We are delighted to publish our second annual State of Sustainability-report, with the ambition to get a detailed overview of how Norwegian companies work with sustainability. To our knowledge, State of Sustainability is the most thorough study of its kind in Norway.
The recipients of the survey are chosen from the S-HUB contact database, and it would be fair to assume that this makes the survey skewed towards companies that might be more advanced in their sustainability work than the general population. With that said, we still think we have good reason to celebrate some of this year’s findings. The field of sustainable business is Norway is fast catching pace, and almost 4 out of 5 companies in our survey have sustainability strategies and reporting in place – with executive management as the most supportive group that champion sustainability from inside. Sustainability is now a clear strategic priority among these companies.
On the other hand, there are several reasons to worry. A majority of the companies in the study, seem to have State of Sustainability Norway in 2019: Reason to celebrate and worry an inflated view of their sustainability efforts and might be in need of a reality check when it comes to their actual sustainability performance. The brutal reality is pointing towards a high degree of corporate immaturity, a clear lack of formal competence, a narrow-minded and old-fashioned interpretation of sustainable business, and an overly positive bias in understanding the company’s actual impact. Some few and experienced companies and people are leading the way. The majority of companies and people have great strategic intentions, but no background in sustainability, they have recently started and seems to be struggling their way forward while trying to define the field of sustainable business in Norway. The room for improvement is substantial, and actions need to follow good intentions. 
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About this report
The report was created in close partnership with leading S-HUB member, Leidar Norway AS. In addition, a Master’s Thesis at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) has been written based on the survey’s results, which focuses specifically on the role of sustainability workers, titled “The Self-Efficacy of Sustainability Managers: Testing a Model of Antecedents and Consequences”.
For the purpose of this study, the word sustainability is used in a broad and general sense, largely based on the definition of sustainable development from the 1987 Brundtland report: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs”.
The findings in this report are from a survey with 101 questions, assessing the practices and challenges in sustainability work. 173 respondents completed the survey from October to November in 2018. The respondents either worked specifically with sustainability or with sustainability as a part of their overall job description. The respondents were pre-selected based on last year’s survey and the Sustainability Hub network. This report may therefore be biased to include more companies actively working with sustainability than are proportionally present in the Norwegian business landscape. The majority of the respondents are also in leadership positions.
The respondents in the survey are from a varied range of industries with close proximity to the composition of industries in Norway, albeit a gap in services and of the industries marked as “other” by respondents and therefore not categorized. 3,5% said they worked in primary industries (compared to 2% on a national basis), 24,9% in commodities (compared to 20% nationally), 59,5% from services (compared to 78% nationally) and 12,1% in uncategorized industries.
For the purpose of this study, the word sustainability is used in a broad and general sense, largely based on the definition of sustainable development from the 1987 Brundtland report: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs”.
The findings in this report are from a survey with 101 questions, assessing the practices and challenges in sustainability work. 173 respondents completed the survey from October to November in 2018. The respondents either worked specifically with sustainability or with sustainability as a part of their overall job description. The respondents were pre-selected based on last year’s survey and the Sustainability Hub network. This report may therefore be biased to include more companies actively working with sustainability than are proportionally present in the Norwegian business landscape. The majority of the respondents are also in leadership positions.
The respondents in the survey are from a varied range of industries with close proximity to the composition of industries in Norway, albeit a gap in services and of the industries marked as “other” by respondents and therefore not categorized. 3,5% said they worked in primary industries (compared to 2% on a national basis), 24,9% in commodities (compared to 20% nationally), 59,5% from services (compared to 78% nationally) and 12,1% in uncategorized industries.