IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jenpmg/v65y2022i6p1001-1023.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

SDGwashing: a critical view of the pursuit of SDGs and its relationship with environmental performance

Author

Listed:
  • Vera Ferrón Vílchez
  • Pablo Ortega Carrasco
  • Francisco Antonio Serrano Bernardo

Abstract

The sustainable development goals (SDGs) provide a strategic vision and future-oriented plan that companies, regulators and society in general are challenged to face. However, companies’ contribution to the achievement of SDGs is questioned by some critical voices. In the business context, SDGwashing refers to positively pursuing a contribution to some SDGs while ignoring the negative impact of others. The objective of this research is to study whether there is an association between pursuing SDGs of a different nature and environmental performance. Are companies pursuing the more environmental-focused SDGs, the ones with better environmental performance, compared to companies pursuing more social-focused SDGs? Thus, this work examines whether multinationals that pursue more environmental-focused SDGs have a similar level of environmental performance to those that make efforts to pursue more social-oriented SDGs. This study analyzes whether SDGwashing exists in relation to environmental performance by studying its relationship with two relevant variables of literature on environmental management: outcome-based environmental performance (through GHG emissions) and process-based environmental performance (through CDP scoring). Using a sample of multinational firms listed on the FTSE 100 index, we applied an ANOVA test and logistic regression to show whether the pursuit of both more environmental-focused SDG and more social-focused SDGs was associated with environmental performance. The results of this study offer a significant contribution to academic literature on SDGs. Our findings show that the organizational profile of multinational companies that pursue more environmental-focused SDGs differs from the organizational profile of multinationals that are pursuing more social-oriented SDGs, in terms of environmental performance. This offers empirical evidence by showing that SDGwashing exists in international business.

Suggested Citation

  • Vera Ferrón Vílchez & Pablo Ortega Carrasco & Francisco Antonio Serrano Bernardo, 2022. "SDGwashing: a critical view of the pursuit of SDGs and its relationship with environmental performance," Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 65(6), pages 1001-1023, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jenpmg:v:65:y:2022:i:6:p:1001-1023
    DOI: 10.1080/09640568.2022.2033960
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09640568.2022.2033960
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09640568.2022.2033960?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jonathan Morris & Edeltraud Guenther, 2024. "Can the Sustainable Development Goals support nexus thinking in companies? The case of water," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 679-691, February.
    2. Marco Ghitti & Gianfranco Gianfrate & Lorenza Palma, 2024. "The agency of greenwashing," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 28(3), pages 905-941, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jenpmg:v:65:y:2022:i:6:p:1001-1023. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CJEP20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.