Boards As Stewards of Sustainability | View Across Asia & Pacific

Humanity is threatened by several existential crises—climate change, social inequality, indiscriminate use of Earth’s resources and cybercrime. While the myriad existential challenges result in increased risk for businesses, they also open up windows of opportunity. It thus makes business sense to act on sustainability.

As the senior-most representative group, boards hold implicit accountability towards enhancing value for the organisation. They are thereby responsible for addressing the needs of stakeholders, society, future generations and the environment. Yet, the board’s role in driving the sustainability agenda has traditionally been underplayed and rarely talked about.

Stewardship Asia Centre and 13 other distinguished organisations across 12 countries in the region have concluded the Asia-Pacific-wide research study titled “Boards as Stewards of Sustainability”.

Based on inputs from over 700 directors across the Asia Pacific, the study objectives were to understand the following:

Challenges boards need to deal with as they pursue the sustainability agenda.
“Active ingredients” that must be in place for boards to drive action and commitment to sustainability.
Different archetypes of boards, based on their mindset and readiness to steward sustainability.
Actions boards must initiate and mindset changes they must embrace to prepare their organisations to overcome existential challenges.

Well-Being@Work^© Index Survey

ICDM, in collaboration with O-Psych Sdn Bhd, is proud to introduce the Malaysia Well-being@Work^© (W@W) Index Survey, the first unified approach to measuring Well-being in the workplace index.

The survey will assesses the Psychosocial Risk, Psychosocial Well-being and Psychological Safety of employees. The data collected will contribute to the Malaysia Annual W@W^© Index Report, giving insights, trends & recommendations to improve well-being in the workplace for generations to come.

View More Download 2025 Index Report

2024 ASEAN Board Trends | Refocus on Board Effectiveness

The past months have been a challenging one for businesses not just across ASEAN but globally, with a harsher VUCA business landscape, the impending financial crisis and geopolitical tussles among many other disruptions. As key corporate governance leaders, boards’ primary roles are steering the corporate strategy, oversight over management, ensuring fair return for shareholders while overseeing the overall risk and opportunities and the wider stakeholders’ interests.

The 2024 ASEAN Board Trends report re-emphasizes the need for boards to take stock of their board effectiveness – looking inward before looking outwards. The responses gave rise to the alarming questions as to whether the board has the insight and foresight to assess and steer their organisation’s business model, governance, talents, dynamics, and culture to position itself for the future.

Steward Leadership 25 (SL25)

ICDM is collaborating with Stewardship Asia Centre, a non-profit organisation established by Temasek Holdings, on Steward Leadership 25 (SL25). SL25 is an annual list that celebrates stories of steward leadership excellence, where businesses across industries drive profitable growth by addressing existential challenges like climate change and social inequality.

The application for this year’s SL25 list is open from 24 October 2024 to 31 March 2025. This application cycle follows the success of last year’s run, which honoured 25 projects from 14 countries across the Asia-Pacific.

Showcase how Malaysia’s homegrown company does excellence in creating a collective better future for all!

SL25 has awarded and showcased 75 stories of impact from Asia and the Pacific over the past three years. Click here to view their stories

Participate Now

Malaysian Board And Senior Management Remuneration Practices Report

The study is an initiative by the Institute of Corporate Directors Malaysia (ICDM), in collaboration with WTW and Bursa Malaysia.

The objective of the study is to understand the current landscape of the Malaysian board and senior management remuneration policies and practices and establish benchmark data in order to recommend best practices moving forward. The report summarises the review of 193 completed survey responses and data extracted from 176 of Malaysia’s top 300 public listed companies’ (“PLC”) Corporate Governance (CG) Report and Annual Report as of 31 December 2021.

The full report will be made available to ICDM Corporate Members from Wednesday, 1 November 2023. For others who are keen to access the Full Report, you may reach out to dianaseow@icdm.com.my to find out more on ICDM Corporate Membership.