An ethical salience framework to achieve sustainable development goals

Abstract

The global sustainable development goals (SDGs) aspire to achieve fairer outcomes for all. A fundamental tenet of the sustainable development agenda is the pursuit and fulfilment of the needs of those most vulnerable and deprived. However, this has been difficult to achieve partly because it requires a mammoth effort to engage multiple stakeholders over complex timeframes and geographical scales. Thus, we propose a new framework – an Ethical Salience Framework – that we developed through amalgamation of the ethical need‐entitlement‐desert framework, and the managerial stakeholder salience framework. The new framework provides a better instrumental interpretation of stakeholder salience through incorporating ethical principles. The new framework also focuses on society's deontological obligations to deprived stakeholders. Instead of a single cluster of high‐salience stakeholders, we propose deontological and instrumental clusters. We propose stakeholders occupying both clusters are equally important for the successful achievement of the SDGs, but also institutional goals more broadly.