About Journal

Dear Readers,

If you are familiar with Education of Economists and Managers, you will know that the authors of this journal always cover topics that are of interest to economists, managers, and other professionals. When I was asked to be the editor of an issue of the quarterly, I tried to find a topic that met this criterion but was also important to me personally.
That is how I came up with Sustainable Development Goals, which set out a roadmap for the most important challenges of our time, the transition to a sustainable development path, and which can be interpreted at individual, corporate, public, and global levels. In the sustainability policy of the UN, the document titled Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN, 2015) is a plan of action for people, the planet, and prosperity. This is the first document that explicitly combines solidarity, the reduction of inequality at all levels and sustainable development. Earlier, the Millennium Development Goals (UN, 2000) had in fact already mentioned all three pillars of sustainability, but there the main message was still global solidarity, and most of the goals and targets as well as the expectation of partnership were primarily directed towards Member States.

In addition to integrated thinking and the declaration of overall responsibility, I also like the symbolism of how the goals are interlinked and interdependent, how this interdependence makes it clear that the most important of the three pillars, the foundation of all, is environmental sustainability. The Stockholm Resilience Centre’s wedding cake illustrates this best. Folke and his colleagues (2016) show precisely the issues of food security in their model, but thinking about goals must be fundamentally determined by their approach. We may have moved beyond paying attention to the economic pillar of development, but it is still wrong to think that the pillars are of equal importance or to think about them in silos. We need to think in an integrated way, where the natural environment, the biosphere, is the basis of our existence and in this way the economy and society have to serve the biosphere, and, moreover, the economy must serve society.
Some of the collected papers are linked to several SDGs, others can be linked to one SDG specifically. The sectors covered also vary: there are papers from the food and wine industry, research organisations, financial institutions, and one investigates the representation of the topic in social media. Three of the five papers emphasise the role of the corporate side, while the remaining two examine the issue from the consumer perspective, emphasising the role of companies in social education. The methodologies are also diverse: manual and computer-assisted content analysis, sophisticated statistical methods, or usage of qualitative interviews can be observed.
Our article, written with my PhD students Nada Omar Hassan Ali and Elhassan Kotb Abdelrahman Radwan, investigates the state of SDG disclosure in European financial institutions’ Integrated Reports. For example, our study demonstrates that the European financial sector does indeed focus, most typically, on the environmental pillar: climate action (SDG13) and affordable and clean energy (SDG7) are the most reported goals, but the less economically tangible, nature-related SDGs, like life below water (SDG14) and life on land (SDG15), are underreported. The financial sector, as an intermediary, plays a central role in the economy: they have to deal with what customers and borrowers need to take responsibility for.

On the theme of requirements: Katalin Tardos and Veronika Paksi’s paper examines the issue of gender equality, a topic that is typically treated as a social goal and highlighted in several international guidelines. More specifically, their research investigates whether the formalisation, often due to external expectations, and the existence of Equality Plans improve the circumstances in research institutions in Hungary. They conclude that if the issue is not included in the strategic priorities, we cannot expect to see any impactful change, e.g., no significant reduction in the gender wage gap, no major change in women’s representation in senior leadership. Their findings can be suitably extended to any SDG-related issue: even in highly effective, well-managed organisations, real impact can only be achieved on issues that are considered sufficiently important and willing to be integrated into different levels of organisational functioning, strategy, and operations. The Equality Plan, policy, and regulation are effective tools, but it is not enough to just give the semblance of an equality plan (e.g., because of tendering obligations), as it is only through a real commitment to the plan that it will have a significant impact.
Family businesses are often a good example of the importance of integrating values into business operations. The paper of Balázs Heidrich, Krisztina Németh, Szilárd Németh, and Nóra Vajdovich, although not explicitly naming them, is concerned with the manifestation of SDGs in family businesses. It can be seen that the authors speak as much about the topic, even if implicitly, as about the family wineries they present. Whilst they may not use the sustainability vocabulary of multinationals, the essence of the operation is non-financial aspects and long-term orientation in value creation, based on different levels of responsibility (for the family, for employees, for the local community, for the business partners and for the natural environment) in business operations. Similar to the paper on reports, communication, and expectations of financial institutions, the authors have also investigated the internal and external motivations for responsibility and the expectations of different stakeholders, with implications stretching beyond family businesses to firms in general.

Consumers are, without doubt, key stakeholders, but they also have a high responsibility for achieving sustainable solutions in consumption. This is the message of SDG12, where sustainable consumption and production are handled together. The paper of Kristina Steinbiß, Elisabeth Fröhlich, and Julia Sander fills the research gap on managing sustainable consumption through the Customer Journey based on one of the models of sustainable consumption, the SHIFT model. Based on the model, there are five drivers of sustainable consumption, including social influence and the tangibility of sustainable consumption possibilities. Some of the dimensions are easier to influence, but all of them must be taken into account to achieve more sustainable consumption patterns. As the research of the authors demonstrated, environmental motivations are usually secondary to motivations pertaining to selfinterest, so personal values and mindsets, as well as communication and education needed for changing them to be more sustainable, are of crucial importance.
The paper of Tímea Emese Tóth aims to map the discourse about sustainability on Twitter in three time periods, presenting the development and changes of sustainability notions over time based on the communications on Earth Overshoot Day. Delivering evidence for the priority role of the environmental pillar of sustainability at the global level, dictates a focus on nature-related problems, challenges, and solutions. At the individual level – related to the previous paper – responsible consumption and sustainability mindsets play a central role. As in the case of banks’ reports as a source of communication, SDG14 and SDG15 are also overlooked topics in social media. This means that among other SDGs, communication and social education play a particularly important role in these areas.

To summarize, I am convinced that the current issue on the SDGs presents the relevance, importance, complexity, and beauty of this topic. I am grateful to all the authors for writing their articles, but even more so for dealing with the question of sustainability. I hope that the articles will inspire readers to play their part in taking responsibility as we face our biggest and most important challenge.

Dr. Zsuzsanna Győri
Head of the Centre of Excellence for Sustainability Impacts in Business and Society (CESIBUS)
Associate Professor at the Faculty of Finance and Accountancy of Budapest Business School

Reference
Folke, C., Biggs, R. Norström, A. V., Reyers, B., & Rockström, J. (2016). Social-ecological resilience and biosphere-based sustainability science. Ecology and Society, 21 (3), 41.
United Nations (2015). Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Retrieved from: https://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/
RES/70/1&Lang=E (accessed on 15 June 2021) https://sdgs.un.org/goals