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Sustainability

The 8 Responsibilities of Chief Sustainability Officers

In recent years, an increasing number of companies have appointed a Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO). But like all new roles in corporations, the officer’s actual responsibilities and tasks are still quite vague. So, let’s clear the fog… because clarity matters.

Sustainability is defining the age in which we live. The number of companies appointing a chief sustainability officer (CSO) is rising rapidly. However, we still see a lack of clarity about a CSO’s tasks and accountabilities. The result is fragmented ownership, internal competition for visibility and resources, and inefficiency with a great deal of overlap and duplication. The confusion is not surprising. While other functions and roles, such as the CFO or CMO, are well established, the CSO role was virtually unheard of until recently.

Capgemini Invent’s Management Lab has conducted extensive research coupled with direct experience with numerous clients to get more clarity on the CSO’s responsibilities. Their work was recently published in an article in the Harvard Business Review: The 8 Responsibilities of Chief Sustainability Officers.

Plotting the CSO’s eight tasks — and the amount of effort spent on each — on a spider graph can help executives figure out the actual coverage of responsibilities, where the current focus is, where there may be a need to increase efforts, where gaps are and a desired future positioning (see in the picture below an example of spider graph).

For more information on the adopted methodology and use cases, we invite you to read our article: The 8 Responsibilities of Chief Sustainability Officers. If you have any questions or are interested in how we can support you in adopting this methodology for your company, please reach out to us via the form below.

Meet our experts

Elisa Farri

Vice president, The Management Lab, Capgemini Invent
Included in the list of management thinkers to watch by Thinkers50, Elisa is an expert on management at the intersection of academia and business. Through exploratory research, thought leadership, and academic collaborations, Elisa bridges the latest management frameworks into practice. A frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Elisa has extensive experience developing and delivering executive training at leading organizations globally.

Paolo Cervini

Vice President | Co-lead of The Management Lab by Capgemini Invent

Gabriele Rosani

Director, The Management Lab, Capgemini Invent
Esteemed author and frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Gabriele has been researching, designing, and testing new management frameworks and tools for over a decade. Gabriele works at the intersection of strategy, innovation, and sustainability, bringing new management practices to the real world of business for clients. An experienced adviser to Fortune 500 companies, Gabriele previously worked at the European Centre for Strategic Innovation where he discovered his passion for shaping the new frontier of management.