Why and How Companies Create Sustainability Programs

“Live Green or Die” is how a recent BusinessWeek cover story describes General Motors Corp.’s current challenge.1 The automaker is hardly alone in confronting the need to integrate sustainability into its products and culture: A Chief Responsibility Officer magazine survey indicated that 25 percent of Fortune 500 companies expected to appoint Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs) as of January 1, 2008.2 And that figure is quickly rising.

Who are these leaders? Where do they come from? What skills do they possess? And what are their most formidable challenges? This paper examines these questions and identifies:

Common “trigger points” that launch formal sustainability programs; Where the capability resides in the organization, how its performance is managed and measured; and What types of leaders are selected to lead these initiatives. The reporting and analyses in this paper are based on interviews with the leaders of formal sustainability programs, CEOs and other executives involved with these efforts among a dozen leading companies in North America and Europe.