More than half of executives surveyed in Thailand admitted their organisations have overstated or inaccurately represented the impact of their sustainability initiatives, which could potentially stall progress on sustainability, according to a recent report.
A report by Google Cloud found corporate greenwashing is a prevalent concern among local executives, with 83% of them believing greenwashing is accidental when companies cannot effectively measure results or progress, which leads to overstatement of sustainability efforts.
Greenwashing, also called green sheen, is a form of advertising or marketing meant to persuade the public that an organisation's products, goals and policies are environmentally friendly.
"Executives point to the lack of leadership alignment and the macroeconomic environment as the reasons for a regression in their organisations' sustainability efforts. They are under pressure to prioritise driving revenue and optimising client relationships," said April Srivikorn, country manager at Google Cloud.
According to the report, 76% of respondents are being challenged with achieving progress on their companies' sustainability goals while operating on lower budgets than before the pandemic amid uncertain economic conditions.
Meanwhile, 59% of Thai respondents who rank environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts as their No.1 organisational priority said their company leadership is not fully aligned on sustainability-related decisions.
"Leadership alignment, advanced technology tools and agile team structures are needed to embed sustainability into a company's operations and unblock progress," noted the report, which surveyed 1,476 executives across 16 markets, including four in Asia: Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.
Thai executives (63%) had the highest percentage out of all the markets surveyed in terms of already having a measurement programme for their sustainability efforts in place, compared with 37% of global respondents.
More than 90% of respondents in Thailand believe having a dedicated sustainability team would be most effective if their companies adopted a cross-functional approach, with 61% seeking relevant knowledge and 45% accessing the right talent to advance their companies' sustainability efforts.
"Companies can mobilise existing talent to design and operationalise technology- and sustainability-related initiatives, leveraging the lateral and transferable skills that these employees already possess in areas like cloud architecture, data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning," said Ms April.
In addition, more than 80% of Thai respondents said customers are more likely to engage and conduct business with sustainable brands, and delaying or scaling back on sustainability goals has negative impacts on company value.
"Close to four in 10 local consumers have declared their willingness to pay more for a sustainable product or service," she said.
"There can be measurable value and return on investment from embedding sustainability into a firm's operations and business model."