Abstract:

The United Nations initiated the Global Compact in 2000 to encourage businesses around the world to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies, and to report on their implementation. In 2007, the Global Compact spawned Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) to transform business and management education, research and thought leadership globally, while promoting awareness about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and developing the responsible business leaders of tomorrow. In 2015, PRME spawned AIM2Flourish to foster attention on how the seventeen SDGs of the United Nations are being successfully addressed by businesses that are concomitantly succeeding economically. This UN-supported program is based at the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. This program has been in existence for ten years. I will investigate changes in the relative attention paid to SDGs by business executives and management students as exemplified in the video interview data of the AIM2Flourish Project. Preliminary analysis of the data finds nearly half of the focus of business executives on SDGs involves alleviating poverty. Very little attention is paid to other SDGs such as mitigating marine debris. The implications of such differential attention will be parsed. Suggestions for appropriate remedial actions will be put forth.