Perceptions of progress toward achieving the sustainable development goals: Insights from cooperative managers

Abstract

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have become the leading international reference for achieving a more inclusive and sustainable model of development. Businesses play an important role in changing the existing model. Analysis of the engagement of businesses with the SDGs first requires knowledge of how managers perceive advances toward achieving these goals. This knowledge is missing from the academic literature. This paper proposes a synthetic indicator that captures company managers’ ratings of how well their companies are meeting the 17 SDGs. To create the synthetic indicator, the DP2 distance method was applied. Companies that most positively rate the degree of achievement of the SDGs belong to the agrifood sector.

Keywords

• Sustainable development goals
• Sustainable business
• Perceptions
• Cooperatives
• Synthetic indicator
• 2030 agenda