DEVELOPMENT AGENDA 2030: STUDYING BUSINESS LEADERSHIP’S ROLE FOR SUSTAINABLE VALUE CREATION

Abstract

Signed in September 2015, by 193 member nations of the UN, Agenda 2030 comprise of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets for facilitating global transformation needed for sustainability. These goals globally require partnership between all entities, especially businesses given its role as driver of economic growth. Given the impact of industrial and economic activity on climate and earth’s natural resources, governments and civil society expect businesses to look beyond economic value creation and be accountable to the larger stakeholders. Through its commitment to Agenda 2030 and SDGs, business can actively participate in the transformational journey for achieving sustainable development and thereby create higher value. However, literature shows challenges faced by business in achieving sustainable development. Literature identifies four variables for managing change required to achieve sustainable development viz., drivers, enablers, pathway and evaluators. Literature on change management shows leadership is a key intervening variable and driver for organizational change in business. Literature review also highlights gap in current context for moving towards sustainability paradigm. Based on review of literature, a conceptual paper on the emerging problems is proposed to address. Thus, the paper is study on leadership and other variables for managing cultural and institutional change for sustainable value creation. The paper concludes with change management framework for sustainable value creation linked to the four variables identified through literature review viz., leadership as driver, SBD approach as enabler, incremental change model as pathway and SDGs as evaluators. The paper further provides for leadership approach in form of sustainable business leadership and success factors required for such leadership along with thematic model for demonstrating committed sustainable business leadership for driving organizational synergy to achieve SDGs.