Monetizing impacts of Spanish companies toward the Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

Corporate sustainability reporting has gained increasing prominence over the last years to quantitative and qualitatively reflect progress of enterprises toward sustainability. However, the measurement of the economic contribution of firms in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is still a pending issue. This research aims at bridging this gap by devising a new system that monetizes impacts of Spanish companies in the fulfillment of the SDGs. A panel of three experts in sustainability determined a set of 33 suitable indicators that represent the SDGs. Best–Worst method was then used to perform a multi-criteria decision analysis to determine weighting factors through responses from a two-part questionnaire circulated to 50 national respondents. The application of the new tool to a Spanish firm underlined a weak linkage between some SDGs and business activities, and the complexity of disaggregating accounting data to feed the metrics of the new framework. The development of instruments that associate the challenges of the 2030 Agenda with corporate accounting was recommended.