The Sustainable Development Goals and the Business Sector: Trends and Implementation Challenges

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) seek to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all by 2030. While in the past, the overarching purpose of the companies was to enhance shareholder value, the SDGs also provide an opportunity for companies to reinvent their purpose considering the needs of various stakeholders and contribute towards a more sustainable future.

The research presented here assimilates fresh insights into the implementation challenges companies face concerning the adoption of the SDGs and how they can effectively align business strategies in addressing the SDGs and brings together diverse perspectives and novel research investigating how the business sector is engaging and contributing toward achieving the SDGs.

Contributing to an evolving albeit nascent field of inquiry and providing new perspectives on the role of businesses in achieving the SDGs, The Sustainable Development Goals and the Business Sector is an important read for corporate practitioners, policymakers, consultants, supranational organizations’ experts, academics, students who seek to understand linkages between business sustainability and the SDGs discourse in developing, emerging, and developed economies.

Corporate Sustainability and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Global Challenges and Opportunities book series examines the broad agenda of the SDGs, which requires the participation of multiple disciplines and sectors to be delivered.

Gabriel Eweje is Professor of Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability in the School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia.

Aymen Sajjad is Senior Lecturer in Sustainability and Business Management at Massey Business School, Massey University, New Zealand.