The Say Do Gap in Corporate Sustainability: What Changed Since 2023
- The number of companies with validated science-based climate targets has roughly doubled since this article was first written, from around 5,300 in 2023 to more than 10,000 by January 2026, with Asia now a major driver of that growth.
- The say-do gap has not closed in the meantime. A 2025 global survey of nearly 1,500 senior executives found 59% still admit to overstating or inaccurately representing their organisation’s sustainability activities, essentially unchanged from 58% in 2022.
- Singapore has taken a different approach to closing that gap: mandatory Scope 1 and Scope 2 climate disclosure for SGX-listed issuers from FY2025, with Scope 3 following for Straits Times Index constituents from 2026, turning intention into a reporting obligation rather than a voluntary claim.
- Research on human motivation still points to the same likely answer this article originally proposed: sustainability sticks when it connects to a sense of efficacy, self-identity, and belonging, the same psychological territory resilience work operates in.
Sustainability commitments have grown faster in the past three years than in the previous decade. What has not grown at the same pace is the evidence that commitments are translating into action. That gap, and what might actually close it, is worth revisiting now that the data has moved on considerably.
Sustainability Commitments Have Exploded Since 2023
When this article was first published, roughly 5,300 companies had submitted net zero targets to the Science Based Targets initiative. By January 2026, that number had crossed 10,000, after more than 2,800 new companies were validated in 2025 alone, a 40% increase in a single year. Validated companies now represent more than 40% of global market capitalisation, and the organisations involved span every major sector and region.
Notably, Asia has become a significant driver of this growth, not simply a region catching up to targets set elsewhere. That regional shift matters for how this story gets told. Sustainability commitment is no longer a primarily Western corporate phenomenon reluctantly adopted elsewhere. It is a genuinely global movement, with Asia increasingly setting its own pace.
But the Say-Do Gap Has Not Closed
The uncomfortable finding this article originally raised still holds. Researchers have described companies’ underwhelming follow-through on the UN Sustainable Development Goals as looking more like SDG washing than genuine engagement. The most recent data on corporate self-awareness of this problem tells the same story: a 2025 global survey of nearly 1,500 senior executives across 14 markets, sponsored by Google Cloud and conducted by Harris Poll, found 59% admit their organisation overstates or inaccurately represents its sustainability activities, essentially unchanged from the 58% figure recorded back in 2022. Three years of rapid growth in formal climate commitments has not moved this number.
There is a more nuanced pattern underneath that headline figure, though. Separate tracking of actual greenwashing incidents found the overall number of flagged cases fell 12% between mid-2023 and mid-2024, the first decline in six years, even as high-severity cases rose 30% in the same period. Regulation appears to be part of the explanation: the EU’s Green Claims Directive has pushed some companies to make fewer, more careful claims, while the claims that do slip through scrutiny tend to be more serious. Fewer companies are getting caught making small, careless claims. The remaining problem has become more concentrated and harder to ignore.
Singapore’s Answer: Make the Gap Impossible to Hide
Singapore has taken a structurally different approach to this problem than voluntary target-setting alone. From financial year 2025, every SGX-listed issuer must report Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions, with Straits Times Index constituents adding Scope 3 disclosure from 2026 and the wider market following in phases through 2030. This does not eliminate the say-do gap by itself, but it changes its economics considerably: overstating sustainability performance in a mandatory, audited disclosure carries materially higher risk than overstating it in a voluntary marketing claim. Where the earlier data in this article shows commitment and self-reported action drifting apart, a mandatory reporting regime is a direct attempt to force them back together.
Is Resilience Still the Key?
This article originally proposed that resilience might be part of what closes the say-do gap, drawing on CB Bhattacharya’s research that sustainability advances through three basic human motivations: efficacy (a genuine belief that one’s actions matter), self-identity (seeing sustainable behaviour as consistent with who someone believes they are), and belonging (feeling part of a group that shares the same commitment). That psychological account has not been superseded by newer research. If anything, the persistence of the say-do gap despite three years of accelerating formal commitments strengthens the case for it: setting a target is a top-down, structural act. Closing the gap between that target and daily behaviour is a psychological and cultural one, which is exactly the territory resilience work operates in.
A workforce running on depleted emotional and cognitive reserves is poorly positioned to sustain the kind of consistent, values-aligned daily behaviour that closes a say-do gap, regardless of how ambitious the target on the wall is. This is the connective thread between resilient individuals, a resilient organisational culture, and a genuinely sustainable business, not three separate initiatives competing for the same budget, but one underlying capacity expressed at different scales.
What Happened to Our Original Research
This article originally invited readers to contribute to a Master’s thesis research project with Éric Bolliger at the Enterprise for Society Center (E4S) in Lausanne, a joint initiative of EPFL, the University of Lausanne, and IMD, examining the connection between resilience and sustainability efforts inside organisations. That survey window has closed. We have not been able to confirm publicly whether the special report originally planned for that period was released, so we are not restating specific findings from it here rather than risk overstating what that research concluded. If you are looking for our current data on the relationship between resilience and organisational performance, our 2025 Global Resilience Report, drawn from more than 8,400 professionals across 70 countries, is the most current published source.
Before your next sustainability review, ask:
- Could our own sustainability claims withstand the kind of scrutiny mandatory disclosure now requires of SGX-listed companies?
- Do our people have the emotional and cognitive capacity to sustain daily values-aligned behaviour, or only the target on the wall?
- Are we treating sustainability, culture, and resilience as one connected capacity, or as three competing budget lines?
Commitments have roughly doubled since 2023. The gap between commitment and action has not closed by nearly as much. Mandatory disclosure can force the numbers into the open. Only genuine organisational and individual resilience can close the distance between what a target says and what people actually do every day.
B Corp Just Changed Its Rules. Here Is What That Means for Asia
- B Lab launched the biggest overhaul of the B Corp standards since the certification began, replacing the old 80-point self-assessed score with mandatory requirements across seven Impact Topics, verified by independent third-party auditors.
- Every existing B Corp, Resilience Institute included, must recertify against the new standards on a five-year cycle by September 2026, with rising requirements at Year 3 and Year 5, not just at the point of certification.
- Singapore’s B Corp community grew from 2 companies in 2015 to 33 by last count, and Hong Kong is targeting 100 by the end of 2026, a genuine regional movement rather than an imported Western trend.
- B Corp status is increasingly a factor in Singapore MNC vendor selection, sitting alongside data security certifications like ISO 27001 as a procurement signal, particularly since SGX’s mandatory climate disclosure rules took effect.
Resilience Institute became a Certified B Corporation in early 2025. Since then, the certification itself has changed more than it has in its entire prior history. If you evaluated us as a B Corp back then and have not looked again since, the standard we are now held to is a different, and considerably tougher, one.
What Actually Changed
On 8 April 2025, B Lab retired the points-based B Impact Assessment that had defined B Corp certification since it began. Under the old system, a company needed 80 out of 200 points across five impact areas, and a strong score in one area could offset a weak one elsewhere. Critics, and some departing B Corps, argued this let companies optimise for the scorecard rather than for genuine impact.
The new standards remove that loophole entirely. Companies must now meet specific, non-negotiable requirements across seven Impact Topics, including Climate Action, Human Rights, and Fair Work, with no ability to average out a weak area against a strong one. Certification starts with baseline “Year 0” requirements, then steps up at Year 3 and Year 5 of a five-year cycle, so continuous improvement is now built into the certification itself rather than assumed. Assessments are also independently verified by third-party auditors under ISO 17021-1 standards, replacing the self-assessment model. Every existing B Corp must recertify under these standards, with recertification for most companies due by September 2026.
Why This Is an Asia Story, Not Just a Global One
B Corp is often discussed as a Western sustainability trend that eventually reaches Asia. The actual growth numbers tell a different story. Singapore had just 2 certified B Corps in 2015. By 2022 that had grown to 24, and by last count it stood at 33. Hong Kong went from a single B Corp in 2016 to 25 by 2023, and the local B Corp community there is targeting 100 by the end of 2026. This is not a handful of boutique brands. Publicly listed companies across the region, including a digital bank in Taiwan and a real estate developer in Singapore, now hold the certification alongside multinationals.
The timing matters for Singapore specifically. SGX now requires mandatory Scope 1 and Scope 2 climate disclosure from listed issuers, with Scope 3 following for Straits Times Index constituents from 2026. Procurement teams inside those listed companies, and the multinationals that supply or serve them, are under real pressure to show verified evidence for their own sustainability claims, not just a statement of intent. A vendor holding a rigorously audited certification is a more useful answer to that pressure than a vendor without one.
What B Corp Actually Verifies
B Corp certification is not a marketing badge a company applies for and receives. Under the new standards especially, it is an audited claim about how a business actually operates, its governance structure, how it treats its workers, its environmental footprint, and its accountability to stakeholders beyond shareholders, not just what it says about those things in a sustainability report.
Benoit Greindl, Resilience Institute’s CEO, described the original certification as “a significant stride in our journey. It’s a testament to our values and a reinforcement of our commitment to ethical practices in every facet of our operations.” That commitment now carries a higher bar to clear. Resilience Institute holds B Corp certification alongside ISO 27001 information security certification, a combination the organisation’s own market positioning describes as rare in the corporate training and leadership development space, and increasingly material in enterprise ESG procurement criteria across Asia.
What This Means If You Are Evaluating an L&D Vendor
Most corporate wellbeing and leadership development providers cannot show independently audited evidence for their own governance and impact claims. Under B Lab’s new standards, a current B Corp certification is a genuinely stronger signal than it was even a year ago, precisely because the loophole that let companies coast on a strong score in one area has been closed.
If you are shortlisting vendors and ESG credentials sit on your evaluation criteria, it is worth asking any B Corp supplier a direct question: are they certified under the pre-2025 points system, or have they recertified under B Lab’s new standards? The answer tells you whether the credential reflects a one-time score from several years ago or an audited, continuously improving standard.
Before your next vendor procurement round, ask:
- Does our vendor evaluation checklist ask for evidence behind ESG claims, or just for the claims themselves?
- If a supplier holds a certification, do we know whether it is current under today’s standards?
- Are our own sustainability claims backed by anything a third-party auditor could verify?
A certification earned once and never revisited is a marketing asset. A certification that requires recertification, rising standards, and independent audits every few years is closer to an operating discipline. B Lab’s 2025 overhaul pushed B Corp firmly into the second category, and Asia’s procurement teams are starting to notice the difference.