Governance for Sustainability*

Abstract

Corporate governance is fundamentally about such questions as what business is for—and in whose interests companies should be run, and how. Wider issues such as business ethics through entire value chains, human rights, bribery and corruption, and climate change are among the great issues of our time that increasingly cross‐cut the rarefied worlds of corporate boardrooms. As a result, a growing proportion of SustainAbility’s work has seen the fusion of corporate governance with such wider societal concerns. This paper reviews the increasingly complex cross‐connects between the rapidly mutating governance agenda and the burgeoning world of corporate responsibility, social entrepreneurship and sustainable development. We will move through three stages: (1) a brief review of work that SustainAbility has done in the area of corporate governance; (2) the three great waves of societal pressure on business since 1960, and where things seem likely to head next; and (3) some headline conclusions that emerged in this field from the World Economic Forum’s 2006 annual summit in Davos.