ESG

Background

As successful leaders of corporate conglomerates, you’ve taken care of what matters to your bottom line: keeping costs down and profits up. There’s been certain aspects of your business which, while not pleasant, have always managed to work themselves out: pollution, water consumption, worker safety, and corruption. But recently, there are two important groups who have taken a greater interest in these Environmental, Social, and Governance matters (that is, “ESG”). Your stockholders are demanding more transparency, arguing these factors long swept under the rug actually make a difference to business success. And government regulators are considering setting limits to hold companies accountable for the public good.

As a gesture of goodwill, you are convening with other companies to establish permissible limits on these topics. While setting limits high enough for all of you to continue business as usual might be nice, there are two reasons to keep the limits lower. First, if you decide on a limit that you meet but your competitor does not, that puts you at an advantage. Second, if you propose limits that do not seem credible, you will lose reputation and business with the public.

Game Overview

There are four ESG issues that your companies will be judged on: carbon emissions, water consumption, worker safety, and corruption. Each round, the players have opportunities to improve the industries they own; then they collectively decide the maximum value allowable for an ESG issue; and lastly, they earn income from their companies (and pay fines if they exceed any limits). After four rounds, the player with the most money wins.

Features

32 diverse industries to add to your conglomerate

4 ESG issues to manage

19 ways to improve your industries