Business alignment for the “Decade of Action”

Abstract

The SDGs and Paris Climate Agreement, taken together, constitute the best hope for charting a new course for the world’s politics and economics, to produce “the future we want.” This paper briefly explores the central environmental, social, and economic challenges; the pathways to sustainability; and the central role of companies in achieving our global goals. We are facing four very deep and interconnected global environmental crises: human-induced climate change, unsustainable land use, mega-pollution, and increased frequency and intensity of pandemic zoonotic diseases. At the same time, we face massive social crises, including increasing inequality. There are six necessary SDG Transformations that each requires a major change in the organization of societal, political, and economic activities – which delineates also the critical role of business. The paper specifies four key questions that companies and their stakeholders can ask to effectively align with the "Decade of Action" needed to achieve the SDG ambitions.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals: Can multinational enterprises lead the Decade of Action?

“…A number of contributions in this Special Issue provide insights on corporate interventions along value chains: for instance, on required changes in power relations upstream towards traders (Van Holt et al, 2021), a different 'take' on standard taking and adopting practices with SMEs (Sinkovics et al, 2021), and how to entice the participation of local stakeholders (Ramirez, 2021). This is also an area vital to progress identified by Sachs and Sachs (2021).…”

“…Existing work on 'intervention logics' in certain nexuses (cf. Sachs et al, 2019;Sachs & Sachs, 2021) can help boost positive meso-and macro-economic spillovers of company strategies (while minimizing negative consequences). By prioritizing one SDG target (and aligning with societal stakeholders on that topic) companies can, for instance, increase the sophistication of the 'theory of change' and intervention logic either alone or together with other stakeholders -thereby developing pathways aimed at certain outcomes and impact (Van Tulder & Keen, 2018).…”

“…Societal arenas in which corporate action in support of sustainable development need to materialize can be considered 'bargaining arenas' in which MNEs negotiate over the design, creation, capture, and distribution of value and rents (as sublimated in their business model), in which they use the SDG framework to fil institutional voids through new forms of societal arrangements and 'social contracts'. The bargaining arena can be organized along production sites, within supply chains or in interaction with local and national communities as acts of corporate citizenship (Sachs & Sachs, 2021). The bargaining arena also materializes in 'ecosystems' of collaborating and competition regulatory agencies, reporting and standard-setting bodies that create the metrics along which 'progress' can be measured.…”

Making sense of global value chain-oriented policies: The trifecta of tasks, linkages, and firms

“…Sustainable development aims at a world that is prosperous, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable, yet today’s economic and governance systems are poorly equipped to target this triple bottom line without the help of the private sector. Market forces, for one, have done little to narrow income inequalities within and across countries, to overcome deeply entrenched social discrimination by race and gender, or to protect the natural environment (Sachs & Sachs, 2021 ). The global nature of many sustainability challenges has furthermore eroded the ability of countries to address these market failures (Scherer & Palazzo, 2011 ).…”

Editorial: The research impact in management through the UN’s sustainable development goals

“…The debate on the SDGs is not new, regarding how they were defined (Sexsmith & McMichael, 2015; Weber, 2017), their efficacy or viability (Diaz-Sarachaga, Jato-Espino, & Castro-Fresno, 2018), the potential problems related to the role of companies in the SDG’s implementation (Scheyvens, Banks, & Hughes, 2016), among other issues. Recently, two Nature ’s editorials, the first called “Time to revise the Sustainable Development Goals” (2020), followed by another called “Recalibrating the SDGs” (2021), highlight the need for fresh approaches for dealing with the SDGs (Sachs, Schmidt-Traub, Mazzucato, Messner, Nakicenovic, & Rockström, 2019). Management research can also strongly contribute to this debate.…”