The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a unique global agenda for sustainable development, in the sense that it was possible due to the agreement between the public, private and social sectors. As a Global set of intertwined goals, they can only be achieved in partnership between economic and social agents, including countries, civil society, and companies. Moreover, as the goals are connected and interlinked, they are a complex but necessary agenda for human and planetary prosperity.
As a roadmap for development, the SDGs can be extremely useful for the private sector to promote its sustainability ambitions, since they are a concrete framework for action.
According to studies from several international organizations, we know that companies have the necessary power to bring this agenda forward, they want to do so, but they lag behind their ambitions for a number of reasons.
With this challenge in mind, the Center for Responsible Business and Leadership is working with several companies to understand what are their main motivations and main hurdles when trying to bring this agenda to the core of their business strategies and operations. Moreover, it is part of our ambition to help corporations to make this agenda practical and aligned with their value creation business ambition.
One of our most recent and interesting projects was developed with Efacec – one of the most technological Portuguese companies. Efacec had a burning question in mind: “How can we select the correct SDGs for our business, and implement the SDG in our strategy and core operations?
Some questions were raised during the process:
- Why does it make sense for the business to implement the SDGs, even if this language sometimes seems distant from the corporate language? Are there advantages?
- How should we select the SDGs that resonate the most with our business?
- What kind of teams to involve?
- What are the most efficient SDG implementation processes?
- How should we care about stakeholders?
These and many other questions were addressed in our joint collaboration with Efacec.
In the midst of the process, the CRB team developed a teaching case study to share our main learnings.
We now want to share our main learnings and lessons for the future with you.
In that context, on the 28th of September, 17h30, we invited Efacec to our School, and we will share with all our guests “How to bring the SDGs from theory to practice”.
Hope you can join us, bring your insights and raise your questions!
See you there!
Have a great and impactful week!
Filipa Pires de Almeida
Deputy Director
Center for Responsible Business & Leadership
This article refers to edition #157 of the "Have a Great and Impactful Week" Newsletter and covers SDG 17.
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