Publications | Page 14

Beau rapport du cabinet Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP qui montre que la RSE ne peut plus être ignoré par les entreprises : « Governance Goes Green ».

It’s not just us tree-huggers. Increasingly, institutional investors, pension plans and regulators are calling for (and in some cases requiring) companies to assess and report on the sustainability of their business operations and investments. Climate change and other environmental concerns are at the forefront of these calls. Institutional investors are focusing on sustainable business practices – a broad category in which environmental and social risks, costs and opportunities of doing business are analyzed alongside conventional economic considerations – as a key factor in long-term financial performance. Sustainability proponents are looking to boards of directors and management to integrate these considerations into their companies’ long-term business strategies.

Éléments essentiels à retenir :

• Institutional investors increasingly regard environmental and other sustainability issues as strategic matters for companies.
• Shareholders continue to submit environmental and other sustainability proposals, successfully garnering attention and prompting companies to make changes, despite their failure to win majority votes.
• Independent organizations are developing standards for sustainability and environmental reporting to provide investors with consistent metrics for assessing and comparing the sustainability of companies’ practices.
• Sustainability and environmental reporting remains in the SEC’s sights as it evaluates the effectiveness of current disclosure requirements and considers changes for the future.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

En voilà une question allez-vous me répondre et pourtant… Un récent article du Harvard Business Review de Suntae Kim, Matthew Karlesky, Christopher Myers et Todd Schifeling intitulé « Why Companies Are Becoming B Corporations » aborde la question de face.

2 raisons essentielles sont identifiées :

1. First, as large established firms have ramped up their corporate social responsibility efforts, small businesses that have long been committed to social and environmental causes want to prove that they are more genuine, authentic advocates of stakeholder benefits.
2.  The qualitative evidence, gathered from firms’ B corporation application materials, revealed that certifying firms believed “the major crises of our time are a result of the way we conduct business,” and they became a B Corporation to “join the movement of creating a new economy with a new set of rules” and “redefine the way people perceive success in the business world.”

So why do certain firms (and not others) choose to identify as B Corporations? Individual leaders are partly why some organizations broaden their purpose beyond maximizing shareholder value. We might look to Sir Richard Branson, who in 2013 co-launched the “B Team,” publicly decrying corporations’ sole focus on short-term profits and calling for a reprioritization of people- and planet-focused performance. We might also consider leaders of firms like Ben & Jerry’s or Patagonia (both B Corporations) that have prioritized societal and environmental agendas.

Clearly, such leaders can be important catalysts of social change. However, the explosive growth of B Corporations seems also to be driven by broader trends and changes in the corporate landscape that cannot be explained by individuals’ actions alone.

Two of us (Suntae Kim and Todd Schifeling) conducted research to build a more robust understanding of the rise of B corporations. By qualitatively examining the internal motives of firms in the process of becoming a B corporation, and quantitatively testing key factors in these firms’ external industry environment – including the shareholder- and stakeholder-focused behaviors of their corporate competitors – we found that there are at least two major underlying reasons why firms choose to seek B Corporation certification.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Selon une étude parue le 8 juin 2016 sur le blog de Harvard (« Women Directors and Participation on Key Committees »), la féminisation des CA progressent mais davantage dans les comités du CA.

Women corporate directors globally are showing greater proportional gains on occupying key board committees than on boards overall, according to a new analysis by leading governance and ESG data and analytics provider Institutional Shareholder Services.

Point intéressant sue le Canada :

Among markets outside Europe, boards of Australian companies showed the greatest proportional gains for overall female boardroom representation between 2014 and 2016 with a 4.9 percent increase, and with female directors now making up just under 21 percent of all directorships at those companies. Canadian companies analyzed saw the greatest growth outside of Europe in female representation on audit committees, jumping 5.6 percentage points during that same period.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian