Board of Directors Resource Center
These resources are designed to enable corporate directors to steer their companies toward a more resilient, sustainable, and inclusive future.
State Street Resources
These resources from State Street provide guidance to boards on how they can effectively advance ESG issues within their companies.
Read More about our Assest Stewardship program.
Academic Resources
February 10, 2021 — The competitive landscape in nearly every sector is changing rapidly. This paper from the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance provides guidance for boards seeking to remain relevant and support a mission while making changes that reflect shifts in society, including specific, concrete steps to becoming such a “future-ready board.”
June 29, 2018 — In light of evolving — and sometimes actively debated — perspectives on the role of public companies with respect to sustainability, corporate social responsibility and other ESG, this paper from the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance provides a high-level overview of how boards of directors and senior management teams may wish to approach these issues.
September 2020 — A clear and compelling mission should be at the heart of every company’s efforts to enhance its positive impacts on the environment and society. The Harvard Business Review describes a framework called SCORE to help boards deliver on purpose through five actions — simplify, connect, own, reward, and exemplify — that can help articulate and foster a firm’s durable value proposition and its drivers.
Advocate Resources
March 2021 — Developed in 2020 with 50 signatories, investor network experts and leading climate research and data NGOs, this framework will be used to assess companies’ alignment with ten indicators that together reflect the key commitment priorities of the Climate Action 100+ Initiative. All company specific data is based on companies’ publicly disclosed information, i.e., annual reports, financial filings, CDP disclosures, etc.
Running the Risk: How Corporate Boards Can Oversee Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Issues
November 2019 — The leading nonprofit Ceres provides guidance to corporate boards on how they can effectively oversee ESG, including questions for directors to ask management throughout the risk identification, prioritization and mitigation processes, as well as concrete recommendations to improve a company’s resilience.
September 19, 2019 — These climate governance principles developed by the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with PricewaterhouseCoopers, are designed to raise awareness and promote board ownership of this topic, increase board-level understanding, and enhance climate competence to enable informed investment decision-making, effective oversight of enterprise and systemic risk, as well as long-term strategic planning consistent with a zero-carbon economic system.
May 2018 — Coauthored by Ceres and The B Team, this paper is designed to help corporate directors understand why climate change is a board-relevant issue, when climate change should fall within their mandate, and how they can oversee climate-related risks and opportunities.
June 15, 2017 — The report from the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures provides recommendations for disclosing clear, comparable, and consistent information about the risks and opportunities presented by climate change, the adoption of which will ensure that the effects of climate change become routinely considered in business and investment decisions.
October 2015 — This Ceres report outlining key strategies for boards to take a leading role in championing sustainability across their entire business enterprise by developing robust sustainability oversight.