By Smitha Shetty
The role of chief sustainability officer (CSO) is gradually disappearing from corporate organisation hierarchies. That’s the sense one gets while going through the recent series of news reports on companies phasing out CSO roles. Was ESG a boom-time indulgence? Are the sustainability roles on the chopping block due to budgetary constraints, geopolitical uncertainties, market volatility or just ESG pushback? The fact of the matter is that sustainability roles are not being abandoned. In fact, these are being redefined and realigned. And how well organisations manage that realignment will determine whether they are able to build genuine operational resilience.
A Role on the Rise
The reported deviation from sustainability commitments is not the reality. Hiring for heads of sustainability remains robust, and spending on sustainability initiatives continues to grow. What is gradually evolving is governance architecture. Companies are syncing ESG roles into existing C-suite functions, rather than maintaining it as a standalone pillar. This does not necessarily indicate weakening of the role. Climate risk is, at the end of the day, also a financial risk, and CFOs are already familiar with the reporting frameworks that demand climate disclosures. Hence, syncing sustainability with finance makes sense.
Sustainability – a collaborative authority
Here is the uncomfortable truth many sustainability leaders will identify with. In most organisations today, the sustainability head is an influencer, not a decision-maker. Budgets and vendor approvals are typically the prerogative of the CFO, COO, or procurement heads. A sustainability leader may feel the importance of adopting a particular supply chain risk management tool. However, the commercial call rests with the procurement officer whose KPIs are cost savings and vendor volume, not resilience.
This is the reason why the CSO roles require readjustment. Sustainability cannot function as a siloed department issuing mandates. It has to operate horizontally in close coordination with procurement, risk, legal, and compliance, thus translating principles into a functional framework. The organisations where sustainability has genuine collaborative authority across functions get this balance right.
Reporting Is Not Resilience
Another worrying pattern underneath the CSO conversation is that many companies have optimised for reporting rather than action. Regulatory reporting obligations such as India’s Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) for listed companies set stringent deadlines and compliance consequence for disclosure gaps. As a result, a section of companies report selectively on what looks impressive on the ESG front and remain quiet on what doesn’t. The purpose is to satisfy stakeholders and shareholders without necessarily changing underlying practice.
And, this is a resilience issue. A business that has its ESG narrative in place but lacks supply chain visibility is exposed – the moment disruption hits – to a supplier failure, a regulatory shift or a climate event. Reporting intrinsically captures what has happened. On the other hand, resilience is built on grasping, in real time, what is happening across the extended vendor network.
Supplier Risk Is A Sustainability Frontier
This is exactly where sustainability and business continuity converge. The strategy to build supply chain resilience should factor in the tools and data an organisation uses to manage its vendors. A static, plug-and-play compliance tool that doesn’t move the business toward its actual objectives is not a resilience asset. Effective supply chain risk management has to be built around the company’s specific goals. A system needs to be integrated into how vendors are selected, monitored, and developed, not to be casually added as an afterthought to comply with an audit. Organisations focussed on building resilience should opt for continuous risk intelligence. This can be achieved by mapping supply chains beyond tier-one relationships and tracking regulatory and climate exposure across geographies.
Building Resilience, Not Just Box-Ticking
So, the businesses need to ensure that the sustainability role comes with authority. Sustainability should not be treated as a parallel universe. It should carry the same impact as financial or operational ones and needs to be embedded into procurement and risk KPIs. Sustainability is not a vertical role for issuing recommendations. It has a horizontal dimension that collaborates with the procurement, risk and compliance divisions. Even supply chain risk technology should be adopted after careful evaluation of its ability to move the needle on the organisation’s actual resilience objectives. Sustainability is not a compliance box-ticking anymore.
A Fleeting Symptom
The dilution of the CSO role is a fleeting symptom. The real question facing corporate leadership is whether there is an intent to add operational power, supplier visibility, and cross-functional accountability to the role. Companies need to realise that resilience and sustainability were never separate goals to begin with. Otherwise, the next disruption will expose how much of their ESG strategy has substance, and how much of it was just reporting.
The author is Director – Centralised Global Operations at Achilles Information Limited
