“Ângelo Ramalho had big decisions in his hands on that late Thursday evening of June 2021. (…) Thus, his main internal debate was whether he should bet on the future sustainability of the business, considering it a strong competitive advantage, or focus on the short-term shareholder crisis that was haunting his days”.

This brief excerpt is part of our most recent publication in the Center for Responsible Business and Leadership: The Case Study “The strategic implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals at EFACEC”. This case study is the result of more than one year of collaboration with this company, supporting them in the
1) understanding,
2) strategic choice and
3) implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals along their core strategy and business operations.

The case aims to help any company to better comprehend the hurdles, benefits and cutting-edge strategies to bring the 2030 agenda to the centre of their strategy while creating economic, social and environmental value for all its stakeholders. It is a practical tool to be used by any manager in order to reduce the complexity of the SDGs implementation, while exposing the case of a company confronted with a very “hot” dilemma: short-term shareholder value creation VS long-term stakeholder value creation.

This way, along one-year time span, the case describes how the company starts with an initial question ("How can Efacec implement the SDGs and make them a motor for the company's strategic success?") and comes up with four strategic SDGs,  a strong core operational team and dozens of KPIs to be achieved in the short, medium and long term.

If you are enthusiastic or a skeptic of the SDGs as a strategy, we hope you can enjoy the case and answer our last three questions:

1. Do you agree with the SDG's strategic choice made by the company?
2. Some collaborators are complaining that Efacec is not paying attention to the "social" SDGs. What do you think should be the Steering Committee’s answer to them?
3. Knowing that the following steps Efacec has in hands are: setting targets and indicators aligned with the business core operations in order to measure progress on the SDG  agenda and the company's strategy or implement a communication plan both for internal and external stakeholders

What would you propose to Efacec if you were part of the CRB's team?

Please let us know if this case was useful for you and keep us aware if you have any research-action suggestions for the future!

Have a great and impactful week!

Filipa Pires de Almeida
Deputy Director
Center for Responsible Business & Leadership 

This article refers to edition #161 of the "Have a Great and Impactful Week" Newsletter and covers SDG 1 to 17.
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