Rankings and the Organizational-level Implementation of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): A Case Study

Abstract

This article examines the organizational-level implementation of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in higher education institutions, with a particular emphasis on the roles of rankings in this context. Drawing on translation theory and a case study of a Saudi Arabian university, the article shows that rankings played a central role in motivating our case organization to implement SDGs and in navigating the implementation process. The article moreover shows that the reliance of rankings on self-reported data allowed for gaming and manipulation, as the case organization was, for example, able to present politically compliant staff associations as evidence for trade union activity, and a segregated college for female students as evidence for the empowerment of women. The article, however, also argues that the flexibility this reliance on self-reported data affords higher education institutions can play a crucial role in adjusting the transnational SDG framework to the political, social, and institutional realities of the many different contexts in which it is implemented. Without this flexibility, the entire SDG framework, including the genuine sustainability advances it brought about, might have been rejected outright in the Saudi Arabian context.