakeholders and they ignore them at their own risk. This is, in large part, thanks to GRI’s important work of bringing a wide array of stakeholders and their interests to the attention of corporate actors over the past two decades.

Allison-Hope: The metrics in the GRI Standards are different than the metrics in the SASB Standards. Do you envision more alignment and harmonization over time on specific metrics? How can that be achieved?

Rogers: Wherever possible, the SASB Standards include quantitative, industry-specific performance metrics that are commonly used to describe performance on key sustainability issues, and we leverage the longstanding work of many organizations—including GRI—to achieve this. The SASB takes this approach, in part, to deliver the most cost-effective solution possible for companies. Companies are already likely measuring many metrics in the SASB Standards because we reference indicators from more than 200 entities, including GRI, CDP, the EPA, OSHA, and the EEOC and IPIECA. The SASB and GRI have also committed to mapping our metrics to one another, which is a project we aim to complete in 2018, so increasing alignment is certainly on the horizon.

Mohin: In many cases, our standards are identical. In others, the SASB has defined disclosures that represent issues that are narrowly defined for certain industries. There is alignment work to be done in the third category where the two frameworks have similar disclosures with different characteristics. For this group, we are working together on a technical level with an aim to create better alignment.

Allison-Hope: Reporting on sustainability issues is still a fairly young discipline, and we are learning all the time about how to do it better. What is your message for companies trying to use both the GRI Standards and the SASB Standards at the same time today?

Mohin: There is already very broad uptake of the GRI reporting framework. Given this level of adoption, it’s likely that many of the companies that are reviewing the SASB disclosures already use GRI. Working together, GRI and SASB have identified a few companies that are utilizing both approaches. We aim to highlight these case studies to show other reporters how the standards can co-exist. 

Rogers: Neither GRI nor SASB are tick boxes—but they are both helpful in mastering sustainability. GRI helps you understand your various stakeholders—their interests and how you affect them. This makes you strong. SASB helps you identify and manage financially material issues that affect your business and therefore your investors. This makes you powerful. It’s good to be strong and powerful.   

Allison-Hope: What are the best ways for BSR member companies to provide input into the development of the GRI Standards and SASB Standards?

Rogers: Our doors are always open to BSR member companies, and we would love to hear from them. Getting involved requires only that you reach out and provide feedback. Our goal is to ensure that the standards reflect the needs and expertise of all users—specifically corporate issuers and investors—but we can only do so if they’re forthcoming with their insights and experiences.

We have a 90-day public comment period open through December 31, which is a great opportunity to provide input on proposed changes to the provisional standards prior to codification. Corporate professionals at BSR member companies can also consider joining the SASB Alliance to develop, share, and explore best practices in integrating material sustainability information into existing processes.

Mohin: As a multistakeholder organization, collaboration has always been at the heart of our work at GRI. We encourage BSR members and other interested parties to play an active role in our standard-setting process. Organizations of all types can join the GRI GOLD Community to become more deeply involved in all the work we do.

There are several ways for individuals to get involved in GRI’s Standards: Stakeholders can apply to become a part of GRI’s standard-setting process; they can submit comments during the consultation period; or at a minimum, anyone can listen live or to a recording of the Global Sustainability Standards Board (GSSB). GSSB is a fully independent body that promulgates the GRI Standards.

GRI released its full set of Standards in 2016. More recently, we have conducted a review of two standards on water and occupational safety. If all goes according to plan, we will release those updated standards in the second quarter of 2018. Over the next year, we plan to review a number of other standards.

Allison-Hope: Thank you, Jean and Tim. We are delighted by efforts toward increased standardization, alignment, and harmonization, and we look forward to working with BSR member companies using the GRI and the SASB standards in combination. We will be sure to share lessons learned along the way.

Blog | Wednesday November 29, 2017

Climate Lessons from the Vehicle Industry

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For the third year in a row, global carbon emissions leveled off in 2016. Unfortunately, however, to avoid unmanageable climate impacts, we don’t just need emissions to level off—we need to ski down what Al Gore refers to as the “double black diamond” emissions reduction slope necessary to keep the Earth inhabitable for humans and realize the vision articulated in the Paris Agreement.

Business is an essential component of this effort. That’s why at the BSR Conference this year, I led a breakout session exploring lessons from companies that have been working on emissions reductions and energy efficiency for decades: global automakers and other vehicle manufacturers.

Alex Keros represented General Motors, one of the world’s largest automakers, and Laurie Counsel spoke for Cummins, a leading supplier of heavy-duty engines. The two of them highlighted several ways that companies in any industry can address climate change:

• Envision a different future. Climate change regulations, together with technology and market shifts, are creating more uncertainty in the vehicle industry than at any point in the past 70 years—pressures that other industries are also feeling. In the face of this uncertainty, companies that help shape a low-carbon future will be well positioned to thrive in it. Cummins’ scenario planning, its technology portfolio that includes all-electric trucks, and its leadership’s willingness to envision an energy-diverse future illustrate this approach, as do GM’s electric vehicle launches and its engagement in shared-use platforms, such as ride-hailing and car-sharing.
• But build on your legacy. Keros told the story of his kids learning to ride bikes to demonstrate that even if the nature of transportation is changing, people’s desire for freedom and flexibility isn’t. Cummins and GM are applying their legacies of innovation and mobility to meet new climate and market realities while supporting their core customers, whether building an EV that becomes Motor Trend’s Car of the Year because it is “fast, fun, and genuinely entertaining to drive,” or helping customers improve efficiency of products already in use.
• Identify and address potential roadblocks. An audience member highlighted concerns about growing resource use for vehicle electrification, such as the human rights concerns associated with cobalt mining. Panelists acknowledged that because transitions inevitably create new challenges, business leaders need to better understand what these changes are going to look like so that they can address them—a running theme of BSR17, particularly in relation to futures thinking.
• Engage in policy. Policy and regulation have important roles to play in addressing climate change, and we have seen a lot of company engagement in the climate negotiations, most recently at COP23 in Bonn. The climate policy environment is particularly complex and uncertain for automakers, and while they cite challenges related to vehicle efficiency regulations, they are also promoting policies at local, state, and national levels that encourage innovation, electrification, and shared mobility. Company support for effective policy, as well as collaboration with public officials in new ways to quickly learn about emerging technologies, will be important for continued progress. 

Overall, however, the panelists encouraged business practitioners to think holistically. Through their power purchases, renewable energy goals, and work to evolve their products and business models, Cummins and GM are tackling numerous aspects of climate change.

For business, addressing this challenge won’t only be about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It’s also about an uncertain and highly dynamic future. We will need to involve business leaders from product design, internal operations, supply chain, government affairs, communications, and other departments, in addition to executive leadership, if we are to “ski down the double black diamond” emissions reduction slope.

Cummins and GM demonstrated that even some of the most carbon-intensive industries are developing their maps to navigate this journey. Other companies can (and should) do the same.

Blog | Tuesday November 28, 2017

BSR Conference 2017 Report

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Blog | Monday November 27, 2017

Corporations and the Challenge of the Global Refugee Crisis

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At the BSR Conference 2017, a panel of experts from the private sector gathered on stage to discuss what business can do to help solve the global refugee crisis. Panelists included President and CEO of TripAdvisor Stephen Kaufer, Chief Executive Officer of Mercy Corps Neal Keny-Guyer, and Executive Vice President of Sustainability and President of Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth Shamina Singh. BSR Associate Director Peter Nestor moderated the panel.

"When you leverage your business expertise and the value of your business—that is how you make a difference," said Singh.

Watch the full video below: 

The BSR Conference 2017 took place October 24-26 in Huntington Beach, California, and gathered sustainability leaders from business, government, and civil society to explore the theme of “How Business Leads.” Follow the conversation on Twitter at #BSR17. See all video highlights on BSR’s YouTube channel. 

Blog | Saturday November 25, 2017

Why Intimate Partner Violence Is Your Business

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The recent surfacing of numerous sexual harassment allegations—including multiple allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace—have demonstrated how much work remains to be done to create genuinely inclusive workplace around the world. Business can no longer be in any doubt about its duty to stamp out violence and harassment at work.  

However, if there is another learning from the #MeToo movement, it is that violence knows no borders. It occurs at work, on the way to and from work, and at home, and the impact spills over from one aspect of life to the other. Companies have a clear interest in ensuring a violence-free workplace, and for a range of reasons—including the importance of looking after your employees—business must consider how it can go beyond the workplace to tackle violence in the domestic sphere.  

International and local instruments increasingly identify employers as important stakeholders to address Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). Coinciding with the Governing Body of the International Labour Organization (ILO) deciding to place a standard-setting item on “Violence against Women and Men in the World of Work” on the agenda of the 107th Session of the International Labour Conference, a tripartite meeting of experts concluded that “domestic violence and other forms of violence and harassment are relevant to the world of work when they impact the workplace.” In another recent development, China enacted its first Domestic Violence Act in March 2016, which includes provisions that require employers to act against domestic violence through measures such as providing assistance to victims.   

Furthermore, working to tackle violence against women makes business sense: IPV can have negative impacts on workers’ productivity. Emerging research suggests that domestic violence can cause absenteeism because of stress, injuries, or ill-health; victims also have difficulty concentrating at work, which results in poor performance. An IFC study in Papua New Guinea calculated that staff lost 11 work days per year to gender-based violence, costing the companies 3-9 percent of payroll. Research from UN Women indicates that women workers in Vietnam who suffered IPV earned 35 percent less than those not experiencing such violence. There is a significant cost to business inaction. 

Business can take a leading role on tackling IPV in several ways: 

• Understand the root causes, raise awareness, and create the business case for intervention. Business can commission or conduct research to understand the root causes of gender inequality and violence. One example of this is the partnership between Diageo and CARE to promote women’s empowerment in the agricultural and hospitality value chain. Business can also clarify laws and regulations on the responsibilities of employers in relation to IPV. A costing study of the economic and social cost of IPV can help generate internal buy-in, which in turn supports investment decisions.
• Leverage the workplace as an engine of positive social change. The workplace can be a powerful space to shape attitudes and behaviors, as well as to create positive role models. Workers—men and women—will be less willing to accept violence at home and in their communities if they work in a respectful environment. Particularly, business should engage with men in company policy dialogue and program interventions, especially in the context of adverse social norms toward women. Implementing gender policies and programs without engaging men could create a perception of male disadvantage, leading to backlash against women. BSR works to engage men through HERrespect, supported by DFID’s What Works to Prevent Violence against Women and Girls, while programs such as MenCare and Program H are other good examples of male engagement in program development.
• Facilitate access to services and opportunities for victims and enhance the response mechanism. Business can facilitate access to essential services such as hotlines, counseling, legal aid, and housing—as Kering demonstrates—for IPV survivors. Business can also create economic opportunities for victims, as Sodexo is doing. Effective redressal mechanisms are traditionally a government’s responsibility, but initiatives such as Avon Foundation’s Justice Institute could support the strengthening of the justice system. 
• Campaign against violence. Companies can promote positive concepts of masculinity through campaigns or design products to provide direct support to women who seek help. The 16 Days of Activism campaign and others such as NO MORE provide a good opportunity for business to speak up against IPV. 

It’s time for companies to be bold. That means adopting a comprehensive strategy on violence in the workplace, which companies have the power to eliminate, as well as helping to change norms and tackle social acceptance of violence beyond the workplace. Whether through raising its voice or protecting and supporting survivors, business has a key role to play in addressing the systemic issue of violence against women in every sphere.  

Blog | Wednesday November 22, 2017

COP23: The ‘Inside-Out’ Approach to Delivering Climate Action

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What if there was a UN Climate Conference where actors reducing greenhouse gas emissions and building climate resilience took center stage, leaving government negotiators to the periphery?

At an “inside-out COP” like this—as described by renowned climate scientist Saleemul Huq at the Development and Climate Days event during the middle weekend of COP23—more attention would flow to those delivering results on the ground, not those skillfully weaving compromises with words.

COP23 showed that the inside-out COP is less and less a fantasy. It was physically divided between the Bonn zone, which featured on-the-ground action, and the Bula zone, where governments continued technical negotiations under the Paris Agreement. That the Bonn zone had brighter energy than the Bula zone may continue in COPs to come. And a focus on results is ever more important with global emissions set to increase for the first time this year, after plateauing for three years of economic expansion.

This is not because the UNFCCC negotiations derailed. To the contrary, countries agreed on the design of the Talanoa Dialogue, a high-level dialogue in 2018 which will take stock of our collective progress toward net-zero emissions, and set the scene for governments to enhance their commitments under the Paris Agreement in 2020. As the We Mean Business coalition and many others asked for, the dialogue creates opportunities for business to demonstrate our progress along the Paris Agreement emissions trajectory and the megatons of emissions we have removed from the atmosphere.

Countries also made progress on technical negotiations under the Paris Agreement by creating the raw material which will eventually become rules for how they account for emissions, communicate national commitments, report on progress, use carbon credits, and are held to comply. Since the Paris Agreement asks all countries to take action, all countries have skin in this game, slowing down the completion of these rules by COP24. There may be extra negotiating sessions in 2018 to finish them.

Just outside the government zone, the energy of action was more apparent. At the U.S. Climate Action Pavilion, California Governor Jerry Brown spoke to the Global Climate Action Summit, which will bring together non-state actors of all stripes in San Francisco next September. And former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg launched the first report under America’s Pledge, an effort to aggregate the impact of non-state actors in the U.S.

Toward the end of the second week, China and 18 other countries announced an increase in the use of sustainable bioenergy. The U.K. and Canada led a group of 20 countries, as well as several U.S. states and Canadian provinces, to launch the Powering Past Coal Alliance to phase out coal use in power generation over the coming decades.

The Powering Past Coal Alliance may foreshadow two trends in the future. First, that policy commitments will become multistakeholder affairs, including governments, businesses, and other non-government partners. And second, that increases in government ambition will be incrementally marked outside the formal Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) deposited under the Paris Agreement, since updated NDCs will require a quid pro quo every five years at the multilateral negotiating table.

In this world of increasingly “inside-out” COPs, the We Mean Business coalition will continue to support increased ambition from all. We appreciate the invitation to convene events and provide inputs to the Talanoa Dialogue. Businesses are stepping up, hundreds are committing to reduce their own emissions in line with the 2°C Paris goal, and they are finding innovative ways of achieving those goals.

We look forward to sharing those experiences to help policymakers have the confidence they need to continue to set and implement stronger and more ambitious targets of their own. There were clear signs of momentum and continued commitment by both countries and non-state actors at this COP, which we must continue to build on in the year ahead.

Blog | Monday November 20, 2017

How Do We Measure the Impact of Our Membership?

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In mission-driven work, it’s important but incredibly challenging to measure impact. Do you focus on the specific measures that can be quantified in the short term and directly attributed? Or do you identify longer-term, systemic impacts that are more difficult to quantify?

As there aren’t commonly agreed-upon answers to these questions, measurement tends to focus on specific project outcomes and intended impacts. BSR evaluates our project work, publishes case studies, and releases research. Yet, at our core, BSR is a membership organization, and it’s much harder to articulate the direct impacts of our membership. Even without numbers that explicitly “prove it,” I believe that our membership model enables BSR’s impact overall to be exponentially scaled at a global level. Why?

BSR has more than 250 member companies in nearly 30 countries spanning 10 industry sectors. These members represent more than US$2.6 trillion in revenue and more than 15 million employees worldwide. They are some of the world’s largest and most influential companies and constitute nearly 20 percent of the top 50 companies in the Forbes Global 2000. Because of this, some of the changes we help inspire reach people all over the world: For example, I love pointing out that helping a giant global food company change one policy on how they purchase one ingredient could have a larger impact on more peoples’ lives than working individually with more than 100 small organic food companies.

The reach and diversity of this membership means that BSR’s activities and insights are spread across these organizations and their broader value chains. By sharing knowledge, best practices, and new ideas, BSR’s impact is amplified well beyond one-to-one engagements, across sectors and regions. For example, when we worked with telecommunications firm Telia Company to integrate human rights into its business decision-making, we shared the process and broad learnings so that other companies can learn from it. Another recent example is the Playbook for Sustainable Business in the United States, which we published this fall. We engaged our members to shape the ideas in the playbook, and we then discussed these recommendations at our recent annual Conference. It is our hope that the dissemination of this Playbook will help sustainable business leaders succeed in the current U.S. economic and political context—both as individual businesses and in collaboration with each other and stakeholders.

With less than 130 staff around the globe, BSR cannot do individual projects with every member on every major sustainability issue. We must rely on the amplification of impacts through our membership if we’re going to achieve our ambitious mission. When we help a company devise a new climate strategy for its supply chain, the program that results is likely to impact not only that company, but also its suppliers and industry peers. When we work to help integrate human rights into business decision-making, we are hoping to shift industry practices toward a new normal.

Membership impacts are also multidirectional. Our impact is maximized because our relationships further help to inform our research and grant-funded activities to ensure that our insights and recommendations are relevant to and build on global businesses’ practices or challenges. This means that when we receive support from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to develop Gender Equality in Codes of Conduct Guidance, for example, we base our work on our decades of experience working with companies, and we engage our members to further inform and refine our recommendations.

Our recent Marketer’s Guide to Behavior Change also illustrates this: It shares the perspectives of a small group of members—AT&T, eBay, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc., McDonald’s, and Walmart—to show how companies can trigger behavioral shifts that enable more sustainable lifestyles, grow demand for more sustainable products, and create business value. When we create something like this, it is our hope that our member companies can then share this tool with their marketing teams, who may use the techniques and inspire other companies to do the same. Thus, an engagement with five companies has the potential to change marketing practices at hundreds!

Finally, our membership provides built-in networks that enable BSR to address systemic challenges that require a collective business response. When we see an opportunity to convene companies on a topic like the use of renewable energy to power data centers or the future of sustainable fuel, we begin by reaching out to those of our member companies that have expressed an interest in the issue. Sometimes, this works in reverse, and our member companies bring ideas to us and ask us to convene others.

We may never know exactly what practices are changed as a result of a member reading a report, participating in a workshop, or talking to a BSR expert; let alone the exact impact that new practices we helped shape might have. But we can be proud that we do our best to magnify our impact across 250 of the world’s largest and most influential companies as we all work to create a more just and sustainable world. 

Blog | Friday November 17, 2017

National Geographic Photographer Annie Griffiths Addresses the BSR Conference 2017

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In a plenary address at the BSR Conference 2017, National Geographic Photographer Annie Griffiths shared her experience using photography as a tool for telling stories, creating empathy, and empowering women.

“The big stories are not breaking news. They don’t break. They exist—they’re big; they’re complex. None more so than women,” Griffiths said.

Watch the full video below:

The BSR Conference 2017 took place October 24-26 in Huntington Beach, California, and gathered sustainability leaders from business, government, and civil society to explore the theme of “How Business Leads.” Follow the conversation on Twitter at #BSR17. See all video highlights on BSR’s YouTube channel. 

Blog | Thursday November 16, 2017

Shared Resilience: Businesses Are Ready to Partner to Build Climate Resilience

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This past weekend at COP23, the We Mean Business coalition cohosted the 15th annual Development and Climate Days—the signature climate development and resilience event during the UN climate negotiations. We Mean Business brought together resilience experts from around the globe, including business leaders, to discuss innovative ways to enhance community resilience in relation to climate change.

One of the themes during this event focused on “shared resilience,” which embodies the concept that no one actor can tackle this complex issue alone: We must work together. Climate risk is no longer thought of as something only impacting small island nations, but something that affects businesses, the global economy, and developed nations. We have seen this in particular this year, with natural disasters in the United States and extreme weather events around the world, such as the flooding in South Asia. All stakeholders must collectively work to create successful, lasting partnerships and initiatives that boost climate resilience.

For business, climate change is a material risk. Over the past three years, the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report ranked climate change as the highest risk facing business. Companies, therefore, have a crucial role to play in both building their own adaptive capacities to climate-related events and enhancing broader societal resilience.

Throughout the Development and Climate Days at COP23, we were lucky to hear from several multinational companies, along with other experts, that are already working to address climate resilience—some are doing so because resilience, development, and risk management are not fundamentally different. All three activities demand systems thinking, identifying root causes of vulnerability, long-term planning, and taking practical action.

Business already assesses many types of risk through enterprise risk management systems, and companies can consider applying an environmental and climate lens to these existing assessments. Holistic and comprehensive resilience strategies are the best bet to address climate risks within the operations, supply chains, and vulnerable communities in which business operates.

Companies can begin by assessing climate risk; they can then develop a resilience strategy that includes their physical, financial, social, natural, human, and political assets. One example of a company that is doing this is Woolworths Holdings Limited, which is tackling climate risk throughout its supply chain and within vulnerable communities through its people. With a program that seeks to enhance the livelihoods of local women throughout its supply chain, Woolworths works with smallholder farmers on water management and farming techniques.

The Kellogg Company also helps farmers in different places face challenges by addressing access to market issues, making supply chain pricing more transparent, and sharing growing and storing techniques.

Finance is also key to the bigger picture of how we’ll transition to a resilient society. How do we increase scale, broaden financial flows, and expand access to finance to those who need it to adapt to the impacts of climate change? Applying financial capital isn’t only about matching funds with project pipelines. It will require collaboration among companies, banks, and all levels of government. Capital can finance non-financial instruments, too, such as procurement, government engagement, guaranteed offtake, and disclosure. These tools can help move the trillions in the real economy necessary to combat climate change.

Companies are ready to partner on the issue of climate resilience. In this spirit, Michelle Patron, director of sustainability policy at Microsoft, told participants of Development and Climate Days, "We want to partner with you and understand where the challenges are—and get tools into the hands of the people who need them most.” 

Blog | Wednesday November 15, 2017

Our Theory of Change: The Rationale Behind BSR’s Open Membership Policy

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In an increasingly polarized world, we often look to sort organizations, ideas, or people into good or bad. When you communicate in soundbites or 140 characters (or even a whopping 280!), it can become challenging to provide context or nuance.

This trend toward categorizing good and bad actors has applied to the private sector for a long time. Big corporations are often portrayed as universally evil, while small businesses are assumed to be good. And while most people know it’s not that simple, it takes time to really investigate the nuance. The starting point for BSR’s theory of change is our open membership policy: Any company that expresses the desire to improve its sustainability performance is welcome to join BSR.

Even among large corporations, consumers and the media often paint one company, or an entire industry, in a negative light, rather than try to understand the balance of positive and negative impacts that most companies have on the world around them. As F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

At BSR, our theory of change is based on this ability, and we believe the greatest impacts occur in the context of this nuance. As lead of BSR’s global membership, I am often asked, “How can BSR possibly work with ______ (insert your favorite company to hate)?” The answer is that we believe in working with business to truly create a more just and sustainable world. We can’t do that if we only work with the small percentage of companies who are already 100 percent committed; and we also know that nobody is perfect.

For example, Unilever has been named the global leader on sustainability in the GlobeScan/SustainAbility Leaders Survey for seven years in a row. Yet Unilever readily acknowledges that they have not yet achieved all of their sustainable living objectives: They understand the need for continuous improvement. And if we only worked with companies at the level of sustainability commitment of Unilever, we would not be doing a very good job in truly changing the way all mainstream business is done. We would also miss opportunities to multiply the number of leaders driving meaningful, sustainable change throughout the ecosystem.

From our perspective, all companies have areas of their performance that can be improved. As our founders stated, BSR works with “leaders and learners, and most companies are both.” The integrity of this model is safeguarded by our policy against allowing companies to cite BSR membership as a “seal of approval,” certifying in some way that they have achieved a certain level of performance. As such, we are clear in stating that BSR membership alone does not provide any qualitative assessment of a company’s performance on sustainability.

We also understand that some industries are inherently less sustainable than others—and for some organizations, it may make sense to avoid an entire sector when developing an engagement strategy. Our model is not perfect, and it works in part because other organizations have different theories of change that complement what we do.

However, at BSR, we have found that the same sectors that some find problematic are the ones where the greatest opportunities for transformation often exist. Our mission is predicated on engagement, and from this perspective, we don’t believe it makes sense to uniformly single out an industry. That’s why BSR works across many industries that some may find objectionable—from those producing GMOs, soft drinks, tobacco, or fast food to those in the business of defense, nuclear power, or oil and gas.

To summarize, our theory of change is based on inclusion and continuous progress within mainstream business. I believe our approach substantially increases our opportunity for impact; it also enhances our ability to engage deeply with businesses across the sustainability leadership spectrum on the tough challenges the world faces today.