Research seminar: Shared imaginaries of sustainable development: The SDGs, their interconnectedness, and materiality assessment 

Shared imaginaries of sustainable development: The SDGs, their interconnectedness, and materiality assessment 

Acces on teams   

Abstract 

The world is undergoing dramatic transformations, and there is an urgent need to address emerging societal and environmental problems of significant scale and impact. Explicit, shared visions of the future are necessary to motivate and guide these grand challenges. Thus, we conceptualize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as dialogic zones where stories of efforts to address grand challenges are discussed—and we explore the possible creation of a shared vision of sustainable development and the role of dialogic accounting tools in this process. Through a single case study, we analyze Nestlé’s sustainability report to explore such imaginaries of sustainable development. To establish the imaginaries of stakeholders we use Twitter/X data. We employ a materiality matrix and map interconnectedness across different SDGs to compare individual visions of this company and its stakeholders. Our findings reveal a lack of collective imaginary for addressing grand challenges, as the visions of sustainable development within this company and among its stakeholders do not fully converge. Moreover, the stakeholders diverge in their visions of sustainable development. The creation of a collective imaginary for addressing grand challenges therefore requires a more collaborative approach and the consideration of the multiple voices of all relevant actors. Hence, the SDGs comprise a useful dialogic space where dialogic accounting tools can serve as a stimulus for discussion. 

Keywords: social imaginaries; stakeholders; sustainable development; SDGs; materiality assessment; grand challenges; interconnectedness; Nestlé 

Charles H. Cho Bio

Charles H. Cho is Professor of Sustainability Accounting and the Erivan K. Haub Chair in Business & Sustainability at the Schulich School of Business, York University. His research interests include Social and Environmental Accounting; Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR); and Accounting and the Public Interest. Professor Cho has published his work in leading academic journals such as Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, the European Accounting Review, and the Journal of Business Ethics. He currently serves as an Editor of Accounting Forum; the Accounting and Business Ethics Section Co-Editor of the Journal of Business Ethics; and as an Associate Editor of Business & Society. He is actively involved in the academic community as a Council member of the Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research and Chair of its International Associates Committee, is regularly invited as plenary keynote speaker at international conferences and professional events, and solicited by the media. He was recognized as one of the top 2% most cited scholars within discipline worldwide (34th in the world and 1st in Canada) in the Accounting field for 2019.