MGT 712: Analyzing SDG 8 - Corporate Governance, Ethics, and CSR

This report analyzes Sustainable Development Goal 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) focusing on its governance structure, stakeholder identification using Mitchell et al's theory, and appraisal with PRME core principles. It identifies businesses, industries, men, women, youth, children, tourism sectors, manufacturing sectors, and commercial banks as key stakeholders, categorizing them based on power, legitimacy, and urgency. The report further evaluates SDG 8 against PRME principles, emphasizing purpose, values, research, partnership, and dialogue, while noting limitations in the 'method' principle. Recommendations aligned with PRME principles are provided, focusing on integrating purpose and values into organizational developmental activities and promoting collaboration between stakeholders to achieve sustainable development goals.

Running head: CORPORATE GOVERNANCE ETHICS & CSR
Corporate Governance Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Introduction
Sustainable development goals are defined as the plan or strategy to accomplish a better
and sustainable future for everyone on the earth (Kates 2018). These goals are designed to
protect the environment, reduce poverty and inequality, providing job opportunity, ensuring
peace, justice and prosperity. This report addresses 8th sustainable development goal, that is,
“Decent Work and Economic Growth” and its various aspects, such as, its structure of
governance, identification of the stakeholders as per the Mitchell et al’s (1997) article “Toward a
theory of stakeholder identification and salience: defining the principle of and what really counts”,
and appraisal with the PRME core principals. It also provides recommendations for applying the
goals effectively.
Sustainable development goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
This goal aimed to promote the sustained and inclusive economic growth along with full
and productive decent work opportunity for all. Economic growth is essential for sustainability.
Economic growth refers to the increase in the products of goods and services per head over a
certain financial year and to achieve a growing production, decent and full employment is
required. This in turn leads to a sustainable growth for the community. The target indicators
include per capita economic growth as per the circumstances of the nation, with a minimum of
7% gross growth rate of real GDP per capita; achieving higher levels of economic productivity
through technological advancement, innovation and diversification, with a focus on the labor
intensive sector to increase the employment; and increasing gender equality in non-agricultural
employment.

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Structure of governance to support the goal
Structure of governance for supporting the SDGs requires effective interactions,
infrastructures and institutions (Joshi, Hughes and Sisk 2015). To achieve the goal of decent
work and economic growth, inclusive employment opportunities and growth are required.
According to the structure of target indicators, annual real GDP per capita growth rate, annual
real GDP growth rate per employed person, increase in gender equality, increase in material
footprint and consumptions per capita and per GDP are required to be achieved. For the growth
of decent work and to achieve sustainability by 2030, full and productive employment should be
achieved, irrespective of sex, age and disability and there should be equal pay for the work of
equal value for both men and women. By 2020, there should be a reduction in the number or
proportion of youth, not engaged in education, training or employment. Effective measures
should be taken to reduce forced labor, modern slavery, and human trafficking. Another agendas
of this goal are to reduce the rate of fatal and non-fatal work place injuries, increase in the
national compliances of the labor rights, increase in tourism promotion and jobs to increase
GDP, increase in the branches of commercial banks and ATMs per 100,000 adults and in the
number of savings account, increasing the trade support funding and lastly, by 2020, increasing
the government spending in the social protection and in the employment programs as a
percentage of GDP and national budgets (sustainabledevelopment.un.org 2018). Thus, from the
SDG it can be inferred that, the goal includes multiple sections of the job sector, human and
labor rights as well as factors of economic growth to establish a sustainable economic growth for
the communities as a whole.
The governance structure therefore should cover all these elements of the SDG. As the
objective of these goals is to ensure the well being of all species by protecting the natural

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environment and providing suitable and sustainable infrastructure, thus, interaction between the
institutions is essential for the infrastructure, needed to achieve the goal. As stated by Biermann,
Kanie and Kim (2017), governance refers to the institutions or processes, which are backed by
the political party of the nation, that set some activities that need to be controlled or influenced
for the collective interest. Hence, governance structure for the 8th SDG will include the
employment and production specific factors, such as, ILO and other labor rights organizations,
international political and domestic institutions, non-agricultural employment sectors, that is,
various types of public and private industries. There should be synergic interaction among these
institutions for creating employment opportunities, reducing the gender pay gap, and child labor
and achieving sustainable economic growth. Infrastructures as per the national regulations should
be developed to provide the opportunities. For example, education opportunities should be
provided to all, especially to the children and youth, irrespective of gender and economic
condition, regulations should be imposed and followed strictly against child labor, banks should
expand its operations and ATM infrastructures, and industries should be developed and proper
equipment, capital and other resources should be supported by the government to create
inclusive, full and productive employment and increase production and consumption level,
which in turn increases the total and per capita GDP.

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Figure 1: SDG Governance
(Source: Nilsson, Griggs and Visbeck 2016)
Identification of stakeholders and mapping of their relationships
The stakeholders of the sustainable development goals by the United Nations belong to
all the sectors of the society. For the 8th SDG, the stakeholders are the business and industry,
men, women, children and youth, tourism and other manufacturing sectors and

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commercial banks. As the goal aims to achieve an inclusive economic growth and equal job
opportunities in all types of industries, hence, all the sectors are stakeholder for this goal.
Figure 2: Stakeholder Salience Theory
(Source: Thijssens, Bollen and Hassink 2015)
According to the stakeholder salience theory by Mitchell, Agle and Wood (), stakeholder
salience includes the following attributes: i) the stakeholders’ power of influencing the firms, ii)
legitimacy of the stakeholders with the firm and iii) urgency of the claim of the stakeholders on
the firm. The green colored section implies latent stakeholders, who have only one attribute and
low salience. The stakeholders in the amber color are the expectant stakeholders with two
attributes and moderate salience. They have higher level of engagement with the firms. Lastly,
the red section denotes definitive stakeholders, who have all the three attributes and high
salience. The firms give them immediate priority.

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 Businesses and industries are the definitive stakeholders of the 8th SDG, having all the
three attributes of power, urgency and legitimacy. They can impose their power and
legitimacy on the government to fulfill their demand urgently, since, government support
is urgently required to make developmental strategies and to meet the capital
requirement.
 The men, women, youth and children are the dependent stakeholders, having the
attributes of urgency and legitimacy. As they cannot advocate for their issues themselves
due to lack of power and hence, their issues are highlighted and advocated by the
government, which is dominant stakeholder.
 Other sectors of economy involved in production and consumption of the goods and
services include manufacturing, trade and tourism. These falls under the category of
expectant stakeholders, that is, dominant stakeholders, having the attributes of power and
legitimacy.
 Commercial banks also fall under the category of dominant stakeholders as they will be
benefitted from the aid to expand their branches and ATMs for accomplishing inclusive
growth. They also have the attributes of power and legitimacy.
Core principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME)
Responsible Management Education (PRME) has six core principles which aim to
educate the future and existing managers about implementing sustainable practices effectively to
achieve the sustainable development goals. Those principles are purpose, values, method,
research, partnership and dialogue (unprme.org 2018.).

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The SDG of decent work and economic growth can be appraised for these six principles for
achieving or supporting the goal.
1) Purpose: this aims to develop the abilities of the students to contribute in the future
sustainability for the businesses and community at large. 8th SDG has the target of
reducing the proportion of youth, not engaged in education, training or employment. It
also aims to reduce the child labor proportion and educate them. Thus, by providing the
education opportunities, its purpose of developing the human resource is fulfilled.
2) Values: the values imply that the SDGs should be aligned with the CSR activities of the
organizations, as in case of United Nations Global Compact (unglobalcompact.org 2018).
Regarding the 8th goal, the stakeholder organizations launch CSR activities with a
purpose of the community development. They can create employment opportunities for
the less developed sections of the community, create educational scopes, arrange for
healthcare services or undertake activities to protect the environment, such as,
responsible production and consumption, reducing pollution emitting technologies. They
can contribute in developing the basic infrastructure, which could be beneficial for
tourism. These are also beneficial for the growth of the trade sector.
3) Method: This principle focuses on creating educational frameworks processes, materials
and environment required for effective leadership. In the context of the 8th SDG, this
method is not precisely suitable as there is no scope for creating education frameworks.
4) Research: This principle involves the empirical and conceptual research advancing the
understanding of the dynamics, role and effect of the corporations for creating sustainable
environmental, economic and social values. In this regard, it can be said that for
implementing the targets and activities to achieve the 8th SDG, the organizations and the

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government need to conduct both of types of research to understand the market
requirement, so that production and consumptions wastes can be reduced. Achieving the
sustainable values for all the sections in the society involve reduction in pollution, and
resources. Thus, before undertaking any investment activity, the organizations should
conduct extensive research and understand the dynamics of the existing situations and
take actions accordingly.
5) Partnership: this allows the interaction with the corporate managers to understand the
existing and potential challenges while meeting the environmental and social
responsibilities and explore jointly the ways to mitigate the challenges. Regarding the 8th
SDG, the government and the organizations or two private organizations collaborate to
plan and undertake the developmental activities as per the requirements of the
community. For example, the banks need government support to expand its operations to
remote areas, which in turn contributes in the inclusive economic growth.
6) Dialogue: This last principle allows the stakeholders, that is, the students, educators,
government, business organizations, media, consumers, civil society etc. to have
discussions and debates about the critical issues in relation to the global sustainability and
social responsibility. This principle is very important to evaluate the effectiveness of the
existing measures undertaken for achieving the goals. In the context of the 8th goal, there
is provision for the stakeholders to engage in discussions and debates to measure the
effectiveness of the implemented projects and developmental activities. This measure is
beneficial for understanding that whether the actions have achieved the expected utility,
or the challenges faced while implementing the measures and to find out ways to
overcome the challenges.

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Thus, to support the target of the SDG of decent works and economic growth, the focus is on the
industrial and trade sector development, all inclusive education and employment opportunities,
and development and expansion of commercial banks. To meet these requirements, the
stakeholders follow 5 principles of PRME, except for the methods, that emphasizes on creating
educational frameworks and processes to gain effective learning experiences for a responsible
leadership. As per the need of the society and resource availability, the strategies are planned and
implemented.
Recommendations
Two recommendations can be provided, which are aligned with the core principles of PRME.
1) Organizations can follow the first and second principle, that is, purpose and values, to
define their developmental activities. The purpose message should be clear and have the
focus towards the development of the environment and community. The values should be
designed such that the activities follow the economic and social values of the community
and also bring benefits to the environment. The corporate houses should involve in
activities such as reducing the carbon footprint, planting trees, reduce rapid urbanization
and introduce various social welfare programs for the benefit of the natural environment
and society. Educational programs should be offered to the less developed class and make
them ready for employment. This step would help to achieve the goal for decent work.
They should not practice gender pay gap and employment of child labor. The youth
should be involved in education or job for achieving an inclusive economic growth.
2) The organizations should follow the principle of method while developing the
development plans. The managers of the corporate houses must be educated to evaluate,

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plan and implement the development strategies as per the need and availability of the
resources. This would be a step closer to responsible production and consumption.
Following a method can be helpful in reducing the wastage of resources, which is also
beneficial for achieving sustainability.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that the sustainable development goal of decent work and economic
growth is focused to achieve an inclusive growth for the community. The equality between men
and women workers, reduction in the child labor and unemployed pool of youth and
development and expansion of the commercial bank branches and ATMs are aimed through this
sustainable goals and by following the purpose, values and method principles, the organizations,
who are the dominant stakeholders, can bring sustainable development to the community through
efficient usage of resources. This would not only lead to community development and a
sustainable growth but also preservation of the natural resources can be possible.

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References
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