prioritize next actions, to guide in reworking the research questions, and to gather an overall explanation for the phenomenon in question (Gillham, 2000).
The research log contains data about each company’s approaches to the SDGs. I started filling it in early and complemented the information during the whole data collection and analysis phase. The research log helped whenever a birds-eye view of a company’s activities was needed. It is
constructed in Excel as it provides the needed possibilities to reformulate data in an extracted format and also helps doing initial analysis of the data with help of simple variables.
To ease the data processing, color codes were taken to use for visualizing roughly how well the company’s SDG activities match with the actual Targets mentioned in the SDGs, how novel they are, how well the company addresses the intended beneficiaries of the Goal, and how well the company measures the impacts of the activities it reports about.
Green color in the research log would have marked that the company’s activities are well in line with the Targets of the Goal in question, the company addresses similar beneficiaries that the Goal speaks of, measures the long-term impacts of its activities, and it has started clearly new activities due to its commitments to the SDGs. However, no company was marked green for any of its SDG activities in this study. Orange color was used to mark that the company’s SDG-activities are partly
in line with the Targets of the Goal they are related to, but there are mismatches between what the company reports and what the Goal says. Beneficiaries of the company’s activities may not be quite the same as those mentioned in the Goal’s Targets, or the company has mainly continued activities that were ongoing already in 2014. Measurement of long-term impacts is not judged sufficient. Red color indicates that the company’s Goal activities are a poor match with the SDGs. The activity does not follow the purpose of the Goal. The company reports mainly activities that are not part of the Goal’s Targets for groups that are not in the scope of it. It does not measure impacts in any relevant way and has clearly labeled as SDG-related activities that have been started earlier or for other reasons than the company’s SDG commitment.
The color-coding is the researcher’s subjective interpretation of the company’s approach in relation to the SDG commitment. It is used for gaining the visual overall understanding of the company’s SDG approach in relation to the aims of this study. The color-coding is not a judgement of the rightfulness of the companies’ activities as such, but of their novelty, their match with the SDGs and of the company’s ability to prove actual progress from the activity.
In the next chapters, I scrutinize the companies’ materials to find out how large PC manufacturers’
commitment to the SDGs reflects in the companies: what new activities companies due to their commitment to the SDGs; whom these companies see as beneficiaries in these activities; and how they measure progress against the SDGs.
4 T
HEC
OMPANYC
ASESIn this chapter, I present and discuss the individual cases of each company. The companies are given a voice in this chapter through quotations and examples of their approaches to the SDGs here.
The analysis of company materials proceeds from looking into which Goals the company addresses and how, to who the intended beneficiaries of the activities are, and finally to how the progress towards the SDGs is measured. The order of the companies in this study is Lenovo, HP, and Dell with the latter being the company that did not present Goal-specific information in its report.
There is no standard for companies on how to report about SDG progress. These three companies seem to use their corporate responsibility reports for reporting about compliance with several initiatives in addition to the SDGs, and these other initiatives may set a form for reporting of the company’s activities.
There is also no right or wrong in which Goals a company should address and how. As explained above, companies have the freedom to decide which Goals are most relevant for them and which actions they are willing to take to advance them.
As explained above, the Agenda 2030 is an action agenda that contains the idea that actors around the world should do more for development than they have done until now. Companies are needed in reaching the SDGs. That is why my claim is that companies that say they are committed to the SDGs should demonstrate that they are doing something differently or something more than before to contribute to the SDGs. These activities should address the beneficiaries that the SDGs aim to benefit, which may be different from traditional business stakeholders that are defined by their financial value for the company. Companies should be able to prove that the activities have an impact by measuring progress. If companies’ commitment to the SDGs is only rhetoric, then it will have no actual impact on development.
In the following sub-chapters, I first explain how each company’s corporate responsibility approach is in general presented in the report and how the SDG approach appears in the reports and in other corporate communication. I also give a few examples of what the companies’ Goal activities are and what kind of information was available of them. At the end of each case I look into what new
the company’s SDG commitment has triggered, which groups the company addresses in its activities, and how the company measures its progress towards the SDGs.
The cases presented in the following sub-chapters are captures of what activities the companies reported and communicated about at the time of the analysis. Two of the three companies have changed their approaches to the SDGs since then – HP has reduced the number of Goals it reports about, and Dell has mapped its activities to the Goals on its internet pages2.