Corporate Social Responsibility: Leading a sustainable enterprise

Today, more than ever, organizations are focused on environmental and social responsibility as a strategic objective. A 2009 survey of 224 business leaders worldwide shows that 60 percent believe that corporate social responsibility (CSR) has increased in importance over the past year. Only 6 percent say it's a lower priority. To be sustainable, businesses are now embracing a relatively new objective: optimizing their operations to improve environmental and social outcomes in a manner that increases overall performance. As a result, executives face entirely new decisions and must manage an intricate new set of trade-offs. (Read the IBM Institute for Business Value study Corporate Social Responsibility: Leading a sustainable enterprise.)