The impact of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals on corporate sustainability reporting

IF 3.8 4区管理学 Q2 BUSINESS

Brq-Business Research Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-03-23 DOI:10.1177/23409444221085585

Keith Whittingham, Andrew G. Earle, Dante I. Leyva-de la Hiz, Alessia Argiolas

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引用次数: 16

Abstract

In 2015, the United Nations launched the SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDGs) in collaboration with civil society and firms, recognizing that leading firms have the potential to innovate bold solutions at scale to achieve global sustainability. Exploring the impact of the SDGs’ launch on firms, through the lens of normative pressure, we apply computer-aided text analysis to the language used in sustainability reports of 164 large corporations to investigate whether and how the SDGs impacted sustainability reporting. Results show that, when comparing firms’ sustainability reports before and after 2015, increasing alignment was observed with the language of certain SDGs, while alignment did not significantly change for other SDGs. We further analyze these changes across industries, natural resource intensity levels, and geo-institutional contexts, revealing variation among firms based on institutional characteristics that may point to selection priorities and critical gaps as global firms engage with the grand challenges embodied in the SDGs. JEL CLASSIFICATION: M14

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联合国可持续发展目标对企业可持续发展报告的影响

2015年，联合国与民间社会和企业合作，启动了可持续发展目标(sdg)，认识到领先企业有潜力大规模创新大胆的解决方案，以实现全球可持续性。为了探讨可持续发展目标的启动对企业的影响，我们通过规范压力的视角，对164家大公司的可持续发展报告中使用的语言进行了计算机辅助文本分析，以调查可持续发展目标是否以及如何影响可持续发展报告。结果表明，在比较2015年前后公司的可持续发展报告时，某些可持续发展目标语言的一致性增加，而其他可持续发展目标的一致性没有显著变化。我们进一步分析了这些变化在不同行业、自然资源强度水平和地缘制度背景下的变化，揭示了企业之间基于制度特征的差异，这些特征可能指向全球企业在应对可持续发展目标所体现的重大挑战时的选择重点和关键差距。凝胶分类:m14

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来源期刊

Brq-Business Research Quarterly Multiple-

CiteScore

7.50

自引率

6.90%

发文量