Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals Through Corporate Sustainability in a Private Banking Organization

Abstract

Corporate sustainability (CS) has drawn the attention of academics and practitioners as a way to achieve profitable businesses without negatively impacting society. However, financial business organizations have not adequately realized the importance of CS in meeting sustainable development goals (SDGs). Thus, it is unclear how the financial sector will achieve the SDGs using CS. All 17 goals are essential, but achieving them depends on which CS issues the organization prioritizes. This study uses a qualitative case study to investigate the use of CS to achieve SDGs at financial corporations. Interviews were conducted with five respondents from City Alo, an SME banking segment of City Bank in Bangladesh, and 15 women entrepreneurs engaging with this organization to receive entrepreneurship education through a bank–university collaboration. The results show that the private banking organization achieved seven SDGs by prioritizing appropriate CS issues.