Strategy & Leadership

Management magnified

August 24, 2009

Global

August 24, 2009

Global
Our Editors

The Economist Intelligence Unit

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Management magnified: Strategies for revenue growth in an economic downturn is an Economist Intelligence Unit report and sponsored by SAS

Management magnified: Strategies for revenue growth in an economic downturn is the second in a series of three reports written by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by SAS. The first report, Management magnified: Getting ahead in a recession by making better decisions, was published in August 2009. The final report, on sustainability, was published in November 2009.

  • Sustainability and corporate performance. About one-quarter (27%) of executives surveyed rate their organisation above average in every sustainability-related category—ability to integrate initiatives into core strategy, investment in initiatives and reputation among stakeholders. Members of this “sustainability leaders” group of companies report better-than-average results in other areas as well: 35% say their financial performance is much stronger than their peers, compared with only 14% of respondents from other firms in the survey. Similarly, 33% of sustainability leaders believe their revenue growth is much stronger than the competition, compared with 10% from other firms.
  • Sustainability isn’t about being nice, but about seeing profits. In particular, leaders believe that sustainability provides a market advantage: 43% say that it is important to customers, compared with only 16% of respondents from other firms in the survey. Similarly, 39% of sustainability leaders believe that sustainability can help to enhance revenue growth, compared with 26% from other firms.
  • Leadership counts. But there appears to be a variation in the levels of support for sustainability among various stakeholders. Such corporate initiatives are very important to boards of directors at 44% of companies, and to senior managers at 36%. But these figures are much higher than those of any other stakeholder, whether inside or outside the company. This indicates that senior executives need to do more to educate both internal and external groups on the importance of sustainability to corporate strategy.

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