Adoption and implementation of Sustainable Development Goals: Evidence from German listed companies

Abstract

Nowadays, embracing sustainable development has become an imperative. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), established in 2015, have set the ambitious challenge of reaching a global development that is sustainable for the environment, the society and the economy, and it has affected the corporate sustainability practices as well as those of sustainability reporting. By performing a content analysis, the present research investigates the extent to which German listed companies are pursuing the SDGs in their different instruments of disclosure – corporate reports and websites. The findings of this study show that the awareness about the SDGs among the most capitalized German companies is high and that they have integrated them into their disclosure practices; the analyzed organizations prefer to disclose their SDGs commitment via sustainability reports, and they mostly address the Goals relative to climate change, innovation and economic growth. However, the German companies have still not understood the real spirit of the SDGs, failing in the integration of the Goals in their business models as well as in their KPIs.