Resumo

How are firms responding to the Sustainable Development Goals? All types of organizations are vital to the achievement of the SDGs. However, multinational enterprises can play an important role on that (Ali et al., 2018; Tulder and Zanten, 2018; Chen, Newburry and Park, 2009). We believe that all organizations will consider their negative impacts in order to prioritize the SDGs and that multinational enterprises (MNEs) will not only consider issues of sustainability that are important to one specific country where they do business. Rather, MNEs would be willing to consider global issues.

Researchers have been studying the role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in pursuing the SDGs (Ali et al., 2018; Tulder & Zanten, 2018). However, there is still little research about it. Our study contributes towards addressing this problem by analyzing how companies in Brazil are integrating the SDGs in their strategy. More specifically, we want to understand how Brazilian companies and MNEs, doing business in Brazil, prioritize the SDGs they work with.

The SDG Compass is a step-by-step process on how companies can align their actions with the SDGs. The second step of the approach has to do with the definition of priorities. The Compass suggests that companies should shape their sustainability strategies by finding ways to address their negative impacts (Compass, 2016). Regarding MNEs, previous research state that they modify their operations by addressing the needs of stakeholders as they change over a country’s short-term and long-term development (Chen, Newburry & Park, 2009).

The literature review helped us with the development of the hypotheses. In order to discuss the hypotheses we developed a structured questionnaire and conducted a survey with companies that are signatory of the Global Compact in Brazil. The questionnaire was developed and pre tested with experts and some companies from February till April, 2018. Data was gathered from 132 companies through a survey with 25 questions. We analyzed the data using the software R. We conducted t-tests to compare the means of Brazilian Companies and Multinationals in several dimensions of our research.

Results show that multinationals are more committed to the SDGs than Brazilian companies. Multinationals are also following the SDG Compass Guide when prioritizing SDGs, regarding the whole supply chain negative impacts. On the contrary, Brazilian companies are selecting the SDGs based on their positive impacts and on how they want to be recognized in the future. Also, we could validate our hypothesis two that MNEs prioritize SDGs that are of concern at local and global levels) and one (companies prioritize the SDGs based on the negative impacts they generate), respectively.

The need for a rigorous and comprehensive approach to business sustainability has contributed to the immediate interest by the private sector in the Sustainable Development Goals, but as of yet, it is still unclear how companies can effectively define priorities and deal with the appropriate issues. Our study contributes towards addressing this problem by analyzing how companies in Brazil are integrating the SDGs in their strategy. More specifically, we address how Brazilian companies and MNEs, doing business in Brazil, prioritize the SDGs they work with based on the Compass Guide.

Ali, S., Hussain, T., Zhang, G., Nurunnabi, M., & Li, B. (2018). The Implementation of Sustainable Development Goals in “BRICS” Countries. Sustainability, 10(7), 2513. Chen, D., Newburry, W., & Park, S. H. (2009). Improving sustainability: An international evolutionary framework. Journal of International Management, 15(3), 317-327. Compass, S. D. G. (2016). The guide for business action on the SDGs. World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD): Geneva, Switzerland.