Contracts for Sustainability: Assessment Scorecard

Companies can approach sustainable contracting in many ways.This scorecard helps you assess how your company’s contracts currently address sustainability.

The scorecard introduces four levels: inactive, reactive, proactive and transformative. These levels reflect a shift from minimal or fragmented approaches toward more coordinated, operational and impact-oriented use of contracts.

The model builds on and adapts Robert Bird’s work on legal strategy, translating it into the context of contracts and sustainability. Performance is assessed across five dimensions: organisational attitudes, contractual content, contract design, monitoring and implementation, and impact. Your company may be at different levels across different dimensions.

DIMENSION	PRACTICES (APPROACH)
	1. Inactive	2. Reactive	3. Proactive	4. Transformative
A. Organisational attitudes	No awareness “None of this concerns us.”	Minimum compliance Doing only what is required	Sustainability integrated into management systems	Strategic lever for systemic change
B. Contractual elements: What does the contract say?	No sustainability substance – or it is ignored	Copy-pasted Generic Pure tick-box No fine-tuning	Concrete, tailored clauses Monitoring requirements	Innovative, incentivising, long-term targets Co-creation Guiding the entire value chain.
C. Contract design: How does the contract say it?	“Anything goes” Jargon Terrible document design	Little or no effort on language and design	Some effort on language and design	Plain language Visualizations Modern document design (information architecture, structure, presentation)
D. Monitoring and implementation	No monitoring	Occasional, usually only under external pressure	Regular audits, reporting and collaboration	Data-driven, continuous and co-development oriented
E. Impact	No impact	Only minimum legally required impact	Business and sustainability goals aligned	Contracts used actively for systemic impact

Inactive level

At this level, sustainability is absent from contracts. This approach no longer meets CSDDD and other due diligence requirements and may expose your company to:

• Regulatory sanctions and administrative penalties
• Reputational damage
• Exclusion from public procurement
• Loss of business from customers with their own due diligence obligations

Reactive level

Sustainability appears mainly as minimum compliance. Generic, copy-pasted clauses may not meet the requirement for adequate due diligence measures that are tailored to your operational context and specific risks.

Proactive level

At this level, contracts reflect your company’s human rights and environmental impact assessments and address topics such as:

• Prevention and remediation action plans
• Responsible purchasing practices
• Engagement beyond Tier 1 suppliers
• Verification and monitoring mechanisms

Transformative level

Contracts become tools for systemic change. Sustainability commitments are co-created with suppliers, expressed in plain language, supported by modern document design, and monitored continuously. The focus shifts from compliance to long-term impact.