Sustainability as Adaptability

Over the past few years, CEOs have been paying increasing attention to corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and ethics. In a recent global survey of business executives conducted by BCG and MIT Sloan Management Review, more than two-thirds of the 4,700 respondents agreed that sustainability is essential to competitiveness. Moreover, nearly three-quarters said that it is permanently on their agenda and that their commitment will increase in the year ahead. Executives in resource-intensive industries were especially likely to make this claim.

There is little consensus, however, on just what sustainability, or the many other terms that are used to characterize the relationship between business and its broader context, mean in practice. (See Exhibit 1 below.)

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