How are member companies strategically engaging with change and complexity in the landscape of human rights and social impact? What challenges and opportunities are peers facing integrating social impact into core business operations? Over the course of 2023, MCSC’s Social Dimensions research team has conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with individuals and teams across a wide range of professional roles to assess challenges, needs, and opportunities in social sustainability. We discovered common emerging strategies to engage a rapidly-shifting landscape of stakeholders and accountability mechanisms. Our team’s goal is to develop an interactive infrastructure to articulate a proactive path to collective engagement with the social dimensions of sustainability.
50+ individuals across all 18 member companies
Wide range of job functions:
Wide range of roles:
Topics
- Perspectives on the meaning of social sustainability, including the distinction between outcome and impact, aligning social impact work with business operations, and charting a proactive strategy for engagement with climate justice and just transitions.
- Structure of programs and initiatives for sustainability, including insights on recent and ongoing significant organizational restructuring and changes in strategic approaches and partnerships to integrate sustainability and resilience KPIs into core operations.
- Insights into the shifting landscape of stakeholder accountability, including license to operate and community engagement frameworks, emerging DOE and EPA mechanisms, collaborative planning, reporting, and a growing landscape of mechanisms through which critique, public opinion, and the proactive anticipation of regulatory policy.
- Challenges, opportunities, and areas of change in the use of metrics, non-financial reporting frameworks, measurement of social impact, tensions and opportunities in the relationship between “E” and “S” metrics, engagement with stakeholders, and implementation of projects.
- Needs for partnership in employee education and training, community outreach and engagement, and supply chain resilience and accountability.
A consolidated report of interview findings will be released by the end of year 2023