Managing opportunities and risks with foresight

The economy is currently being fundamentally changed by a multitude of developments. Under the term ESG (Environment, Social, Governance), companies, institutions and society summarise a broad spectrum of this change towards a more sustainable and socially just future. Our study "Steering Sustainably" examined how companies from four industries (automotive, manufacturing, infrastructure, and transport and logistics) are preparing for change based on self-assessments.

Even though sustainability and social justice issues are already widely implemented and regulation is becoming more comprehensive, ESG issues still offer a lot of potential for the automotive industry. Nevertheless, only 40 per cent of respondents describe their company's level of ambition regarding critical ESG issues as proactive and proactively manage opportunities and risks to gain competitive advantage. There is also room for improvement in embedding ESG accountability at the top management level: Only half of the companies surveyed state that sustainability-relevant topics are located at the C-level and board level in their company.

The implementation of ESG in companies in the automotive industry is often hampered by a lack of KPIs for managing sustainability aspects: only 46 percent of the companies surveyed have suitable KPIs for managing environmental issues, and to an even lesser extent there is a coordinated set of KPIs for managing governance or social aspects.