The adoption of sustainable development goals by large Portuguese companies

Abstract

Purpose Two years on from the launch of the United Nations 2030 agenda, this study aims to approach just how and why large Portuguese companies are incorporating the sustainable development goals (SDGs) into their strategies. This sets out a theoretical framework for priority levels of management and the key rationales and motivations towards the adoption of the SDGs by companies within the scope of identifying logical and mutual connections. Design/methodology/approach The proposed theoretical framework applied an empirical, qualitative study approach, deploying content analysis of the semi-structured interviews carried out. Findings The results convey how the responding companies are using the different management models identified for integrating the SDGs, with the strategic and operational facets of greatest relevance. There are various key reasons put forward in justification of this involvement, in particular highlighting the understanding of the 2030 agenda as an ethical and social contract followed by concerns over managing stakeholders. The results demonstrate that these main motivations influence the management level at which the SGDs undergo integration, yet they do not determine the type of integration. Research limitations/implications The analysis of a limited number of companies and the fact that the semi-structured interviews were made with a single representative, which correspondingly reflects how the responses received convey the understandings, visions, values and responsibilities of these interlocutors. Originality/value This provides one of the first studies contributing towards understanding how and why businesses are aligning with the SDGs. At the conceptual level, this proposes a theoretical framework for analysing the underlying logics and the levels of integration into business management and how both can be interconnected. In practical terms, this clarifies how business management strategies may leverage the integration of the 2030 agenda as a mechanism for implementing corporate sustainability.

United Nations Global Compact: Where are we going?

“…The second builds on the ten pillars of UNGC to empower participants in making SDGs a reality. In this perspective, the predicted rise in the number of joiners of UNGC combined with the general awareness of the ethical questions addressed by SDGs (Santos and Bastos, 2020) allow us to state that we can also expect an increase in the number of organisations pursuing SDGs in the years to come. This is particularly important given the urgency of building a future in which a large number of conscious actors address the issues of inequality, poverty, working conditions and environmental protection.…”

Businesses’ Role in the Fulfillment of the 2030 Agenda: A Bibliometric Analysis

“…Therefore, the question that companies must ask themselves is how to collaborate with SDGs and how to incorporate this into their strategy [3,26,28]. Organizations must design their business plans from a more sustainable perspective considering two premises: harm the SDGs as little as possible and implement actions to help achieve those goals (e.g., save energy, reduce emissions, circular economy, etc.)…”

“…The world is changing and the impact that activities have on our planet is provoking more and more negative consequences, which has meant that the main institutions worldwide have made a global commitment necessary to stop this deterioration. That is why the United Nations [1] proposed to continue the world's economic development in a sustainable way [2] and established the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in September 2000 [1][2][3].…”

Toward a Sustainable University: Babes-Bolyai University Goes Green

“…Weber (2017) criticized the SDGs, as the author considers the goals a result of a political project developed by entities that will most benefit from it, and given the indivisible character of the goals, the agenda may not be realized. Scholars have started to investigate how organizations are contributing to the achievement of the goals through several studies focused on different countries: Italy (Di Vaio and Varriale 2020;Izzo et al 2020), Spain (Ferro et al 2019;Peña-Sánchez et al 2020;Diaz-Sarachaga 2021), Greece (Tsalis et al 2020), Russia (Blagov and Petrova-Savchenko 2021), Japan (Ike et al 2021), Portugal (Santos and Silva Bastos 2020), India (Poddar et al 2019), and the Czech Republic and Poland (Šebestová and Sroka 2020). In the case of HEIs, scholars have been investigating different disclosure practices or have focused mainly on intellectual capital disclosure (Fazlagic 2005;Ndou et al 2018;Brusca et al 2020;Nicolò et al 2020;Aversano et al 2020;Nicolò et al 2021b).…”