Sustainable Horizons 1 (2022) 100012

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Sustainable Horizons
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/horiz

How much is global business sectors contributing to sustainable

development goals?
Lan Song a,b,∗, Xiaojiao Zhan a,b, Huahan Zhang b, Ming Xu c,d, Jianguo Liu e, Chunmiao Zheng a,b,∗
a
Shenzhen Institute of Sustainable Development, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China
b
State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Integrated Surface Water-Groundwater Pollution Control, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen,
518055, China
c
School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
d
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
e
Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48823, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: While the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have explicitly called on businesses to con-
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) tribute, little is known to what extent have the business sectors engaged with the SDGs. Here we benchmarked the
Corporations engagement of the Fortune Global Top 500 corporations with the SDGs based on publicly available information
Business sector
screened between November 1, 2019, and February 15, 2020. The results revealed that 304 of the 500 corpora-
Encourage and regulate
tions had presented relevant content on their websites. However, 32.6% of the corporations tend to match their
usual business practices with relevant SDGs instead of implementing new initiatives. Only 22.8% of the corpo-
rations developed specific actions or strategies for specific SDGs, and only 0.2% developed methods and tools to
evaluate progress. European-headquartered corporations are leading the way to engage with the SDGs, whereas
U.S.- and China-headquartered ones fall short. The SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and SDG 13
(Climate Action) are the most popular SDGs among these corporations. At the same time, SDG 2 (Zero Hunger)
and SDG 14 (Life below Water) received the slightest interest. The level of engagement is uneven across various
business sectors, with the corporations in the Information & Technology sector have largely engaged with the
SDGs. In contrast, the Health Care sector has shown the slightest interest in the SDGs. Our results call for leading
corporations in these sectors for continuous and enhanced efforts to help accelerate the global process towards
the SDGs. Governments could provocatively encourage and regulate business sectors to engage with the SDGs
and disclose uniform data to benchmark the progress towards a sustainable future.

1. Introduction velopment goals into the 14th five-year plan for the country in 2020
(The State Council PRC, 2020). The Netherlands intends to make the
In 2015, all United Nations Member States adopted the 2030 Agenda SDGs the leading policy framework for the country in the next 15 years
for Sustainable Development which provides a shared blueprint for (United Nations (b), 2020). In terms of implementing SDGs at the city
peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the fu- level, New York City is the pioneer city that submitted the city-level
ture (United Nations (a), 2020; STS&P, 2020). At its heart are the 17 SDG implementation report (NYC, 2021). Helsinki followed the pioneer
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aiming to address the global and submitted the SDG implementation report in 2018 (Helsinki, 2021).
challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, cli- The reports at the country and city level mainly illustrate the edges
mate change, environmental degradation, peace, and justice (United Na- and plans of cities to achieve the SDGs from the perspective of
tions (a), 2020). Similar to the Millennium Development Goals, the SDGs governments. Usually, they lack strategies and implementation pro-
aim to mobilize resources from the Member States, but the SDGs go fur- cesses (Rodriguez et al., 2018). Frameworks and action pathways have
ther to explicitly call on businesses to contribute with other stakeholders been developed for the sustainable transformation of cities, and sys-
(SDG Compass Guide, 2020; Malay, 2021). tematic methods were also developed for assessing Spatio-temporal
Many countries and cities have developed their plan to implement progress towards achieving the SDGs at the national and sub-national
SDGs. For instance, China released its first national plan for imple- level (Elmqvist et al., 2019; Rosenzweig & Solecki, 2018; Xu et al.,
menting SDGs back in 2016, and it has integrated the sustainable de- 2020).

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (L. Song), [email protected] (C. Zheng).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.horiz.2022.100012
Received 4 January 2022; Received in revised form 6 February 2022; Accepted 14 February 2022
2772-7378/© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Southern University of Science and Technology. This is an open access article under the
CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
L. Song, X. Zhan, H. Zhang et al. Sustainable Horizons 1 (2022) 100012

Except to implement SDGs at the national and subnational level, the SDGs in their report, it lacks evaluation and tracking tools to bench-
actions from business sectors are of vital importance in achieving the mark the current status and actions in implementing the SDGs in the
SDGs (Pedersen, 2018; Salvia et al., 2019; Topple et al., 2017). Accord- business sectors. Business sectors hold a significant influence on eco-
ing to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development study, nomic and social stability. For instance, The Fortune 500 corporations
the business sectors drive 84% of GDP and 90% of employment oppor- generated $32.7 trillion in revenue and $2.15 trillion in profit, and 69.3
tunities in developing countries and play a vital role in the pursuit of million jobs in 35 countries across 56 industries worldwide in 2018
technological innovation (World Business Council for Sustainable De- (Fortune, 2020). It is essential to assess to what extent the business sec-
velopment, 2020). Therefore, it is essential to call for the effort from tors have engaged with the SDGs considering their roles in economic and
business sectors to align their business value with the SDGs at all stages social importance. To what extent would the business industry stretch
of business development. the effort for sustainable development is critical for policymakers to bet-
Although corporations are profit-driven, with the increasing pres- ter plan their strategy and policies to encourage and regulate companies
sure from policy, market competition, customers, and the general pub- towards achieving SDGs.
lic, among others, business sectors have started to engage with the SDGs To unveil the status of the SDGs adoption in business sectors and
framework. For instance, Danone, the multinational food and beverage identify potential factors affecting the adoption, we reviewed the SDGs
company, released that it is fully committed to the SDGs and has aligned relevant reports of the 500 corporations listed by the Fortune 500 world-
its 2030 goals. According to their annual report, it tends to share sus- wide. We conducted a quantitative analysis to map the SDGs footprints
tainable value efficiently and responsibly and encourages healthier and in 2019. The level of engagement per corporation is benchmarked to-
more sustainable eating behaviors (Danone, 2021). JD, an e-commerce wards the SDGs framework and individual SDGs. We aim to answer the
company, claimed that it fully integrated SDGs into its corporate man- following questions: First, how many Fortune 500 corporations have en-
agement practices. The company promotes the popularization of sustain- gaged with the SDGs framework, to what extent have they engaged with
able consumption concepts and green living while continuously improv- individual SDGs and their priorities? Second, how does the geographic
ing the consumer experience and helping the sustainable development of distribution of companies affect their engagement with the SDGs? Third,
upstream manufacturing by responsible procurement and supply chain how do the engagement with the SDGs and the prioritized SDGs differ
management (JD, 2021). A study showed that business aligning with across industries? Fourth, what is the role of revenue in the engagement
sustainability goals could result in ‘win-win’ situations for economic with the SDGs framework?
progress and sustainable development (Burritt and Schaltegger, 2010).
Companies can respond to the SDGs by technology innovation, such
as the replacement of traditional energy sources by renewable energy 2. Methods
sources and replacing conventional manufacturing and processing prod-
ucts by using information and communication technology and other To answer these questions, we conducted a quantitative analysis to
technical solutions (S&P Global, 2021; Zhu et al., 2019). Simultaneously, map the SDGs footprints across the Fortune 500 corporations worldwide
contributing to the SDGs can enable existing corporations to innovate ranked in the Fortune Global 500 in 2019. The Fortune 500 corpora-
their business processes, capture new market opportunities, attract in- tions are chosen for this study because of their critical role in the global
vestment, and enhance social reputation (de Villiers et al., 2021). It is economy, with $32.7 trillion in revenue and $2.15 trillion in profit and
estimated that the SDGs can unlock the US $12 trillion in business op- $69.3 million jobs in 35 countries across 56 industries worldwide in
portunities by 2030 (United Nations (a), 2020). 2018 (Fortune, 2020). They are the leaders in the business sectors, and
Various studies tend to explore the factors that can affect the corpo- their engagement with the SDGs can make a difference to society. As
ration’s implementation of the SDGs (Martins et al., 2020; Mutale et al., many of them are international companies, the prominent locations of
2019; Vildasen, 2018). An exploratory survey conducted across 81 Euro- these companies are chosen according to the sites of their headquarters.
pean and North American companies among the Financial Times Global These corporations were distributed in 35 countries and regions, cov-
500 revealed that multinational corporations engage more with SDG tar- ering nine business sectors and 56 industries according to the Fortune
gets than others (van Zanten and van Tulder, 2018). A recent study that 500.
interviewed 58 respondents from 16 sample firms located in the Philip- To map the footprints of the SDGs at the corporate level, firstly, we
pines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam showed that multinational en- identified which corporations have mentioned the SDGs on their official
terprises would set particular SDGs during establishing, expanding, or websites by using the following terms: “UN Sustainable Development
subsidiary operations in these countries, and the non-governmental or- Goals,” “Sustainable Development Goals,” “UNSDGs,” and “SDGs.” The
ganizations and the local community could influence their prioritization information was collected from the online pages and the latest annual re-
in selecting the focused SDGs (Ike et al., 2019). Another study revealed port, Corporate social responsibility report, and other online accessible
that several multinational enterprises operating their manufacturing in- reports, if any, that were displayed on their official website. The data
dustry in Indonesia claimed that their initial engagement with the SDGs sources are listed in Supplementary Information 1. If multiple reports
was directly due to regulatory compliance, and only mandatory targets are displayed on a corporation’s official website with SDGs, the latest
were considered. The influence from headquarters directs their decision report or the report with more detailed SDGs prevails. The search was
to consider sustainability issues (Borgert et al., 2018). These case studies conducted manually from November 1, 2019, to February 15, 2020. The
give a peek at the reasons that drive the engagement of business sectors critical information regarding the SDGs from their websites and relative
to the SDGs in specific industries and countries. In terms of the progress reports was extracted and categorized into six categories (0-5):
made toward the SDGs in business sectors, a conceptual framework was
proposed in a recent study and suggested that the internet-of-things and • Unknown (depth = 0): cannot confirm any SDGs footprints because
blockchain technology could help to measure the effort and progress of of inaccessible websites;
business sectors toward achieving the SDGs (de Villiers et al., 2021). • Uninvolved (depth = 1): cannot find any information related to
Another recent study analyzed that 23% of the 2000 largest stock listed SDGs on official websites;
corporations mentioned the SDGs in their annual reports (Van der Waal • Preliminary (depth = 2): mentioned the SDGs briefly without any
and Thijssens, 2020). However, mentioning the SDGs in their annual further information;
report doesn’t necessarily mean they are effectively engaged with them • Elementary (depth = 3): Matched their existing strategies and
or have taken any actions to address the SDGs in their operation. projects with the SDGs framework or individual SDG;
Our understanding of the status and progress of embracing the SDGs • Intermediate (depth = 4): planned strategies or conducted actions
in business sectors is limited. While many corporations mentioned the specially for the SDGs framework and individual SDG;

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Fig. 1. The distribution of the nine business sectors across countries.

• Advanced (depth = 5): developed methods or tools that specifically nine sectors is displayed in Supplementary Information 2. Fig. 1 shows
help assess their impact against relevant SDGs. the relationship between the nine business sectors and the corporation’s
location. The headquarters of the Fortune 500 are distributed across 35
The engagement rate is defined as the percentage of corporations
countries and regions, of which 70.4% of them are distributed among
that are expressed their interests and participated in the SDGs frame-
the U.S., China, Japan, France, and Germany. Both U.S. and China have
work, or to any individual SDG, at the global, regional, country, business
more than 110 top corporations. There is no clear trend observed be-
sector, and individual industry levels, which are calculated according to
tween the distribution of the corporations and their sector categories.
the Eq. 1.
∑5
𝑛𝑖
Engagement Rate = ∑𝑖=2 (1)
5 3.2. Engagement towards the SDGs framework
𝑖=0 𝑛𝑖

in which n represent the number of corporations in each category, i 3.2.1. Global level
represents the depth of that category. The percentage of the Fortune 500 corporations engaged with
The engagement depth is defined as the weighted average of engage- the SDGs framework is encouraging, but many engagements are
ment levels towards the SDGs framework across countries and indus- superficial.
tries. The potential correlation between the average engagement depth We found that the SDGs framework has been adopted by the majority
and revenues is analyzed across countries and industries. The engage- of the Fortune 500 (Fig. 2a). 304 out of the 500 corporations have en-
ment depth per country and per industry are calculated according to gaged with the SDGs framework and presented relative content on their
Eq. 2 and plotted together with the corresponding average revenue with websites. Although 32.6% of corporations offer their sustainable devel-
standard deviations. opment strategies or projects on their website, they have just matched
∑5
𝑛𝑖 ∗𝑖 their usual business against the SDGs instead of planning a new strategy.
Engagement Depth = ∑𝑖=0 (2) 22.8% of corporations developed specific actions or strategies for indi-
5
𝑖=0 𝑛𝑖 vidual SDG. However, the adoption of the SDGs framework is still in its
in which n represent the number of corporations in each category per infancy. There are still 39.0% of the Fortune 500 corporations that didn’t
country or per industry, i represents the depth of that category. The cor- present any SDG context online. 5.2% of the Fortune 500 corporations
relation between the revenue and the corresponding engagement depth have just mentioned the SDGs briefly without further information, im-
with the SDGs framework is explored by linear regression. plying their engagement with the SDGs framework may not have been
adopted in these corporations. 32.6% of companies with elementary en-
3. Results gagement with the SDGs framework have just matched their project and
strategies against the SDGs framework. These companies are still doing
3.1. Characterization and distribution of the Fortune 500 business as usual and have not developed new strategies or new projects
specifically considering the SDGs framework. About 22.8% of the For-
The Fortune 500 are distributed in 56 industries, which can be cate- tune 500 corporations have engaged with the SDGs framework. Only
gorized into nine business sectors based on the main activities of these 0.2% of the corporations developed methods and tools to assess and
corporations. The relationship between the individual industry and the evaluate the progress of their actions towards relevant SDGs.

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Fig. 2. (a) Percentage of the Fortune 500 corporations participating in the SDGs framework by the February 15, 2019. (b) Percentage of the Fortune 500 corporations
participated in each SDG by the February 15, 2019. (c) Number, revenue, and the overall SDGs participation level of the Fortune 500 corporations in different regions
(the countries included in each area can be found in Supplementary Information 3). (d) The percentage of engagement on each SDG of the Fortune 500 corporations
is distributed in different regions.

SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and SDG 13 (Cli- ergy. The goals that are not directly related to business returns are less
mate Action) are the most popular SDGs among the Fortune 500. popular, like Zero Hunger and Life Below Water.
In terms of the engagement with individual SDG, more than 50%
of the Fortune 500 corporations acted toward SDG 8 (Decent Work 3.2.2. Continental level
and Economic Growth) and SDG13 (Climate Action). Meanwhile, SDG Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) region is leading the SDG
12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), SDG 5 (Gender Equal- engagement compared to Asia-Pacific and the Americas. Although
ity), and SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) received attention from the total revenue of the Fortune 500 corporations distributed in the
47.2%, 46.6%, and 45.2% of the Fortune 500 corporations, respectively EMEA region is the lowest compared to the corporations located in the
(Fig. 2b). SDG 14 (Life below Water), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), and SDG 6 Americas and Asia-Pacific, they are leading the way towards engaging
(Water and Sanitation) received the lowest attention among the Fortune all the SDGs (Fig. 2c&d). More than 50% of the EMEA-headquartered
500 corporations (approximately 30%). The difference in engagement Fortune 500 corporations have engaged with the SDG 3 (Good Health
rate across the seventeen SDGs reveals the business industries are either and Well-Being), SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 5 (Gender Equality),
interested in the high-profile goals, such as climate action and gender SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Eco-
equality, to improve their public image or the goals that closely align nomic Growth), SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), SDG
with their business interests, such as decent work and economic growth, 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), SDG 12 (Responsible Con-
responsible consumption and production, or affordable and clean en- sumption and Production), SDG 13 (Climate Action), and SDG 17 (Part-

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L. Song, X. Zhan, H. Zhang et al. Sustainable Horizons 1 (2022) 100012

nerships for the Goals). Specifically, SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 8 China are ranked at the fourth and the third from last (Fig. 3b), imply-
(Decent Work and Economic Growth) received the highest engagement ing most companies based in the two countries have not taken practical
of the EMEA-headquartered Fortune 500 corporations (approximately actions towards the SDGs.
75%).
The Asia-Pacific region has the highest number of Fortune 500 3.3. The unequal engaging rate among individual SDG across countries
corporations and the highest total revenue among the three regions
(217/500). However, only 54% of corporations have engaged with the Fig. 3a reveals the detailed engagement rate of the Fortune 500
SDGs. Like the EMEA-headquartered top corporations, the SDGs that re- on individual SDGs across countries. Results showed that SDG 8 (De-
ceived the highest engagements are SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic cent Work and Economic Growth) and SDG 13 (Climate Action) are
Growth) and SDG 13 (Climate Action) among the Asia-Pacific headquar- the most popular goals, especially among the European-headquartered
tered Fortune 500 corporations. Except the SDG 8 and 13, none of the countries. However, only 33.1% and 28.6% of the U.S.- headquartered
other SDGs received more than 50% engagement from the Fortune 500 and China-headquartered Fortune 500 corporations have acted toward
in the Asia-Pacific region. the SDG 13 (Climate Action), which is their highest engaging rate among
Although the total revenue and the number of the Fortune 500 cor- the seventeen SDGs in both countries. The engagement rates for the
porations located in the Americas are slightly higher than those in SDG 8 are only 30.6% and 28.6% among the U.S.- headquartered and
the EMEA region, the engagement rate of the Americas-headquartered China-headquartered Fortune 500 corporations, respectively. Consider-
Fortune 500 with the SDGs framework is the lowest among the three ing many Fortune 500 corporations are based in the U.S. and China,
regions. Results showed that none of the SDGs received more than such a low engaging rate implies both countries haven’t implemented
50% engagement from the Americas-headquartered Fortune 500 cor- proper guidelines or policies for businesses to participate in the SDGs
porations. Interestingly, the SDGs received the highest attention from framework, or the awareness of SDGs framework in both countries are
the Americas-headquartered Fortune 500 corporations are consistent still pending improvement.
with the EMEA and the Asia-Pacific region, i.e., the SDG 8 (Decent The SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) and the SDG 14 (Life below Water) re-
Work and Economic Growth, 36.3%) and SDG 13 (Climate Action, ceived the lowest attention from the Fortune 500 across all countries.
37.7%). At the same time, the engagement with SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanita-
tion), SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), SDG 10 (Reduce
3.2.3. National level Inequalities), and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) varies
The Japanese, French, German, and Britain corporations are more significantly across countries. These variations align with the differences
advanced in the SDGs adoption compared to the U.S.- and China- in industry structure, geological locations, and culture across nations. It
headquartered corporations. Only 3.8%, 22.6%, 24.1%, and 6.3% of is interesting to find the Fortune 500 corporations based in Canada, the
Japanese, French, German and British companies didn’t display SDGs Netherlands, and Australia have pretty low engagement rates on SDG 6
in context online, respectively (Fig. 3a). Japan has the best perfor- (Water and Sanitation) and SDG 14 (Life below Water).
mance among the five top countries, in which only 11.5% of Japan-
headquartered corporations have no or preliminary engagement with 3.3.1. Sector level
the SDGs. Most Japan-headquartered corporations (88.5%) displayed To check which sectors are more advanced in the implementation
their sustainable development strategies or projects with relevant of SDGs and on which individual SDGs, help companies to benchmark
SDGs (elementary level, 75.0%) or had specific actions or strategies their performance among the companies under the same sectors, and
for individual SDG (intermediate level, 13.5%). 3.4% of Germany- guide the policymakers to plan better their strategies in involving more
headquartered corporations developed tools or methods to benchmark companies to implement the SDGs we plotted the sector’s performance
their performance against each SDG (advanced level), which is the high- in Fig. 4.
est across all the countries. For countries that have less than twenty For- The Information & Technology sector has the highest engage-
tune 500, the UK, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia, and ment rate to the overall SDGs framework across all industries.
Italy showed an impressive engagement with the SDGs. When looking at the nine sectors, although the manufacturing sec-
In terms of the average engagement depth, the Fortune 500 lo- tor has the largest share in the Fortune 500 corporations, Information
cated in the UK, Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, and Spain & Technology sector has the highest engagement rate to the overall
displayed the highest engagement level towards the SDGs framework SDGs framework across all sectors, with 69.6% to the SDG 4 (Qual-
(Fig. 3b). These companies have not only revealed the SDGs related ity Education) and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), and
content on their website or their annual report, but the majority of 73.9% to SDG 13 (Climate Action) (Fig. 4). It was followed by the
them have also developed strategies or conducted actions specially Manufacturing and Energy sector, with several engagement rates are
for the SDGs framework and individual SDG. Although Japanese com- higher than 50% to the individual SDG. Less than half of the top
panies have the highest engagement rate towards the SDGs frame- corporations in the Retail and wholesale sector, the Transportation
work, the average engagement depths are not as advanced as European and logistics sector, and the Engineering and Constructions sector are
countries. committed to the SDGs framework. The highest engagement made by
The U.S. and China have the most significant number of Fortune 500 the Fortune 500 corporations in the sector of Retail and wholesale
corporations, while their engagement with the overall SDGs framework and the Transportation and logistics sector is on the SDG 8 (Decent
is pending improvement. Both U.S. and China have more than 110 top Work and Economic Growth), which is 40%. These sectors don’t pay
corporations, but their engagements with SDGs are inadequate (Fig. 3a). much attention to goals like life below water or ending poverty and
Incredibly, 57.9% of U.S.-headquartered Fortune 500 didn’t display any hunger.
SDGs relative context online, 8.3% and 15.7% of them presented ele- The Health Care sector has the lowest engagement rate with
mentary and intermediate engagement with the SDGs. Only 17.4% and SDGs among all the sectors analyzed. Only 37.5% of the corpora-
0.8% of U.S.-headquartered Fortune 500 showed intermediate and ad- tions in the Health care sector have engaged with the SDGs focusing on
vanced SDG engagement. The engagement with the SDGs among the SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being) and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Eco-
China-based Fortune 500 were even worse; more than 70% of the For- nomic Growth). Health care corporations among the Fortune 500 has
tune 500 based in China haven’t engaged with the SDGs yet in 2018, and zero engagement towards the SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 6 (Clean Water
22.7% of them only presented elementary engagement with the SDGs, and Sanitation), SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), SDG 9 (Industry,
which leave only 6.7% showed intermediate engagement with the SDGs. Innovation, and Infrastructure), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Commu-
The average engagement depth of corporations based in the U.S. and nities), SDG 14 (Life below Water), SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong

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Fig. 3. (a) The number of the Fortune 500 corporations across countries and regions and their engaging rate with individual SDG across countries and regions.
Information regarding the SDGs engagement in more countries, please see Supplementary Information 4. (b) The average engagement depth (dots) to the SDGs
framework across countries and regions with standard deviation (the EMEA region is marked in blue color, The Americas is marked in red color, the Asia-Pacific
region is marked in green color), plotted together with average revenue (triangle) in each country with standard deviation. The number marked in blue on the top
of (b) represents the number of the Fortune 500 in each country. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web
version of this article.)

Institutions) and the SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). These findings the total number of Fortune 500 in these industries is relatively low.
revealed that the health care industry is lagging in adopting the SDGs Meanwhile, wholesalers specialized in food & grocery and electronic &
framework compared to other industries. office
Equipment, companies in textiles industries, insurance companies
3.3.2. Industry-level specialized in property and causality (mutual), diversified financials,
The engagement depth varies significantly across industries. and Apparel industries are not motivated to take any actions towards
The Food industry, health care specialized in pharma & other services, the SDGs framework. The engagement depth varies significantly within
medical products & Equipment, and tobacco companies showed the most industries, implying there is no common standard or common sense
most profound engagement toward the SDGs framework. All compa- toward understanding the value of adopting the SDGs framework in
nies planned strategies towards the SDGs framework (Fig. 5). However, these industries.

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Fig. 4. Engagement with the SDGs at the nine sectors: (a) on the overall framework and (b) on individual SDG.

Engagement with the individual SDG is linked with the intrin- mark their progress, and better plan their strategies to achieve the 2030
sic characters of each industry (Supplementary Information 5 & 6). agenda. Many efforts have been made to create measurable, compara-
In corresponding to their role to the society and their impact on the en- ble, and accessible methods to track the progress of the SDGs at dif-
vironment, petroleum refining companies are leading the engagement ferent levels. For instance, the United Nations built the SDG Progress
with all the SDGs other than the SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 6 (Clean Wa- Chart 2020 to evaluate global progress (United Nations (c), 2021). The
ter and Sanitation), SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), SDG 8 (De- United Nations global compact system has developed an evaluation and
cent Work and Economic Growth), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption participation system to assess the engagement from business sectors.
and Production), SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 14 (Life below Water), Yet, only 28 companies in their system have reported on the SDGs
SDG 15 (Life on Land), SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions), (UNglobalcompact, 2020). The Times Higher Education Impact Rank-
and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). Similarly, Banks (Commer- ings has also introduced measures to benchmark the performance of
cial and Savings) are leading the engagement with SDG 1 (No Poverty), universities against the SDGs (The Times Higher Education, 2021). A
SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 5 (Gender Equality), and SDG 10 (Re- global-scale machine learning-based human footprint index was built to
duce Inequalities), which reflects the role of banks to the society. Motor evaluate the progress of 43 countries on achieving SDG15 by analyzing
Vehicles and Parts are leading the SDG commitments relevant to their the satellite images (Keys et al., 2021). A composite SDG Index classifies
responsibility to the community as well, i.e., the SDG 3 (Good Health the 17 SDGs into four directions, i.e., society, economy, environment,
and Well-being), SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), and and means of implementation and cooperation was developed to reveal
SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities). the performance of achieving SDGs across 15 countries (Huan et al.,
There is no clear trend between the SDGs engagement and the 2021).
difference in industry distribution across countries. Although the This study mapped in detail the engagement rate of the Fortune 500
number of Fortune 500 corporations distributed in the U.S. and China corporations with the overall SDGs framework and their in-depth en-
are close (121 in U.S. and 119 in China), the industrial structure in gagement with individual SDG for the first time. Yet there are many
the U.S. is more diverse among the Fortune 500 corporations. The For- Fortune 500 corporations across industries that fall short of engaging
tune 500 corporations are spread out in 47 industries, whereas the top the SDGs framework. In addition, many corporations tend to match
corporations are only distributed across 29 industries in China. Japan their usual business route towards the relative SDGs instead of plan-
has 52 corporations among the Fortune 500 corporations across 19 ning new strategies for the SDGs. Their disclosures of engagement with
industries. France and Germany have 31 and 29 Fortune 500 corpo- the SDGs essentially add value to their branding (Lu et al., 2020). The
rations, respectively, distributed among 21 industries in both coun- primary motivations for specific industries could mainly be due to the
tries. There is no clear link between the engagement with the SDGs expected financial benefits (Naidoo & Gasparatos, 2018). Less than 1%
and the industry structure across countries, implying the difference of corporations developed tools and methods to assess and evaluate
in industry distribution doesn’t play an essential role in the SDGs the progress of their action against relevant SDGs. These findings ex-
engagement. press concerns over the progress of adopting the SDGs framework in
There is no clear trend observed between the ranking/revenue of business sectors. Meanwhile, the low uptake of the SDGs framework
corporations and their engagement with the SDGs (Supplementary In- across industries may indicate that it needs to be better structured to
formation 7). The correlation between the revenue and the engagement guide the business and lead the transition towards a more sustainable
level of the 500 corporations is 0.040, implying the engagement with society.
the SDGs is barely associated with their revenue. The present study revealed that the location of headquarters plays
a vital role in affecting the SDGs engagement in the business sectors.
4. Discussion European-headquartered corporations are leading the way, whereas the
Global 500 corporations located in the U.S. and China fall short on
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals are the essential targets to the engagement rate and engagement level with the SDGs. Such differ-
achieving the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. The Goals ences may associate with regional and country policies. A previous study
are set to help countries and cities identify their challenges, bench- showed that government regulations significantly impact the environ-

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L. Song, X. Zhan, H. Zhang et al. Sustainable Horizons 1 (2022) 100012

Fig. 5. The average engagement depth

to the SDGs across the individual indus-
try with standard deviation (colors rep-
resent the extensive industry categoriza-
tion, the purple triangle represents the re-
tail & wholesale industry, the red rect-
angle represents the health care industry,
the blue rectangle represents the manu-
facturing industry, green rectangle repre-
sents the information transmission, soft-
ware, and information industry, the open
blue rectangle represents the financial ser-
vices industry, red circle represents the
transport & logistics industry, the black
diamond represents the energy, utilities,
and mining industry, the grey rectangle
represents the engineering &construction
industry, the orange rectangle represents
the miscellaneous industry), plotted to-
gether with average revenue (open trian-
gle) in each industry with standard devi-
ation. The number marked in blue on the
right edge represents the number of the
Fortune 500 in each industry. (For inter-
pretation of the references to color in this
figure legend, the reader is referred to the
web version of this article.)

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L. Song, X. Zhan, H. Zhang et al. Sustainable Horizons 1 (2022) 100012

mental performance of heavily polluting industries (Söderholm et al., able awareness of higher management in the business sector, among
2019). Strict ecological regulations positively influence multinational others.
enterprises’ commitment to the environment (Lin et al., 2019). Coun-
tries need to align visions further and share experiences to promote the
SDGs among business sectors. On the other hand, multinationals are as 5. Conclusions
global citizens to bring SDG-related business practices to other coun-
tries through their worldwide outreach and help set higher expectations The present study evaluated the engagement of the Fortune 500 cor-
and standards for local businesses. For example, Siemens developed a porations with the SDGs framework across business sectors and catego-
methodology to evaluate their contribution to achieving the SDGs in rized their meeting into different levels. It revealed that Europe, Mid-
different countries (Siemens, 2019). dle East & Africa (EMEA) region is leading the SDG engagement com-
In terms of the engagement with individual SDG, it was found that pared to Asia-Pacific and the Americas. The U.S. and China have the
corporations are selective in deciding which SDGs they would like to en- most significant number of Fortune 500 corporations, while their en-
gage. Some SDGs can give an edge in the fierce competition with other gagement with the overall SDGs framework is pending improvement.
companies (Schramade, 2017). SDGs such as SDG 8 (Decent Work and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and SDG 13 (Climate Ac-
Economic Growth) and SDG 13 (Climate Action), which help address tion) are the most popular SDGs among the Fortune 500. At the busi-
cost efficiency, the well-being of employees, and improve the brand- ness sector level, the information & technology sector has the high-
ing image of corporations, are the most popular SDGs among the For- est engagement rate to the overall SDGs framework across all indus-
tune 500 corporations. Previous studies also pointed out that corpora- tries, whereas the health care sector has the lowest engagement rate
tions prefer to disclose their engagement close to their core business with SDGs among all the sectors analyzed. Engagement with the in-
(ElAlfy et al., 2020). SDGs like SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG 14 (Life dividual SDG may be linked with the intrinsic characters of each in-
below Water) may not give a clear advantage for businesses, which re- dustry. Although the overall engagement rate is encouraging among
ceived the slightest interest from the Fortune 500 corporations. How to the Fortune 500, the engagement depth varies significantly across in-
balance and encourage the business industry to engage with more SDGs dustries and countries. The findings revealed the current status and
is pending discussion. potential gaps of the SDGs framework across countries and business
Engagement with individual SDG varies significantly across indus- sectors. Our findings call for actions from national and subnational
tries. This could be associated with the profit, the education level, governments to better evaluate the SDGs’ implementation across the
awareness of employees, and the role of industries in society. For in- business sector and provide policy preference to corporations that are
stance, high profitable industries such as Information and Technology more willing to participate and implement the SDGs in their busi-
industry have the highest engagement across the more significant in- ness planning. The categorization method in this work can be ap-
dustry categories. It may be due to the high profit in this industry, and plied to monitor the SDGs engagement among business sectors over the
their employees are generally highly educated. However, with a vital years.
role in society, health care is the least prepared industry to transform As the first detailed assessment of industrial engagement towards
towards achieving the SDGs. This finding concurs with the situation un- the SDGs framework and individual SDG, we have only included the
der COVID-19. The health care system in multiple countries is under the Fortune 500 corporations. All the data was collected and analyzed
pressure of getting sustainable and flexible support from administrative manually. Hence, this study gives a lead on how the top players in
and resources aspects. When taking a closer look, heavily polluting in- the business sectors perform in achieving the SDGs, but it is not the
dustries such as petroleum refining companies engage the most with the whole picture. Future research could focus on automatically collect-
SDGs. Nevertheless, considering their contribution to the economy and ing data from a much larger sample size and developing systematic
society and the amount of pollution emission, their engagement with and comprehensive evaluation tools to assess the progress of SDG path-
the SDGs may still need to be improved. These findings imply that ev- ways in business sectors. In addition, even among the Fortune 500
ery industry has its uniqueness. It is essential to evaluate the role of corporations, some companies don’t have an English website, and the
individual industry to society and the sustainable future of humankind website of one of the America-based companies was broken. These
when setting targets to assess their progress towards adopting the facts added barriers to data processing. Besides, how the SDGs engage-
SDGs. ment is demonstrated in each company’s report or the website varies
The present study calls for regular and continuous efforts to monitor in style and details. As one of the first few studies in this field, our
the progress in business sectors. Compared to the possibility of affecting findings not only lay a theoretical foundation for future research to
the decision at the city or country level, corporations are much easier quantitatively evaluate the engagement of corporations towards the
to be affected by policymakers, customers, marketing competitors, the SDGs framework but also call for attention from top business players
general public, and other sources. Monitoring the engagement with the to form a universal way to disclose their engagement with the SDGs
SDGs in the business industry can help to provide data, raise the com- framework.
petition among corporations, add advantage to businesses with strong
social responsibilities and heavy engagement to our planet’s future, and Declaration of Competing interests
hence accelerate their path towards engaging with relevant SDGs. Gov-
ernments could provocatively encourage and regulate business sectors The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
to engage with the SDGs for a sustainable future. For instance, gov- interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
ernments could form regulations to uniform how corporations disclose the work reported in this paper.
their engagement with the SDGs. The governmental agencies can set pri-
mary targets to regulate the commitment of corporations to the SDGs.
Meanwhile, stimulation policies should be implemented to promote the CRediT authorship contribution statement
corporations that are proactively participate in the SDGs framework,
disclose the relevant data and release their annual SDGs report or de- Lan Song: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Data cu-
velop the SDGs-oriented strategies. Governments and future research ration, Writing – original draft, Resources, Writing – review & editing.
can also investigate further the potential barriers that hinder the en- Xiaojiao Zhan: Data curation, Formal analysis, and Writing – original
gagement with SDGs in the business sectors to help them in the tran- draft. Huahan Zhang: Visualization. Ming Xu: Supervision, Writing –
sition toward sustainability. The barriers can be a lack of sustainable- review & editing. Jianguo Liu: Supervision, Writing – review & editing.
oriented suppliers on their production supply chain or a lack of sustain- Chunmiao Zheng: Funding acquisition, Supervision, Validation.

9
L. Song, X. Zhan, H. Zhang et al. Sustainable Horizons 1 (2022) 100012

Acknowledgments The Times Higher Education. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/impactrankings#!

/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/undefined. Access on 26th Au-
gust 2021 (2021)
This work was funded by Shenzhen Science and Technology In- UNglobalcompact. https://www.unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc/participants/search?
novation Commission under the project “Shenzhen strives to build utf8=%E2%9C%93&search%5Bkeywords%5D=&search%5Baction_platforms%5D%
a sustainable development demonstration pioneer 2020-2025” (No. 5B%5D=11&search%5Bper_page%5D=10&search%5Bsort_field%5D=&search%
5Bsort_direction%5D=asc. access on 2020 Nov 11th (2020)
RKX20200327092603866). United Nations (a), https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-
development-goals/. Accessed on 20 Feb 2020 (2020)
Supplementary materials Topple, C, Donovan, JD, Masli, EM, Borgert, T, 2017. Corporate Sustainability Assess-
ments: MNE engagement with sustainable development and the SDGs. Transnational
Corporations 24, 61–71.
Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in United Nations (c), 2021. Sustainable development goals progress chart 2020 https://
the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.horiz.2022.100012. sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/26727SDG_Chart_2020.pdf. Ac-
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