Organizations' engagement with sustainable development goals: Fromcherry‐pickingto SDG‐washing?

Abstract

This article analyzes the organizational engagement with the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs), an initiative for corporate social responsibility also referred to as the 2030 Agenda. Engagement with the SDGs by organizations all around the world, whatever their sector and size, has attracted a lot of media interest and heightened expectations. Nevertheless, there is a lack of empirical work that sheds light on the commitment to this initiative at the organizational level. In order to fill this gap, this article examines the characteristics of engagement with the SDGs of 1370 organizations from 97 countries, taking data from their sustainability reports. The study looks at how and why organizations engage with the SDGs, as well as the priority they assign to them. The findings point to a superficial engagement with the SDGs for the vast majority of organizations, which suggests a process of “SDG‐washing”. Implications for managers, public policy makers and other stakeholders are analyzed.

Exploring sustainable development goals reporting practices: From symbolic to substantive approaches—Evidence from the energy sector

“…The interest in the business case for SDGs reporting has recently matured also among academics. Empirical studies investigating SDGs disclosure patterns have been conducted in different countries: Italy (Izzo et al, 2020;Pizzi et al, 2021), Spain (Curt o-Pagès et al, 2021Diaz-Sarachaga, 2021), Portugal (Fonseca & Carvalho, 2019), Australia (Subramaniam et al, 2019), Indonesia (Gunawan et al, 2020), the United Kingdom (Silva, 2021), India (Yu et al, 2020), Greece (Tsalis et al, 2020), Africa (Erin & Bamigboye, 2021) and worldwide (Heras-Saizarbitoria et al, 2022;van der Waal & Thijssens, 2020). Some studies focused on specific industries, such as real estate (Ionas ¸cu et al, 2020) or chemicals (Nechita et al, 2020).…”

“…A critical issue pertains to the ability and willingness of companies to demonstrate their business case for the SDGs effectively. Companies show increasing attention to highlighting the opportunities generated by implementing the 2030 Agenda and declaring their commitment to one or more SDGs in broader terms, particularly in separated sections (Izzo et al, 2020;Yu et al,2020;Tsalis et al, 2020) and CEO message (Heras-Saizarbitoria et al, 2022;van der Waal & Thijssens, 2020). However, the quality of the SDGs disclosure remains low, and reports are evasive (Erin & Bamigboye, 2021;Heras-Saizarbitoria et al, 2022;Silva, 2021;van der Waal & Thijssens, 2020).…”

“…Nevertheless, previous studies revealed a general trend to follow a symbolic approach toward SDGs disclosure. These are based on impression management rationales aimed at demonstrating compliance with emerging stakeholders' pressures to gain their legitimacy rather than evidencing real changes to corporate actions (Heras-Saizarbitoria et al, 2022;Silva, 2021;van der Waal & Thijssens, 2020). In most cases, the general declaration of commitment to one or more SDGs is not followed by a concrete explanation of how SDGs have entailed changes in corporate strategies, business models, and core operations (Heras-Saizarbitoria et al, 2022;Silva, 2021;van der Waal & Thijssens, 2020).…”

The economics of the UN Sustainable Development Goals: does sustainability make financial sense?

“…More recently, a study carried out by Consolandi et al [ 38 ] offered a methodology for measuring the contribution of health care companies to achieve SDG 3 linking the goal’s targets with the SASB’s generic ESG issues by adopting the financial materiality perspective. Nevertheless, a scarce engagement with the SDGs for organizations may create a process of “SDGs washing” [ 39 ], this is, a process in which firms use SDGs to market their positive contribution to achieving some objectives while neglecting their negative impact on others, or it can negatively affect the “sell” recommendations of financial analysts [ 40 ].…”

Corporate Social Responsibility and Marketing: A Bibliometric and Visualization Analysis of the Literature between the Years 1994 and 2020

“…Panel surveys can assess, over time, the marketing results of organizations that exhibit these CSR washing practices. Although it is not within the scope of bibliometric analysis, significant growth in the number of publications on this subject was noticed in the year 2021, indicating a real increase in interest in investigating this topic (e.g., [116][117][118][119][120]).…”