Advancing the Sustainable Development Goals: Evidence from leading European banks

Abstract

The sustainable development goals (SDGs) reflect grand challenges that the global community needs to address in order to ensure economic welfare, environmental quality, social cohesion and prosperity for future generations. In this respect, the role of the banking sector, among other critical business entities and key stakeholders, is vital. The purpose of our paper is to examine how comprehensively the reported performance of banks aligns with the endorsement of SDGs. We employ the well‐established framework of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) performance indicators for a comparative assessment of the nonfinancial performance disclosed in the annual sustainability reports. Focusing on a small sample of leading European banks, we find an overall low contribution to SDGs. Furthermore, each bank's contribution remains particularly heterogeneous towards most individual SDG goals. Likewise, bank‐specific strategies drive the most extensively addressed SDGs, overlooking any critical importance of certain GRI indicators with multifaceted impact across several SDGs. The study sets forth managerial implications for improving effective reporting of SDG performance. It concludes with emerging opportunities for enhancing disclosure of SDGs contribution and highlights future research perspectives towards industry‐wide shared‐value appraisal under the scope of these pressing grand challenges.

Sustainable Development and European Banks: A Non-Financial Disclosure Analysis

“…In particular, the figure related to goal 13 confirms the banking sector's strategic focus on the fight against climate change, which seems to anticipate the trend set by the European Commission in 2018 on sustainable development. The figures on goals 14 (aquatic flora and fauna), 15 (terrestrial flora and fauna), and 6 (clean and accessible water) confirm that these are not strategic goals for the banks [32].…”

“…In particular, one of the research areas characterized by very few studies is represented by banking sector. The main contribution provided to the debate is represented by the paper of Avrampou et al [32]. The paper analyzes a limited number of European banks in order to evaluate their overall degree of contribution to the SDGs.…”

“…Among these, a recent study by Avrampou [32] proposes a method for analyzing the contribution from the banking sector to the SDGs on the basis of corporate sustainability disclosures in a sample of five large European banks. The proposed scoring system evaluates the contribution and completeness of non-financial disclosures concerning the SDGs according to the capacity of a report to provide detailed information on GRI indicators and business topics linked to the SDGs.…”

Perceptions of Multistakeholder Partnerships for the Sustainable Development Goals: A Case Study of Irish Non-State Actors

“…SIBs are a hybrid arrangement between social and financial institutions that creates a unique platform to support public-private partnerships between different sectoral actors working collaboratively to achieve the SDGs [45]. Several other studies take a similar sectoral focus making cases for the SDGs in education [42,43,48], in addressing the needs of women [46], for rehabilitating vulnerable communities [47], across value chains [49,50], and in the banking sector [51].…”

Sustainable development challenges in a war‐torn country: Perceived danger and psychological well‐being

“…One of the major objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals in the context of Afghanistan is to ensure mental and physical health and promote happiness and well‐being all the peoples (workers and nonworkers) in the country (Afghanistan Sustainable Development Goals, ). It is well accepted that happiness, satisfaction, physical and mental health, and well‐being of individuals in their life and workplace can help societies to easier achieve sustainable development (Avrampou, Skouloudis, Iliopoulos, & Khan, ; Dawes, ; Jones, Comfort, & Hillier, ; Suarez, Arias‐Arévalo, Martinez‐Mera, Granobles‐Torres, & Enríquez‐Acevedo, ). Afghanistan suffers from long‐standing war and conflicts (almost four decades).…”