Implementing the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

In 2015, leaders from 193 UN member countries came together and announced an ambitious set of global goals to transform our world. Known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), these 17 goals are a call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and improve everyone's lives and prospects as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Today, progress is being made in many places, but action to meet the SDGs is not advancing at the speed or scale required. This section evaluates some strategic tools available to support organizations engaging with the SDGs.

How can goal conflict within the SDGs work against one another? What are the opportunities to achieve the SDGs by 2030 within planetary boundaries?

2. Conceptual Background

2.1. The SDGs

The SDGs can be considered as an extension of the now defunct Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the first attempt at a global strategy for extreme poverty alleviation, which expired in 2015. The MDGs, initiated in the year 2000, focused on pressing issues such as reducing hunger, basic access to education, basic access to water and sanitation, reducing maternal mortality and child survival. They adopted a simplified definition of development as 'meeting basic needs', and did not include social and environmental considerations. They were, therefore, regarded as an agenda for developing countries, relevant to governments, donors, and aid organizations.

By 2015, the end of the lifespan of the MDGs, final scores on progress were varied. For instance, alleviating poverty and access to clean water were broadly considered successful, despite geographical disparities, whereas goals related to access to sanitation or maternal mortality were off-target. Scholars in particular, highlighted the need to reframe the three pillars of sustainable development - economic, social, and environmental - to view it as a nested concept, and of relevance to developing and developed countries alike.

The decision to move beyond the MDGs to a new universal set of goals that fully integrates economic, social, and environmental challenges, was made in the 2012 UN Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development. The new goals were expected to broaden the narrow scope of the MDGs to include a wider variety of issues in a long-term sustainability agenda that is applicable to all nations. The following three years, post-Rio Conference, involved multi-stakeholder consultation across the globe in which hundreds of businesses, universities, governments and civil society groups participated. Surveys were also ran in which citizens were asked what they would like to have included in the new goals. Subsequently, the SDGs, encompassing 17 goals for economic prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability, were adopted by all UN member states in 2015.

A key difference between the SDGs and the MDGs is the type of parties involved: the MDGs focussed almost exclusively on government-led action, whereas the SDGs emphasize a united effort, particularly from non-state actors. In fact, scholars have argued that the success of the SDGs depends on moving beyond cockpit-ism - the view that top-down action by governments and intergovernmental organizations alone will address global challenges. They have called for mobilizing new agents of change, including businesses, cities, and civil society.

Despite the broad consensus on the necessity of action from non-state actors, the mechanisms for doing so are unclear. A 2015 survey indicated that more than 70% of globally operating companies were already planning to engage with the SDGs, and more than 40% of them were intending to embed the SDGs into their business strategy within five years. Since then, many reports and business strategies have been published with the SDGs language (and logos) present in them, but no assessment has been done on whether or how the SDGs have been truly embedded into business strategies.

2.2. organizational Strategy

organizations are inherently diverse with innumerable structures, value propositions, and functions. Due to this diversity, any form of general analysis is often restricted to the industry or structure of the entity. A unifying characteristic of organizations, however, is the decision making process. Regardless of the structure and function, all organizations must make decisions to ensure ongoing operation.

Formal actions shaping organizational decision making are often referred to as strategies. 'Strategy' is a highly transferable concept, spanning a number of distinct academic fields. Historically, 'strategy' has been associated with military philosophy, a lineage which was then transferred into regimented corporations and governments catalyzed, post-WWII. This broad coverage is generally reflected in the spanning academic literature, with 'strategy' referring to the "direction and scope of an organization over the long-term, which achieves advantage in a changing environment through its configuration of resources and competences". However, this definition is used as a catch-all for general, amorphous organizational functions; an activity that varies drastically depending on the scale and focus of said organization.

The process of developing a strategy and allocating resources for its execution is often called 'strategic management' (SM). Strategic management can be defined as "an understanding (SIC) the strategic position of an organization, making strategic choices for the future and managing strategy in action". SM is a common approach to modern, organizational strategy. The primary use of SM is simple; it is a method that can be used to address the complexity that accompanies any decision-making process within organizations. organizations are multifaceted systems that produce innumerable possibilities for action; the near-infinite range of alternatives must be reduced to a select few to then choose and strategise from. Effectively, SM allows for a range of possibilities to be sorted, by highlighting those which are most important and valuable to the organization's future.

SM contends with the full complexity of organizational operation, structure, and decision-making. As a result, modifications to this process will have effects equal to the wide-scale view of the process - that is, organization-wide. Traditionally, the importance of SM has been conceptualised as part of the 'dynamic capabilities' framework for organizational competitive advantage. This framework is based upon the premise that SM is essentially a method for wielding an organization's assets and strategy, to both achieve and subsequently maintain a competitive advantage in changing environments. More specifically, SM can be used to reconfigure internal and external factors, in order for the organization to succeed under dynamic conditions. This positioning of SM as a crucial component of an organization's future illustrates the significance of the process, and the potential for substantial change if the process is modified.

2.3. A generalized Model of Strategic Management

The literature on strategic management presents a myriad of processes for how organizations should or could develop their strategies. Despite their differences, most of those processes share a few key phases and activities. These are:

  1. An ideation phase, where the strategic objectives are defined and articulated;
  2. A development phase, where multiple options or pathways to realize the objectives are devised and evaluated, and the preferred options/pathways are then selected as the strategy;
  3. An implementation phase, where the selected strategy is executed and then monitored.

We briefly describe each phase below. When put together, these three phases can represent a simplified model of the strategic management process, as shown in Figure 1. This figure is a synthesis of the process described in various literature, with the characteristic components from a number of foundational texts reviewed and collated into a single diagram. Due to this generalized characteristic, the diagram represents a typical strategic management process, which is broadly applicable to organizations, rather than a diagram that is specialized for a single industry or entity type.


Figure 1. A generalized strategic management process that is synthesized from the foundational literature on the topic.

2.3.1. The Ideation Phase

The ideation phase involves developing a set of objectives that need to be achieved by the enterprise. The starting point for developing the objectives are the expected, or desired, outcomes. The outcomes are mandated, or incentivised, by external or internal needs and are informed by the organization's socio-economic purpose. Once broadly defined, the expected outcomes are often articulated in the form of specific and measurable objectives that the organization can work towards.

2.3.2. The Development Phase

In the development phase, the options or pathways that can realize the objectives are devised. The options are then analysed, based on external opportunities and threats, as well as the internal strengths and weaknesses. Once they have been sense-checked, their financial feasibility has been assessed, and ideally, their broader social, environmental and political suitabilities have been understood, one option or a group of options will be selected for implementation.

2.3.3. The Implementation Phase

The implementation phase involves an execution of the strategy. This phase is often the interface between the organization and its customers or clients, and is where the enterprise activity is observed by the broader society. In an ideal world, the implementation phase will be closely monitored and evaluated, in order to provide learning and feedback back into the strategy process.

2.4. organizational Strategy and the SDGs

Businesses and organizations are no longer perceived to be just economic entities; they are now viewed as key components of broader society. Specifically, the environmental and social impact of organizations has become increasingly significant. This sentiment began in the 1970s/1980s, when environmental management/legislation became more forceful, and organizations needed to demonstrate formal compliance. This integration of environmental concerns progressively evolved to consider the organization's broader impacts, not just for regulatory compliance, but also for competitive advantage and commercial ethics. This holistic perspective of organizations is commonly referred to as 'corporate social responsibility' (CSR).

CSR is a well-established concept that primarily focuses on the need - or advantage - for organizations to consider and improve the positive societal impacts of their operations. CSR is a contested field, with many competing interpretations of what constitutes 'positive societal impact', and how it should be achieved. There are four primary types of CSR approach: instrumental, where social activities are used to enhance economic results; political, where the influence of the organization is used to produce societal good; integrative, where societal impact is ingrained into the organization's structure; ethical, where the organization addresses direct ethical responsibilities. SM approaches to CSR primarily fit within the 'integrated' category, as efforts in this area affect the underlying structure and management of an organization. The use of SM to address the wider responsibilities of organizations has been extended to more directly address economic, social, and environmental considerations that underpin 'sustainable development'. Aligning with other modern approaches to commercial sustainability, this utilization of SM illustrates the applicability of the concept to all topics that require holistic strategizing, rather than solely economic strategy setting.

The SM process has also been used as a tool to facilitate organizational alignment and action towards sustainable development. Sustainable development is a concept that grew from various parts of environment-related activism and academia, but it was formally introduced in the 'Brundtland report' of 1987. This report referred to sustainable development as an economic, environmental, and social form of development that meets the needs of the present, whilst not jeopardizing that of the future. The three pillars of sustainable development - economical, environmental, and social - are synonymous with the underpinnings of CSR that were discussed previously. The application of the SM process to fulfill businesses CSR obligations has also been extended to include sustainable development. Sustainable development acts to further define organizational efforts towards sustainability, providing a template for the direction and format of organizational action.

The SDGs are an extension of sustainable development, quantifying the concept into the 17 goals of the agenda. Due to this synergy, it would be expected that SM could also be used to assist businesses to act towards the SDGs, as it was for sustainable development. As discussed earlier, the SDGs cannot be achieved on a business-as-usual trajectory, and they require concerted efforts by different actors and a suite of transformative actions and strategies. The combination of the capacity for SM to produce transformative actions and strategies, as well as its already-established synergy with sustainable development, make it a valuable concept for investigating organizational SDG action. The starting point for such an investigation needs be an understanding of the nature of the existing tools and frameworks that are available to organizations for SDG action, and how they fit within the strategic management process. Such an understanding helps with identifying whether or not existing tools can enable the required transformations, and where the gaps might be. The following sections try to address those questions.