Governance issues have surpassed environmental concerns and emerged as top ESG reputational risk in 2026, according to a new global survey.
The sixth edition of Oxford–GlobeScan Global Corporate Affairs Survey 2026 was conducted between February and April 2026 and 294 Corporate Affairs practitioners from across global markets participated in the survey.
The 2026 edition of the survey was focussed on three pillars, environmental, social and governance (ESG). Of the respondents, 45% identified governance factors as posing the greatest reputational risk to their companies – a substantial increase on the 29% who ranked such factors highest in 2024.
The proportion who ranked environmental issues first fell from 39% to 27% during the same period. Social issues were lowest-ranked at 26%, indicating little change.
The survey findings reveal that corporate affairs professionals are increasingly concerned about internal governance, ethics and compliance-related failures, potentially due to growing stakeholder scrutiny, regulatory pressures and recent high-profile lapses.
It added that environmental issues remain significant but are better understood or managed than before, so may have been pushed down the list of priorities by other emerging risks.
GlobeScan said the decline in environment as a top risk and continued low ranking of social issues could indicate that these factors “might be seen as more stable or manageable in the near term.”
The consultancy firm added that the sharp rise of governance as a reputational risk points to increasing concerns among corporate leaders about compliance, ethics and internal governance.