MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Corporate Sustainability at a Crossroads

This report represents the conclusion of sustainability research carried out between 2009 and 2017 by MIT Sloan Management Review (MIT SMR), in partnership with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Over the course of eight years, we conducted an annual global survey on the topic of sustainability and business. Executive and management respondents came from a broad mix of industries, 118 countries, and totaled over 60,000 respondents (18,733 responses were from managers in commercial enterprises). The survey pool included MIT SMR subscribers and readers, MIT alumni, BCG clients and alumni, UN Global Compact participants, and other interested parties.

In addition to survey results, each year we interviewed practitioners, academics, and subject-matter experts from a number of industries and disciplines to further our understanding of the sustainability issues facing organizations and to refine hypotheses we were testing in the survey itself. A list of the 176 people who participated in our research through interviews (some more than once) can be found in Acknowledgments. We appreciate the generosity they demonstrated in sharing their time and insights, which contributed to the richness of our reports, including dozens of examples of sustainable business practices, many of which made their way into the final reports. Content from several reports are integrated into this report, which synthesizes and extends the findings from this eight-year research effort.