Corporate Social Responsibility and the Sustainable Development Goals In the Light of Legitimacy Theory

Abstract

The attention of companies focused only on economic issues is becoming a thing of the past, actions focused on social and environmental elements are becoming common in the business sphere, whether for longevity and maintenance of the business, or as required by the external public. In this context, the objective of this work is to verify how the practices of corporate social responsibility (CSR) carried out by publicly traded Brazilian companies, classified as potentially high-level pollutants, are aligned with the objectives of sustainable development (SDG). For this purpose, a qualitative research was carried out, with the application of the content analysis technique. The documents explored were the companies' sustainability and/or annual reports. In all, 15 companies had reports of this nature released for the year 2018. The results indicate that the CSR practices evidenced by potentially polluting companies in their reports have a certain level of alignment with the SDGs. In addition, it is noticeable that there is a tendency for companies to start preparing their socio-environmental reports from the perspective of the SDGs, since the vast majority of the analyzed reports presented an approach to the objectives of sustainable development. In this way, the SDGs can become a new guideline to help companies formulate and execute their CSR. The findings of this research strengthen the assumptions of the theory of legitimacy, in the sense of the need incurred by companies to present themselves as legitimate regarding their operationalization before society. Another contribution is to bring the SDG guidelines closer to the business environment.