Driving Sustainability for High Performance in the Chemical Industry

Accenture (8/19, Simons and Abood) – Accenture collaborated with the American Chemistry Council (ACC) to conduct an online survey of 27 ACC members on the topic of sustainability…[T]his white paper addresses three main points; (1) sustainability’s value proposition for chemical companies, (2) accomplishments and current initiatives in sustainability and (3) how companies monitor and drive progress—with stakeholders, customers, employees and partnerships.

Pursuing sustainability is not only admirable but advantageous; it encourages behaviors consistent with the five dimensions Accenture associates with high-performance businesses…The five key dimensions are: growth, measured by revenue expansion; profitability, measured by the spread between the return on invested capital and the cost of capital; positioning for the future, measured by the portion of share price that cannot be explained by current earnings (what Accenture calls “future value”) and by the portion of the industry total that each company’s future value represents; longevity, measured by the duration of superior performance in total returns to shareholders; and consistency, measured by the percentage of time that a company’s performance has been greater than median performance in terms of profitability, growth and positioning for the future.