Sustainability in portfolio management

Abstract

In the past, there was not desire to know the ecological impact of products, since environmental disasters were rather rare. Contrarily, today several companies have adopted sustainable strategies as long term value in their business model, in order to face environmental problems as population growth, climate change and divergent living standards.

Sustainability integrated with portfolio management implies many changes in the operations, focusing on material issues, engaging with diverse stakeholders, managing climate and resource related risks, creating new sustainability driven opportunities, and reporting transparently on actions and performance.

The vision of sustainable value offers a compelling challenge to business. Companies that choose to start the “sustainability journey” have to go through different stages:

• Exposure : includes energy savings, building efficiency and compliance projects.

• Integration : more holistic approach, starts including LCA. Better understanding of the positive relation between sustainability and business strategy.

• Transformation : the peak of the organizational change, when sustainability becomes part of the core strategic vision of the company, being part of all the decision, processes and metrics for success.

Organizational culture is defined as: “The values and behaviours that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organization.” The way the culture is expressed by the leaders and the employees impacts relationship with external and internal stakeholders and the company efficiency in general. It is important to understand, how a shared vision and a common culture of sustainability is necessary to be created and promoted, to facilitate organizational understanding of core values and to help project mangers better understanding and leading a good alignment between goals and outcomes.

Driving sustainable strategy into an organization requires senior management to communicate the vision clearly. Sustainability gives to the organization a big competitive advantage, increasing expectations by stakeholders, obtaining radical transparency and contributing to support declining resources.