Utilising the power of sustainability disclosures and three-dimensional resilience

Sustainability reporting can be a powerful driver of change when used as a strategic tool. One of its most valuable but often overlooked opportunities is its potential to strengthen organisational resilience. However, resilience must be correctly understood as more than a system’s ability to resist shocks to realise its full potential.

A narrow focus in sustaining business as usual risks perpetuating failing systems. By applying the concept of resilience to actions driven by sustainability disclosure, organisations can move from passive reporting to change implementation that builds resilience over time. However, to unlock its full potential, resilience must be understood as three-dimensional, and reporting should be viewed as more than a compliance exercise.

Thinking beyond compliance

When disclosures are utilised only for compliance, organisations risk missing opportunities to use them to build resilience. Frameworks such as CSRD, TCFD, ISSB, and GRI are designed to improve transparency and comparability, helping stakeholders understand how operations are exposed to sustainability-related risks and their impacts on people and the planet. While the primary function of these frameworks is reporting, their strategic value increases significantly when viewed through the lens of three-dimensional resilience.

Disclosure insights paired with three-dimensional resilience, can empower organisations to transform sustainability reports into tools for internal alignment, systems thinking, and long-term risk awareness. Additionally, disclosure preparation typically requires organisations to develop governance structures, formalise processes, and improve data quality. Although initially driven by external requirements, these changes can often support internal improvements that strengthen organisational resilience.

Understanding resilience as three-dimensional

To translate disclosure insights into resilience that promotes sustainable development, attention must be paid to how resilience is conceptualised. Resilience is often defined as the ability to maintain or return to a previous state and withstand disruption, thus enabling business as usual. This framing can unintentionally reinforce failing systems. A more complete definition reimagines resilience as three-dimensional. It involves absorbing disruption, driving incremental adaptations over time, and ultimately transforming an organisation’s long-term viability.

Disclosures can play a key role in building each dimension. By exposing material risks and performance gaps and clarifying stakeholder priorities, reporting can enable organisations to identify vulnerabilities and how they can respond and evolve. In this scenario, sustainability disclosure becomes a foundation of resilience’s three dimensions, offering insight that informs immediate actions and long-term strategy.

Dimension 1: Absorptive capacity

In the short term, meeting reporting expectations helps organisations manage regulatory pressure, investor scrutiny, and stakeholder concerns. This protects reputation, identifies key risks to be tackled, and forms the essential first step in building absorptive capacity.

Dimension 2: Adaptive capacity

The reporting process often prompts deeper engagement with risk, strategy, and operations as it matures. Materiality assessments, climate scenario analysis, and value chain reviews can surface previously fragmented or overlooked issues. As actions on these insights incrementally accumulate, they support adaptive capacity. This enables organisations to respond proactively to evolving conditions rather than react to disruption.

Dimension 3: Transformative capacity

Disclosures highlighting systemic risks or performance gaps often reveal the need for shifts in business models, governance, or long-term investment priorities. The incremental shifts promoted by dimensions 1 and 2 can lay the foundation for more significant transformation aligned to accommodate such shifts. When utilised in this manner, disclosure does not just describe resilience; it can help deliver it across different timescales.

Embedding resilience through disclosure

Resilience and reporting are powerful tools whose value is often underutilised. By applying the concept of three-dimensional resilience to interpret sustainability disclosures, organisations can utilise reporting as a tool for sustainable development, not just compliance. This facilitates deliberate action supporting long-term value and systems change.

This approach connects insight with strategy. It allows organisations to clarify what should be protected, what needs to evolve, and where transformation is essential. Rather than simply documenting past performance, disclosure becomes an active part of how businesses navigate complexity, build capacity, and shape a more resilient and sustainable future.