Canadian companies must embrace social reporting to remain
competitive.
Analysts are giving more positive recommendations to firms that
score higher and report on environmental, social and governance
measures, recent research from the London Business
School and Harvard Business School shows. And
those that adopt mandatory sustainability reporting requirements
have seen positive effects on corporate performance.
This makes sense: Disclosure of that kind of information creates
incentives for companies to manage such issues more effectively,
even if only to avoid having to disclose bad performance to their
stakeholders.
And a recent MIT/Boston Consulting Group
survey of corporate leaders found that companies
are taking notice – agreeing across all sectors that
social reporting is growing in importance. The divergence is now
between "embracers" and "cautious adopters"
– companies that are pressured to catch up by policy
makers, investors, employees and customers.
