Sustainable Development Goals Reporting: Evidence from Portuguese Listed Companies

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the UN 2030 Agenda are an opportunity to improve the management of organizations, in order to seek solutions that add value and solve the greatest global challenges, by linking organizational strategies and global priorities. The SDG provide an integrated framework for future-oriented Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) engagement. The way in which organizations evaluate their contributions to the SDG is the key to informing and shaping future engagement and action. Organizations will need to be able to assess their impact on the achievement of the SDG and review their strategies and practices, needing to collect and report new data. Thus, it is important to align the organizations' strategy and the corporate reporting with the SDG. Among the goals of Agenda 2030, we highlight target 12.6 that encourages companies to adopt sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycle. Although many companies mention the SDG in their annual or sustainability/integrated reports, particularly on topics related to climate change, sustainable water management or employment, organizations need a reporting approach that takes into account not only the importance of specific SDG, but also how to measure the level of progress against them. The aim of this study is to explore how Portuguese listed companies have started to engage with the SDG and how this expresses itself into their corporate reporting. Concerning the methodology, a content analysis of their sustainability reports was conducted, seeking to identify the companies that are concerned with SDG-related disclosure, disclosing information about theirs practices promoting SDG achievement.