The United Nations Global Compact tomorrow (June 24) will reveal the results of a survey of 1,000 CEOs about their views toward sustainability. The survey is expected to provide a look into whether business leaders consider sustainability issues such as energy use and environmental impact as core to their operations, and how they expect these issues will shape the way they do business in the next decade.
Carolyn Y. Woo, Martin J. Gillen Dean of the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame, is serving as the only representative from higher education on the plenary panel presenting the landmark survey.
“It’s important that we begin to view sustainability and other ethical issues not just in terms of morality, but how to truly bring the power of business to bear on the issues impacting the human community,” Woo says. “To accomplish that, we must monitor and measure these efforts. The survey will be an important tool to gauge where we are, and where we need to go from here.”
“A New Era of Sustainability: UN Global Compact-Accenture CEO Study 2010” will discuss whether the business leaders see sustainability as a core value to be integrated with operations, how much progress corporations have made, and what they see as the challenges ahead in the next decade, among other issues. The report is now available online at: http://www.unglobalcompact.org/docs/news_events/8.1/UNGC_Accenture_CEO_Study_2010.pdf
The report, conducted jointly by the U.N. and global management consulting firm Accenture, is being presented during the annual United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit 2010, which was convened Wednesday in New York by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The U.N. Global Compact is a principles-based initiative that encourages businesses worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies.
Woo represented AACSB International in the start-up of the Global Compact’s academic counterpart – Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), which provides a framework for academic institutions to advance the broader cause of corporate social responsibility and incorporate universal values into curricula and research. The Mendoza College was one of the first signatories for the initiative, which was unveiled during the U.N. Global Compact Leaders Summit in July 2007.