Positioning Corporations as Sustainability Leaders: A Roadmap to Align Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility With the SDGs

Introduction

In a time of heightened climate risk and social consciousness, the era of efficiency-based corporate sustainability management is insufficient. Businesses once viewed as leaders, targeting returns along the intersection of the triple bottom line are now being surpassed by a new age of responsible corporations actively transforming markets to address multiple societal values. Fully entrenched in what Klaus Schwab’s 2020 Davos Manifesto dubs a purpose-led era for business, research and evidence-based practices have shown that issues of sustainability continue to find increasing resonance in the values of civil society, activities of industrial organizations, and intentions of nation-state regulatory frameworks (Hoffman, 2010). A landscape once dominated by environmental activists and ethically motivated NGOs, market transparency, and rising accountability standards in the wake of the popularization of social media-based mechanisms now favor innovative firms and conscious leaders who embody the promises of sustainable development (Broman & Roberts, 2017). As a result, sustainability has become an integral part of business across various sectors and industries (Galpin et al., 2015).

This chapter explores the evolving realm of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) research and practices in the era of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sustainable development has emerged as an integrative framework for theorizing the interface between businesses, society, and nature (Marcus et al., 2010; Vermeulen & Witjes, 2016). While scholars and CSR practitioners have been critical of the nebulousness of the SDG domains (Jamali and Karam, 2016), we argue that the SDGs offer a robust framework to guide CSR given the objectivity and specificity of the goals, targets, and indicators. With the current debates regarding the definition of “materiality”, reporting on the SDGs by corporations across various sectors has been shown to enhance reporting quality, along with the organizational-level capabilities to align strategic planning with a diverse array of stakeholder needs. Rather than a strategy in-of-itself, strategic CSR provides a paradigm (by which we perceive and act on issues of sustainability) that, when embedded into corporate language, theory, and practice, provides a systems approach to delivering multiple values, spanning beyond the service of wealth creation, organizational boundaries, and traditional stakeholder groups (Dyllick & Muff, 2016). Both a process and outcome in-of-itself, the authors introduce a contemporary definition of strategic CSR reflective of corporate realities in the SDGs era.

First noted by Gladwin et al. (1995), then elaborated upon over the last two and a half decades, management theory and organizational sciences are undergoing a paradigm shift from mechanistic to systems thinking. Section 1 provides an in-depth exploration of the conceptual foundations and normative elements that underscore the evolution of corporate social responsibility approaches, highlighting three transformative shifts in thinking.

• 1.

  From Agency to Communion: The shift towards business as the dominant institution driving social responsibility.

• 2.

  From Exterior to Interior: The shift in drivers of the corporate sustainability journey and relevant impacts on the rate and efficacy of corporate change.

• 3.

  From Conceptual to Material: The shift from sustainability’s conceptual roots towards a renewed focus on materiality and strategic implementation.