What do ESG, net-zero, CSR, and corporate purpose have in common?
Ten years ago, in the wake of the Paris Climate Agreement, businesses began re-thinking their role in society and increased attention to social and environmental sustainability. CEOs set ambitious climate targets, investors began asking questions about environmental performance, firms invested heavily in green innovation, and developed sustainability-focused departments in the organisation. Sustainable management had become not just responsible but expected.
Today, the winds have changed. Geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty, and societal polarisation have triggered a backlash. Firms are pulling away from net-zero commitments, sustainability is increasingly siloed within organisations, and ESG has become politically contested in some contexts.
For example, large energy companies including BP and Shell have adjusted their energy transition strategies, divested from Renewable Energy, and lowered their emission reduction goals. Similarly, Unilever, long seen as a flagship of purpose-driven business, has faced investor criticism over its sustainability strategy, alongside scrutiny of whether purpose-led positioning had come at the expense of growth.
We have seen several ‘hot takes’ on this backlash. At first glance, this can feel like a reversal. But it may better be understood as a recalibration of the course.
This backlash is not simply ideological – it reflects a mismatch between the speed at which sustainability expectations scaled and the slower pace at which organisations can operationalise them. The problem is not that sustainability has failed. The problem is that businesses have not been able to keep up with the work that is needed to meet their public commitments.
This pattern of rise and fall is not unusual. There have been earlier studies of management fads, and new technologies or emerging markets often follow what the consultancy company Gartner Inc. describes as the Hype Cycle; where inflated expectations are followed by disillusionment before a phase of recovery.
Drawing on several years of research on corporate purpose at King’s Business School and a more recent focus on the sustainability backlash, our ongoing research suggests that this pattern is widely experienced by practitioners. Many experience the current moment not as endpoint, but as a reset.
The question is therefore not whether sustainability will disappear, but how organisations can refocus and start to deliver the benefits to society and the environment.
What made sustainability vulnerable to hype?
There are three factors which make technologies – or in this case, a management idea – vulnerable to hype (e.g. Logue & Grimes, 2022). All three of these have been building over the last few years to create instability about the idea of sustainable business.
Vague definitions
One reason sustainability and corporate purpose remain vulnerable is their lack of stable definition. Unlike established business functions as HR or accounting, sustainability is still evolving and highly context specific. Sustainability department operate differently across organisations and range from compliance to communications. This ambiguity can weaken confidence, especially when concepts such as sustainability are challenged.
Over-expectations
Periods of high attention tend to come with inflated promises. Sustainability has been presented not only as a solution to societal challenges, but also as a straightforward path to economic success: win-win framing that was powerful, but not always realistic.
Many firms set ambitious net-zero targets that were not backed by practical strategies or adequate resources. According to the Ernst & Young (Global Climate Action Barometer 2024), only 41% of companies have adopted a transition plan for climate change mitigation, reinforcing the broader gap between ambition and execution in corporate climate strategies. Grand ambitious led to disappointment. We are seeing firms revising or scaling back their earlier targets, which can erode trust and fuel accusations of greenwashing, even when initial intentions were good.
Media dynamics
Media and public discourse play a key role in amplifying both hype and backlash. Narratives can shift quickly, often oversimplifying complex developments. This creates volatility in how sustainability efforts are perceived, moving from enthusiasm to scepticism faster than underlying practices actually change. For instance, ESG has become increasingly politicised, particularly in the United States, where investment strategies have faced regulatory and political pushback.
How do senior managers respond to a backlash?
For the last year, we’ve been working with a group of senior professionals who are dealing with the backlash against corporate purpose. We notice that their organisations are not simply reducing ambition or increasing communication control. Instead, they are adjusting how legitimacy is built under scrutiny to maintain sustainability and purpose. In our engagement with these people, three main patterns stand out:
Perspective-taking: engaging with critique
A first step is reflection: what went wrong, and what was overlooked?
Rather than treating backlash as external noise, some professionals are taking critics more seriously and engage seriously with critics and opposing views. Backlash is often fuelled by polarisation; reducing this gap requires understanding, not dismissal.
Balancing voice: reducing noise, not ambition
A second pattern is a recalibration of communication within organisations.
In response to criticism, some professionals respond with silence. While silence can feel safe, it can have drastic effects on ambition – similar to the concept of quiet quitting. Balancing the narrative is more sustainable approach. This means maintaining a clear stance, while avoiding overstatement. It is less about defending grand promises, and more about communicating realistic progress.
Cross-industry collaboration: confidence around shared narratives
Corporate purpose is typically developed within individual organisations, shaped by specific strategies and cultures. This leads to fragmentation and isolation of sustainability roles.
Cross-industry collaboration plays an important role in strengthening definitions and building confidence. It helps organisations to broaden perspectives, test assumptions and develop shared understandings. In a context of backlash, this shared sense-making becomes particularly important for building credibility and coherent definitions.
Towards a steady course
Sustainability-driven management concepts are not disappearing; they are being recalibrated. What we are witnessing is not the end of sustainability, but a transition: from hype to a more grounded, integrated, and realistic phase. The challenge ahead is not whether organisations should pursue sustainability, but how they can do so with clarity, credibility, and resilience - staying on course even when the winds change.