Redefining Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) World

Abstract

In a paradigm characterized by unprecedented levels of transparency and business risks, CSR reporting standards have gained substantial power in their ability to drive organizations towards more sustainable business practices. With the advent of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), corporate sustainability discourse has progressed to a point where sustainability became critical to the success of firms. This dissertation explores the changes in the CSR domain post the introduction of the SDGs in 2015. The SDGs provide a robust framework for strategic CSR given their objective 17 goals along with 169 sub-goals and 232 indicators, which represent a comprehensive agenda for sustainable development. This dissertation explores the changes in the reporting practices by analyzing more than 14 thousand reports provided by 9,397 organizations to test a set of hypotheses that identify the factors that influence SDGs reporting within firms. Additionally, this dissertation highlights current gaps and challenges in the contemporary CSR domain and sheds light on the latest practices of CSR communication, such as the use of social media sites as platforms for CSR and SDGs reporting. We introduce a novel approach using social media analytics to analyze how corporations communicate about SDGs on social media, namely Twitter. The dissertation also highlights the current initiatives towards the standardization of reporting frameworks. Findings from this research contribute to strategic CSR literature by highlighting the nature of reporting per sector, and how organizations report on the SDGs that are related to their core operations. The results of the dissertation also contribute to legitimacy theory by identifying how and why corporations address the SDGs in their strategic CSR reporting. Finally, the dissertation provides a set of recommendations that can help improve strategic CSR reporting in the SDGs era.