CSRHub Blog Research on ESG metrics and comments on sustainability best practice

Harvard Business Review (HBR) has published its annual global ranking of the 100 best-performing CEOs, with Pablo Isla of the Spanish fashion retail giant Inditex topping the list for the second year in a row. Following behind Isla in the #2 and #3 spots are Jensen Huang of NVIDIA and Bernard Arnault of LVMH. They’re joined by newcomers to the top 5 this year, François-Henri Pinault of Kering (#4) and Elmar Degenhart of the German automaker Continental (#5). Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has climbed to the #6 spot, up from #12 in 2017.

The list, which appears in HBR’s November-December issue, is different from other leader rankings in that it measures performance for the entire length of a chief executive’s tenure. “In a business environment that often seems obsessed with today’s stock price and this quarter’s numbers, our ranking takes the long view,” said HBR Editor in Chief Adi Ignatius.

Harvard Business Review’s article stated, “To compile the list, HBR looked at CEOs of the S&P Global 1200 as of April 30, 2018, and calculated overall shareholder return and increase in market capitalization over their entire tenure. It also factored in ratings of corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance provided by two firms, CSRHub and Sustainalytics. (Read more about the methodology.)” 

The HBR article stated “Among the biggest shifts companies face right now is in the global political environment….Whether and when CEOs speak out doesn’t factor directly into our rankings—but such activism may be captured indirectly in ESG scores, according to the experts at CSRHub and Sustainalytics, the firms that help us crunch the data. For instance, ESG ratings do account for company lobbying expenditures, the degree of disclosure on issues such as carbon use, and the presence of a sustainability officer at the company’s top level, among other measures. A CEO’s political statements (or lack thereof) may also show up in data gleaned from employee review sites such as Glassdoor. The phrase “CEO activism” connotes proactive behavior by leaders—but more and more often, dealing with political realities is just another facet of a multifaceted job.”

“We are honored to have CSRHub ESG (environment, social, governance) metrics included in the methodology to determine the HBR Ranking of the World’s Best-Performing CEOs for the third year in a row” said Cynthia Figge, CSRHub CEO and Co-founder.

See the full report available in Harvard Business Review Magazine, found here.  

To learn more about CSRHub, our ESG/CSR metrics or how you can improve your ESG scores, contact us here.

CSRHub is the largest ESG and sustainability rating and information platform globally. We aggregate 180M data points from 550 data sources including 12 leading ESG analyst databases. Our big data patented algorithm aggregates, normalizes, and weights data to rate 18,000 companies in 132 countries across 136 industries. We track 97% of world market capitalization. We cover 12 subcategories of ratings and rankings across the categories of environment, employees, community and governance. We show underlying data sources that contribute to each subcategory’s ratings. CSRHub metrics are a consensus view (any 2 sources may have about a 30% correlation so we make sense of the disparate data). We tag companies for their involvement in 17 Special Issues. We provide Macro-enabled Excel dashboard templates, customizable dashboards, and an API. Our big data technology enables 85% full coverage of data across our rated companies and robust analyses. We provide historical ratings back to 2008.

CSRHub Co-Founder and COO, Cynthia Figge, will be speaking at Sustainable Brands New Metrics conference, in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 14-16. Cynthia will discuss The Second Generation of ESG Metrics and the Movement to bring “Dark Data” to Light. New Metrics will showcase the macro, corporate and investor landscapes to help business succeed. During the three day conference, new approaches to valuing risk and impact, company goals and KPI’S and new solutions in data management will be among some of the topics discussed.

Monday, November 14^th, 5:55pm

Rising Waves: The Second Generation of ESG Metrics and a Movement Toward Bringing ‘Dark Data’ to Light

• Cynthia Figge, Co-Founder and COO; CSRHub

Virtually all members of the Sustainable Brands community are asking what changes they can expect in corporate disclosure of ESG metrics over the next few years, and how they can best prepare to transition toward a disclosure landscape that is less confusing, less scattered and more consistent over time. While the first generation of sustainability metrics has been driven mostly by custom self-reported data, combined with hundreds of surveys and ratings, a new wave of ESG disclosure trends is shaping up that promises to meet the needs of all stakeholders. This talk will outline the most important features of the next generation of ESG metrics and explain how ‘dark data’ may play a role in it.

Sustainable Brands:

Sustainable Brands is home for the global community of business innovators who are shaping the future of commerce worldwide. Since 2006, their goal has been to inspire, engage and equip today's business and brand leaders to prosper for the near and long term by leading the way to a sustainably abundant future. They do so by offering news and views from thought and practice leaders, live and on-line events, peer-to-peer learning groups, a robust resource library, a solutions provider directory and more -- all designed to help brand, sustainability and design innovation professionals, social entrepreneurs and the eco-system of value network partners who support them, discover, co-create and successfully execute on new opportunities to profitably innovate for sustainability.

Cynthia Figge is a forerunner and thought leader in the corporate sustainability movement who co-founded EKOS International in 1996, one of the first consultancies integrating sustainability and corporate strategy. Cynthia is COO and Cofounder of CSRHub. Cynthia has worked with major organizations including BNSF, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Dow Jones, and REI to help craft sustainability strategy integrated with business. She was an Officer of LIN Broadcasting/McCaw Cellular leading new services development, and started a new “Greenfield” mill with Weyerhaeuser. She serves as Advisor to media and technology companies, and served as President of the Board of Sustainable Seattle. Cynthia has an MBA from Harvard Business School. Cynthia is based in the Seattle area.

CSRHub provides access to corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings and information on 16,550 companies from 135 industries in 133 countries. Managers, researchers and activists use CSRHub to benchmark company performance, learn how stakeholders evaluate company CSR practices and seek ways to change the world.

By Bahar Gidwani

Several groups have written predictions about the future course of the Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) measurement space.  We’ve seen stories about the importance of millennials (as both customers and employees), a sense that carbon tracking is finally an accepted part of corporate life, and that companies must watch out for a range of new legal and regulatory issues.

At CSRHub, we are exposed to all of these trends, and many more.  Our data collection engine automatically absorbs new data elements on 3,500 topics from 435 data sources.  It analyzes this information, normalizes it, weights it, and outputs ratings on more than 15,000 companies.  Each month we get a fresh look at what sustainability professionals around the world think is important.

One thing we’ve watched for several years is the shift in emphasis between interest in Environmental, Social, and Governance issues (“ESG” issues).  Governance and Environment each had their time as the top area of focus.  However, our data shows clearly that Social issues are now emerging as the focus for corporate social behavior analysis.

The overall sustainability ratings for the companies CSRHub tracks was stable or even dropped a little between 2009 and 2011.  We believe this was due to cutbacks on ESG spending, following the great recession of 2008-9.  Since 2011, we have seen steady overall improvement across companies in all industries and geographic regions.

It is relatively easy to drill down into this data and pull out the average ratings across all of the companies CSRHub tracks, for each aspect of ESG.  However, our coverage has grown rapidly over the past eight years, partly due to the fact that we’ve found more data sources (we started with only 70 sources) and partly due to the fact that more companies are reporting sustainability information.  To ensure that we could focus just on trends in ESG focus, we selected 400 companies from this year’s Fortune 500 for whom we had full ratings back to 2009.

As you can see in the graph below, the ratings on Governance issues for this set of 400 companies have fallen since 2009 (probably as the legal and governmental pressures from the recession receded).  Environment had an upward spike in perceived performance from 2012 through 2014, but has now leveled off.  Social ratings have now started to move up and look likely to soon pass those for the other two areas of ESG.

We can also track how much information we receive from our sources for each area of social performance.  If we assume that the amount of information our sources receive ties to the amount of information that companies produce, we see evidence that the group of companies we study have generated more data in Social than in either of the other two areas.

CSRHub tracks six different social metrics areas: Community Development & Philanthropy; Compensation & Benefits; Diversity & Labor Rights; Human Rights & Supply Chain; Product; and Training Health & Safety.  We expect to see our clients continue to step up their efforts to benchmark their performance against that of their competitors in each of these areas.  Software firms will add more tools and consultants will write more reports on Social practices—just as they did during the 2008-09 era for the Governance space and in the 2012-14 era for the Environment space.  The overall effect should be a refocused interest on improving corporate performance on social issues, over the next few years.

 Bahar Gidwani is CEO and Co-founder of CSRHub.  He has built and run large technology-based businesses for many years. Bahar holds a CFA, worked on Wall Street with Kidder, Peabody, and with McKinsey & Co. Bahar has consulted to a number of major companies and currently serves on the board of several software and Web companies. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and an undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy. He plays bridge, races sailboats, and is based in New York City.

CSRHub provides access to the world’s largest corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings and information.  It covers over 15,000 companies from 135 industries in 132 countries. By aggregating and normalizing the information from 435 data sources, CSRHub has created a broad, consistent rating system and a searchable database that links millions of rating elements back to their source. Managers, researchers and activists use CSRHub to benchmark company performance, learn how stakeholders evaluate company CSR practices, and seek ways to improve corporate sustainability performance.