Last year, when the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic was still escalating, we expected the crisis to dampen companies’ enthusiasm for investing in supply chain sustainability (SCS). Enterprises would surely divert all their attention to combating the pandemic. Remarkably, the survey results suggest that Covid-19 did not significantly slow the push to make supply chains more sustainable. More than 80% of survey respondents in this year’s report claimed the crisis had no impact or increased their firm’s commitments to SCS. Executives were undeterred by the crisis; 83% of the executives interviewed said that Covid-19 has either accelerated SCS activity or, at the very least, increased awareness and brought urgency to this growing field.
Internally, company executives emerged as critical SCS champions. Executives were the most significant source of pressure behind corporate commitments to supply chain sustainability across all issue areas. Given executives’ central role in setting and steering strategies for growth, this finding suggests that the drive toward supply chain sustainability is not a fad but rather a business trend to watch.