In the 10 to 15 years of its existence, the ‘corporate responsibility’ (CR) movement has gained considerable momentum and become increasingly mainstream – to a degree that would have been almost unthinkable in its early days. Yet the current approach may be butting up against systemic limits. While a small but growing number of bold and visionary companies have made considerable achievements, the overall corporate impact on critical sustainability issues – such as sanitation, healthcare and climate change – has been limited.

This Issue Brief assesses how CR can be scaled up to make a more substantive contribution to addressing global challenges and presents an overview of the analysis carried out in SustainAbility’s report, Gearing Up: From corporate responsibility to good governance and scalable solutions.