Across the world, both private and public sectors are challenged to meet the ever increasing demand in human, financial and physical capital. Its supply is limited and its allocation must be done in a sagacious fashion.
While documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth has raised the general level of awareness, it appears that the second stage is now required: ensuring that CSR and SDS are not seen as one-off initiatives but rather part of normal day-to-day business. At this time, many businesses segregate CSR and SDS organizationally and as result, core business activities often take precedence in terms of financing or funding. The solution to this matter needs to be fleshed out in order effect true change. Pure SDS organizations should no longer exist and all of its activities should be fully integrated with various organizational business units.
In terms of KPIs, there needs to be a clear and collective agreement on what is to be measured and how it is to be supported from an information management perspective. If what gets measured gets managed, there needs to be more integration of KPIs with Enterprise Systems such as SAP. If not, organizations are faced with a barrage of ever-changing informational requirements which are to be addressed at the detriment (in terms of time) of core business.
Filed under: corporate sustainability, sustainable development | Tagged: CSR, KPIs
I’m assuming SDS is ’sustainable development strategy’, right?
I completely agree that there has to be whole-of-business integration of sustainability principles so that it becomes part of core business not an ‘add-on’. It’s akin to the way we have integrated IT into business. To have a completely separate division that focuses solely on technology is clearly anachronistic. The same might be observed of sustainability.