The Sustainability Ratings Game

Robin Deliso is an associate director in APCO’s corporate responsibility practice.

The Guardian recently wrote a post on its Sustainable Business Blog titled “What is the value of corporate sustainability ratings?” about the newest phase of SustainAbility’s Rate the Raters program. Originally launched in May 2010, this fifth phase of the project is a survey in partnership with GlobeScan on how sustainability experts view and use corporate sustainability ratings.

It’s an in-depth look at how ratings are used by companies, investors and other stakeholders.

Some initial findings:

  • When asked which groups were most trusted to evaluate company sustainability performance, NGOs were most trusted, followed by ratings and rankings, and then a company’s own employees.
  • Experts are most familiar with these three rankings: Dow Jones Sustainability Index (2012 results out today) Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Leadership Index and FTSE4Good Index Series.
  • The top two factors contributing to the credibility of a rating system are: 1) objectivity/credibility of data sources and 2) disclosure of methodology.

SustainAbility and GlobeScan will be publishing additional results over the coming months. Check it out!

Posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2012 By SharedPurpose
Catogories  CR in North America and tagged , , , ,
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