What This Report Covers
Corporate sustainability is entering a more focused and pragmatic phase. While companies are advancing implementation, this progress is often constrained by limited resources, internal alignment challenges, and a growing emphasis on compliance over long-term value creation.
The GlobeScan–BSR State of Sustainable Business 2026 report provides a snapshot of how corporate sustainability is evolving today based on insights from 124 senior sustainability professionals at large global companies.
The findings show a clear shift from ambition to implementation, as organizations narrow their focus, respond to growing regulatory pressure, and work to align sustainability with core business priorities.
Key Findings:
- Regulation is the most important driver for 76% of respondents in 2026 compared to 31% in 2016; consumer/customer demand doubled from 21% to 44% and market growth dropped by over 40%.
- There is a significant disconnect between the 77% of sustainability leaders who view sustainability as a core driver of long-term business strategy, and just 39% of their senior executives.
- Sustainability teams claim lower engagement with 11 of 16 business functions over the past decade, with the steepest decline occurring in the CEO’s office. In contrast, engagement with Legal, Risk Management, and IT grew as Investor Relations and the Board held steady.
- While nearly 60% of companies have integrated physical climate risk into risk management, only 30% have adaptation plans for their operations and only 15% for their supply chain.
- 43% of respondents expect U.S. influence on sustainability to decline over the next three years, compared with 62% who expect the influence of the Asia-Pacific region to grow.
A More Pragmatic Era for Sustainability: Time to Act
As sustainability enters a more pragmatic phase, the priority is to focus on where it can deliver the greatest business value. This will require stronger alignment between strategy, resources, and capabilities, as well as a clearer articulation of how sustainability supports performance, resilience, and growth. Companies that can embed sustainability in core decision‑making and demonstrate tangible progress will be better positioned to sustain momentum and investment.
- More than a quarter of companies (27%) are reducing sustainability investment while 90% are maintaining or increasing sustainability implementation.
- Only 18% of respondents expect their company’s sustainability budget to increase in the next budgeting cycle, while 40% expect budgets to remain flat and 25% expect further decreases.
- Over 60% say their companies take more sustainability actions than they communicate.
- 54% of companies have adjusted or rescoped sustainability goals in the past 12–18 months, with more companies increasing ambition (19%) than reducing it (13%).
- Human rights efforts are narrowing toward direct operations: management of Tier 2+ supply chain impacts fell by 13 percentage points to 33% since 2017, while own operations remain widespread (79%).
- Only one in three respondent companies have formal governance in place to manage environmental and social impacts of AI.
- More than half (56%) of respondents expect corporate sustainability to be focused on delivering fewer, clearer priorities over the next five years.
The research findings are based on an online survey conducted between April and May 2026 among 124 sustainability professionals working at companies with revenues above US$1 billion.
