Dr. J.A. (Jan Anton) van Zanten

This dissertation studies the role of companies in sustainable development. In 2015, the United Nations (UN) adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that aim to “free humanity from poverty, secure a healthy planet for future generations, and build peaceful, inclusive societies as a foundation for ensuring lives of dignity for all” (UN, 2017:4). Although all 193 UN member states have committed to the ambition of achieving the SDGs by the year 2030, success is unlikely without the support of the private sector. The studies comprising this dissertation aim to improve our understanding of the relationships between companies and sustainable development. Appreciating the interdisciplinary nature of this research topic, I draw from diverse literatures, which can be broadly categorized into the international business and management, and sustainability sciences disciplines, and I use a variety of methods, in order to shed light on companies’ engagement with, and their impacts on, the SDG Agenda. Overall, the dissertation is defined by the problems that it addresses rather than by its disciplinary embedding (cf. Clark, 2007), thus taking a phenomena-driven perspective that has recently been called for in the business and management literature (Buckley et al., 2017).

In Chapter 2 I study how corporate engagement with the SDGs can be explained using an institutional approach. The study first conceptualizes the SDGs as a goal-based institution for international business. Based on this conceptualization, the study develops propositions that help explain how the engagement of MNEs’ with the SDGs is influenced by traits of SDGs and by traits of the MNEs themselves. It proposes that two SDG traits are relevant: i) the actionability of an SDG target, which can be internal or external to MNEs’ (value chain) operations; and ii) the ethical duties conveyed by the SDG target, which can be positive (“doing good”) or negative (“avoiding harm”). Additionally, it proposes that two traits of MNEs help explain their engagement with the SDGs: i) their home- and host-country contexts; and ii) their industrial sector. Survey results from 81 European and North American Financial Times Global 500 companies indicate that MNEs engage more with internally than externally actionable SDG targets, that SDG engagement is higher for SDG targets that seek to avoid harm rather than do good, that European MNEs engage with more SDG targets than North American

MNEs, and that MNEs in industrial sectors with negative externalities engage more with SDG targets that seek to avoid harm.

In chapters 3 and 4 I study the impacts of the economic activities that companies undertake on the SDGs’ targets. In the third chapter, I systematically review 876 academic and grey articles published between 2005 and 2019 to unearth how 420 types of economic activities (as a proxy for corporate strategies) impact the SDG targets. The study reveals the ample opportunities, but also the many trade-offs, companies face in contributing to the SDGs. Economic activities are critical for advancing economic and social SDGs. They often are sources of economic productivity (SDG 8) and drivers of industrialization, infrastructure, and innovation (SDG 9). Specific types of economic activities help people meet their most basic needs by producing and distributing food (SDG 2), health services and medicines (SDG 3), education (SDG 4), water and sanitation (SDG 6), energy (SDG 7), housing and transport (SDG 11), and information (SDG 16). But trade-offs abound and are not just related to economic activities that are the usual suspects. Rather, the study finds that nearly all economic activities emit greenhouse gases (SDG 13). Many activities use and/or pollute water (SDG 6). Numerous activities also generate pollution and waste more generally (SDG 12), degrading ecosystems (SDGs 14/15) and harming people’s health (SDG 3). The chapter synthesizes economic activities’ positive and negative impacts on SDG targets to provide an evidence-base for companies’ SDG strategies, and for governments’ SDG policies.

In Chapter 4 I argue that the degree of alignment between corporate strategies and the SDG Agenda is an indicator of long-term sustainability success. By building on the findings of Chapter 3, this article investigates which types of economic activities that companies undertake are most, and which are least, aligned with the ambitions of the SDG Agenda. The chapter selects 67 unique economic activities and uses a qualitative scoring framework – developed in the sustainability science literature – to assess their positive and negative interactions with 59 SDG targets. Using mathematical techniques, the identified and scored interactions are then studied as a network. The results allow for distinguishing between four types of corporate activities based on their alignment with the SDG Agenda, each facing a particular sustainability imperative: (i) core activities predominantly generate

positive, while having few negative, impacts on the SDGs, challenging companies to scale their contributions; (ii) mixed activities have moderate/high degrees of both negative/positive impacts, posing a decoupling imperative; (iii) opposed activities provide few benefits yet cause significant adverse impacts, which challenges companies to sustainably transform their business models; and (iv) peripheral activities have immaterial positive and negative impacts, challenging companies to explore innovative avenues for creating SDG contributions.

In Chapter 5 I investigate how companies can more effectively advance sustainable development. The chapter thereby contributes to developing a theory of sustainability management that enables companies to improve their impacts on sustainable development, as conceptualized by SDGs. It introduces a nexus approach to corporate sustainability. This nexus approach induces companies to assess and manage their direct and indirect, and positive and negative, interactions with the SDGs in an integrated manner. Instead of treating SDGs as isolated silos, a nexus approach aims to advance multiple SDGs simultaneously (thus creating ‘co-benefits’) while reducing the risk that contributions to one SDG undermine progress on another (thus avoiding ‘trade-offs’). Two frameworks are introduced: one for mapping how a company’s interactions with the SDGs lead it to influence the resilience of the social-ecological systems in which it operates; and one for operationalizing a nexus approach to corporate sustainability. This interdisciplinary chapter is grounded in the social-ecological systems literature. A nexus approach is a step towards creating systemic corporate sustainability strategies that appreciate the complexity of sustainable development.

Finally, in Chapter 6 I survey how the SDG Agenda can inform the navigation of societies through and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter argues that the SDG Agenda is not without flaws. It also underscores that the first five years of the SDGs – indeed even before the pandemic - witnessed (too) slow progress. However, in this chapter it is argued that the SDG Agenda provides three ‘logics’ that could help transform towards sustainable societies: (1) a governance logic that sets goals, adopts policies, and tracks progress to steer impacts; (2) a systems (nexus) logic that manages SDG interactions; and (3) a strategic logic that enables (micro-level) companies to develop strategies that impact (macro-level)

policy goals. The chapter discusses key hurdles that each of these SDG logics face. Transforming towards sustainable societies beyond COVID-19 requires that multinational enterprises and policy makers (better) apply these logics.