Nonet G Abord-Hugon, Gössling T, Van Tulder R, Bryson J M
Jönköping International Business School, Region Småland, Jönköping, Sweden.
Present Address: Centre of excellence for Sustainability, KEDGE Business School, Bordeaux, France.
J Bus Ethics. 2022;180(4):945-957. doi: 10.1007/s10551-022-05192-0. Epub 2022 Sep 1.
The world is not on track to achieve Agenda 2030-the approach chosen in 2015 by all UN member states to engage multiple stakeholders for the common goal of sustainable development. The creation of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) arguably offered a new take on sustainable development by adopting hybrid and principle-based governance approaches, where public, private, not for profit and knowledge-institutions were invited to engage around achieving common medium-term targets. Cross-sector partnerships and multi-stakeholder engagement for sustainability have consequently taken shape. But the call for collaboration has also come with fundamental challenges to meaningful engagement strategies-when private enterprises try to establish elaborate multi-stakeholder configurations. How can the purpose of businesses be mitigated through multi-stakeholder principle-based partnerships to effectively serve the purpose of a common sustainability agenda? In selecting nine scholarly contributions, this special issue aims at advancing this discourse. To stimulate further progress in business studies, this introductory essay, furthermore, identifies three pathways for research on multi-stakeholder engagement processes in support of the Decade of Action along three coupling lines: multi-sector alignment (relational coupling), operational perception alignment (cognitive coupling) and goal and strategic alignment (material coupling).
世界并未走上实现《2030年议程》的正轨，该议程是2015年联合国所有成员国为实现可持续发展这一共同目标而选择的多方利益相关者参与的方法。17个可持续发展目标（SDGs）的制定，可以说是通过采用混合式和基于原则的治理方法，为可持续发展提供了一种新的视角，在这种方法中，公共部门、私营部门、非营利组织和知识机构被邀请围绕实现共同的中期目标展开合作。因此，跨部门伙伴关系和多方利益相关者参与可持续发展的格局已经形成。但是，当私营企业试图建立精心设计的多方利益相关者结构时，合作的呼声也带来了对有意义的参与战略的根本性挑战。如何通过基于多方利益相关者原则的伙伴关系来缓和企业的目标，以有效地服务于共同的可持续发展议程的目标？在挑选九篇学术论文时，本期特刊旨在推动这一讨论。此外，为了促进商业研究的进一步发展，这篇引言文章沿着三条耦合线确定了支持行动十年的多方利益相关者参与过程研究的三条途径：多部门协调（关系耦合）、运营认知协调（认知耦合）以及目标和战略协调（物质耦合）。
