The Knowledgebase

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Bringing purpose to life

Additional resources

Blueprint content:

External content:

Links to books & other external resources

On the metrics landscape:

The need for standards in non-financial reporting: an interview with Robert Eccles – in this article Prof. Robert Eccles, one of the world’s foremost experts in the field of sustainability and integrated reporting, is discusses the history of non-financial reporting and important developments in this space.

A new framework for valuing human capital | World Economic Forum – this paper explores how companies might value the investments they make in their  people.

Global Business Leaders Support ESG Convergence by Committing to Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics > Press releases | World Economic Forum – January 2021 – a growing coalition of over 60 top business leaders across industries announced their commitment to the Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics, a set of environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics and disclosures released by the World Economic Forum and its International Business Council (IBC) in September 2020, that measure the long-term enterprise value creation for all stakeholders.

Measuring Purpose: An Integrated Framework – this paper advocates a three-stage process to seeking to measure purpose and gives a useful summary of the measurement initiatives in relation to these three stages.

On the limitations of and potential unintended consequences of metrics:

Don’t let metrics undermine your business’ – this HBR article highlights some of the unintended consequences of measures and metrics in particular ‘surrogation’ and how to manage these.

Ending the Tyranny of the Measurable | by Itamar Goldminz | The Ready | Medium – this article highlights some of the potential pitfalls and watch outs when looking at measures and metrics

HBR: Overselling Sustainability Reporting, May-June 2021 Issue – this HBR article asserts that the increased focus on reporting is not a proxy for progress and discusses what we need to focus on to help make progress.

Financial Targets Don’t Motivate Employees – this article discusses the unintended consequences of financial incentives.

Corporate culture – grasping the ungraspable | FCA Insight – this article outlines some of the challenges in seeking to use metrics to address behaviour and how seeking to assess rather than measure culture can help.

Two key problems will keep sustainability reporting from changing the world Dan Osusky, Head of standards and insights, B Lab – discusses how sustainability reporting developments share a common recognition: that higher quality, more efficient, and more widespread sustainability reporting standards for businesses are necessary. However the downside is that all of this emphasis on reporting might divert attention from other, perhaps more difficult but also more impactful changes that need to be made.

Examples of different approaches to measuring culture:

The UK Banking Standards Board: An outcome-based approach to assessing organisational culture – Banking Standards Board – the BSB is undertaking a new approach within the UK banking sector to help firms understand and manage their culture, providing boards with objective evidence, support and challenge on issues relating to culture, behaviour and competence, and facilitating cross-firm working to identify good practice. It sets out to measure not culture per se (which will differ across firms), but rather the outcomes generated by that culture. The results allow firms to gauge where they are performing well and where progress needs to be made, and to see this across different parts of their organisation, contrasting against their peers and over time [report only available to subscribers].

Culture | The Investment Association (theia.org)– have developed a non-prescriptive practical toolkit, informed (amongst other things) by recent insights, trends and real-life case studies – from which firms can draw, informing their own approach to culture change [some parts of the toolkit are only available to members].

Contexis Index – building on the work of academics Victoria Hurth and Jaideep Prabhu Contexis have sought to develop an approach that seeks to measure the effectiveness of purpose in an organisation, through how people in the organisation think and behave.