Business & The Sustainable Development Goals

Front matter

ROTTERDAM SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT ERASMUS UNIVERSITY

BUSINESS & THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

A FRAMEWORK FOR/EFFECTIVE 1g RPORATE INVOL vEMEr

Table Of Contents

FORO WOM sie scree its acd tenement aE EE A AE 8 PART | WHY?

The creation of the SDGs — A new paradigm for progress?

1.2 The sustainable development challenge: preconditions

Part III How?

A framework for corporate strategies in support of the SDGs.

3.2

3.3

3.4

3.5

3.6

3.7

Breaking through the reactive threshold:

Making it functional: breaking through further

Framework: how can companies better contribute to the SDGs? 105

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This short book presents a framework for making corporate strategies effective for sustainable development. This framework is a condensed result of a variety of interdisciplinary research and teaching projects, organised with colleagues in academia, practitioners at companies, civil society organisations and government, and with PhD and master students. Over the course of a considerable number of years these collaborations allowed me to develop a micro approaches, positive change trajectories and all sorts of management techniques that are needed to (pro) actively take up complex societal challenges (rather than staying passive or shift responsibility to others).

of the Sustainable Development Goals as a leading agenda for research and teaching at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, helping

to facilitate its new mission, ‘to be a force for positive change in the world’. | felt energised and personally responsible to share my knowledge and insights in a concise manner with students, staff and societal stakeholders. This short book is an effort to navigate student’s research and societal action towards higher levels of engagement in today’s ‘grand challenges’. It provides input

for teaching, but also background material for the learning modules that are developed around each SDG by RSM. With this book | support RSM’s mission to ‘be a force for positive change in the world’ by introducing a concrete strategic framework that companies can apply in case they (also) want to take the SDGs seriously.

| would like to thank Eva Rood and her team — supported by the dean’s office and other major faculty stakeholders — who chased me to provide a solid foundation for the faculty’s efforts. Being interested in all the SDGs, however, made it impossible for me to present a quick fix to this challenge. Being one of the lead subscribers to the ‘SDG Charter’ | also felt the intellectual urge to legitimise my support of the SDGs as a ‘new paradigm’ — in particular because the SDGs are not necessarily considered by everyone as ‘progress’. This book takes their criticism very seriously (see Part |).

On the execution of this book, | am particularly indebted to Eveline van Mil who allowed me to take some of her thinking as frames for this book. She was also prepared to meticulously go through the draft texts of most of the manuscript. The thinking on and framing of wicked problems is based on her inputs. Ronny Reshef and a number of competent editors, in particular Lesa Sawahata, further helped me to make the text more readable and the referencing more adequate.

On the building blocks and insights, | am particularly indebted to my PhD student Jan Anton van Zanten, with whom | am working on a number of SDG projects with great energy and intellect. Since 2016, a growing number of my Master students have become interested in the SDGs, which has provided me with additional inputs and literature reviews on related topics.

Colleagues of the Partnerships Resource Centre and RSM helped me to develop insights on a number of topics: materiality thinking (Laura Lucht, Alex van

On validating insights: the policy-making community around the SDGs in the Netherlands — in particular at the ministry of Foreign Affairs and a number of Dutch embassies, Global Compact Netherland, GRI and the Worldconnectors — has helped me to further test the relevance of my ideas. The same acknowledgement applies to the leaders of a number of frontrunner companies and NGOs around the world that have shared their inner insights with me on a variety of building blocks: those from Unilever, DSM, AkzoNobel, Philips, KPN, Partos, ICCO, Cordaid, Max Havelaar Foundation, Amnesty International, World Wildlife Fund, Amref, the UNDP, Friesland Campina, Social Enterprise.NL, ABN Amro, Netherlands Africa Business Council, Jolibee, Unifruti and ESAMI (East African Business Schools).

There is no product without audience; the way my faculty colleagues embraced the SDGs in teaching and research gave me the certainty that this book will

have an audience. My direct colleagues Maarten Wubben, Muel Kaptein, Marius van Dijke, Joep Cornelissen and Steve Kennedy have been working on a new curriculum for the Leadership Sustainability and Governance bachelor course of which the SDGs and this short book are now an integral part. In the philosophy of the SDGs, this book is produced as a common pool resource and an open access product. It is my hope and expectation that this book will not only be used by students, but by everyone interested in making the joint ambition of

the SDGs a reality.

Rob van Tulder