22 Apr The Profession’s Role in Sustainability Advocacy: Challenging CFOs to Join the Movement
This article first appeared on July, 2018 The CPA Journal
For the past 15 years of my 40-year career in the hospitality sector, I have been advocating for hotel companies, and the tourism industry at large, to not only include the triple bottom line of economic prosperity, social responsibility, and environmental protection in their strategy, but to actually base their entire strategy around that equation and build a strategy of differentiation to compete in this expanding industry. This is, as a matter of fact, a suggestion for all industries.
In a world where business decisions are mostly based on financial consideration, financial managers must reverse the perception that sustainability is a cost rather than a profit driver. Companies have improved their recognition of sustainability as part of a global strategy, but there is still a long way to go. Companies where there is no sustainability expert on the board of directors, or where the vice president of sustainability does not report directly to the CEO but to a senior vice president of marketing or a general counsel and is not part of the executive committee of the company, are still getting it wrong. Sustainability has still not reached a point where it is taken as seriously as it should be; rather, it is considered nice to have for image purposes.
