Executive Summary

This publication focuses on how companies organize—at the management level—to carry out their sustainability initiatives. We offer insights drawn from a survey of 104 companies, in-depth interviews with 20 sustainability executives, and a roundtable discussion with 116 executives from 86 firms. We found that 98 percent of companies surveyed expect the level of integration of sustainability into the business to increase in the next five years—and more than half expect a significant increase. This finding has implications for how companies organize to execute their sustainability initiatives. We also found that there is no single “correct” organizational model. The approach depends on, among other factors, the company’s “maturity” stage in sustainability, its overall organizational structure, and the capabilities of its management team. Nonetheless, certain key insights for what’s ahead emerged from our work:

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