OECD Responsible Business Outlook 2026

Many large listed companies are aware of and already implementing commitments to RBC. However, reported uptake of due diligence actions for addressing impacts, especially in the supply chain, remain limited. At a time when policies and regulations to encourage and enable responsible business conduct are emerging, it will be important to further understand how implementation can best be supported and incentivised.

This includes assessing whether regulatory, supervisory or market‑based signals sufficiently encourage companies to move from commitments towards action. In this context it could be important to further investigate the relationship between companies’ material impacts and material risks to understand how this relationship affects due diligence uptake, in particular for issues where a significant materiality gap may exist.

Potential barriers and disincentives to RBC may also need to be better understood, including; lack of awareness and capacity; real or perceived risks of liability associated with risk assessment and reporting; barriers to engaging in high-risk contexts; as well technical and operational barriers and legal barriers that may hinder or directly conflict with the ability of companies or their suppliers to carry out due diligence or otherwise comply with requirements.

It is also important to ensure that remediation and meaningful stakeholder engagement are built into due diligence policies and that such policies promote engagement with suppliers to drive progressive improvement on the ground and allow for nuanced and context‑specific approaches to disengagement.

Additionally, policy and market expectations should be designed to be appropriate and proportionate to the associated risks and realities of operating environments. There is scope for governments to support companies in focussing their due diligence efforts. This can include ensuring that guidance, supervisory practice and policy design enable companies to follow this risk-based approach, based on credible prioritisation processes.

Companies need support to identify and address impacts of their supply chains upstream. The deeper segments of a company’s supply chain are often associated with more significant impacts and risks of disruption. However, businesses may struggle to carry out due diligence beyond their tier‑1 business relationships for many reasons, including lack of visibility and leverage, leading to threats to supply chain resilience overall.

Collaborative or collective action such as sustainability initiatives, industry associations, and partnerships with governments can help to address supply chain cost, visibility, access and leverage issues. As the landscape of sustainability initiatives is rapidly evolving to meet varying needs of companies, more transparency about the scope, activities, objectives and governance of initiatives can help companies and policymakers to better understand the extent to which such initiatives are fit for purpose to enable supply chain due diligence. The OECD is developing a fitness framework to support policymakers, companies and sustainability initiatives to scale their collaborative action in line with OECD RBC standards and emerging policy and regulatory requirements.

Furthermore, governments can support the development of tools for deeper visibility and access into supply chains. Traceability systems can, when used as part of a wider risk-based due diligence process, help integrate data on origin, evolution, and ownership of products and inputs. Policymakers can support the scaling of supply chain transparency and, where warranted, traceability tools through stronger political commitment and investment in technological capabilities backed by cost-sharing, reliable verification and secure data-sharing protocols whilst also recognising that end‑to‑end traceability is neither feasible nor affordable in many circumstances and less intensive forms of supply chain transparency may be sufficient or more implementable (OECD/IEA, 2025[1]).

More relevant, and more comparable data is needed to assess uptake and outcomes of due diligence. Metrics available through ESG data related to due diligence uptake provide an indicative, but only partial and approximate picture of due diligence practice by companies.

Despite a growing number of companies reporting in line with the GRI and/or the ESRS, which integrate reporting expectations related to due diligence processes aligned with international standards on RBC, few companies report on their identified salient impacts or actions taken to address them (OECD, 2025[2]). Previous work by the OECD has found that ESG rating products rely primarily on input-based metrics, which capture self-reported policies and activities put in place to address potential and actual ESG issues, but with far fewer metrics measuring the outcomes of these policies and activities (OECD, 2025[3]).

Therefore, further guidance for companies on appropriate outcome‑oriented indicators (e.g. reduced incident rates over time, improved supplier performance on key sustainability metrics, stakeholder feedback demonstrating improved practices and outcomes) can help to drive more meaningful reporting. Furthermore, the collection of data by ESG rating providers across metrics more closely aligned to due diligence expectations and more focussed on outcomes would facilitate better and more comparable measurement of uptake of due diligence across global companies, and correspondingly better measurement of their impacts.

While there is existing data on the integration of RBC into law or key policy measures, there is less evidence of implementation of such policies and to what extent they are achieving their objectives.

Many governments are considering how to design monitoring and evaluation frameworks to better understand the impact of their due diligence measures. These frameworks should not just consider the uptake or compliance rates by businesses, but also seek to understand to what extent the measures are contributing towards effectively preventing or remedying adverse impacts linked to company conduct, as well as the costs and benefits to businesses, including impacted SMEs and suppliers, arising from these measures.

More work is needed to understand the implementation and effectiveness of financial and non-financial incentives on RBC, including opportunities to align industrial policies with responsible business conduct objectives. Similarly, with growing integration of RBC into trade and investment policies and agreements, stronger evidence is needed on their implementation and ultimate impact on domestic policies and ultimately business conduct.

Eighty-four per cent of OECD Member countries and 67% of countries adhering to the MNE Guidelines, as well as several non-adhering countries have introduced due diligence related regulation. While many of these measures share similar core objectives, requirements and basis in international standards, they sometimes diverge in scope, design and terminology, raising implementation challenges for business.

Stronger co‑operation between governments is needed to promote coherence, avoid unnecessary divergence or duplication and reduce compliance or implementation burdens on businesses as well as their suppliers and other business relationships – in particular SMEs. The OECD Inclusive Platform for Due Diligence Policy Co‑operation (2026[4]) provides a space for countries to exchange information and experiences on the design, implementation, and impact of responsible business conduct due diligence policies, laws, and regulations.

Governments can also take steps to ensure coherence across domestic policies and measures on RBC. The findings of this report indicate that policy decisions are often taken with limited visibility of related measures or complementary policy tools. This can increase the risk of misalignment and weaken the overall effectiveness of government action. Better understanding and actively managing how policies interact can support an enabling environment for RBC and ease compliance as well as implementation burdens, for both governments and businesses.

Regulating business conduct alone is not sufficient to avoid adverse impacts linked to corporate activities. Governments have a key role in providing an enabling environment, for example through implementation of already existing international standards and commitments related to labour, human rights, the environment, anti-corruption, and the rule of law.

[4] OECD (2026), Inclusive Platform on Due Diligence Policy Co-operation, https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/due-diligence-guidance-for-responsible-business-conduct/inclusive-platform-on-due-diligence-policy-co-operation.html.

[3] OECD (2025), Behind ESG ratings: Unpacking sustainability metrics, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/3f055f0c-en.

[2] OECD (2025), Global Corporate Sustainability Report 2025, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/bc25ce1e-en.

[1] OECD/IEA (2025), The role of traceability in critical mineral supply chains, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/edb0a451-en.