What CSR means in practice varies on the cultural and historical environment in which a company operates, and may also represent the difficulties that a company is dealing with at the time 8. It comprises all firms’ activities beyond what is required by law 9. A generally accepted definition refers to a company’s relationships and responsibilities to society, regarded as the groups of stakeholders with which it interacts 6, 7, 8. The concept of CSR goes back to the 1950s and has been variously defined. In fact, the three dimensions into which the SDGs can be grouped are coherent with the three dimensions of CSR 4: the social dimension (1–5, 10, 16, and 17), the economic (7–9, 11, and 12), and the environmental one (6, 13–15) 5. Firms are considered crucial development players in achieving the SDGs 3, while the goals are coherent with the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The goals balance three dimensions of sustainable development (economic, social, and environmental) and encourage action in areas vital for humanity and the world. On 27 September 2015, the UN established 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets to be reached by a joint effort from all members of society by 2030. Subsequent contributions from the United Nations (UN) continued to clarify it and to outline the dimensions of sustainable development 2. The term was conceptualised back in 1987 as “the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” 1. Reaching sustainable development is an urgent need for humanity. Most importantly, it provides a novel tool and a set of keywords to monitor the influence of the private sector on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. This paper provides theoretical contributions and practical implications relevant to firms, policymakers and management education. Results show that: (1) SDGs themes tie conversations among major UK firms together (2) the social dimension is predominant (3) the attention to different SDGs themes varies depending on the community and sector firms belong to (4) stakeholder engagement is higher on posts related to global challenges compared to general ones (5) large UK companies and stakeholders generally behave differently from Italian ones. By doing so, we provide a comprehensive and nearly real-time picture of firms’ engagement with SDGs. We present a novel interdisciplinary approach based on analysing big data from an online social network (Twitter) with complex network methods from statistical physics. Efforts to map firms’ contributions have mainly focused on analysing companies’ reports based on limited samples and non-real-time data. Thus, a key question is to what extent firms engage with the SDGs. Society is involved in the challenge, with firms playing a crucial role. To achieve sustainable development worldwide, the United Nations set 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for humanity to reach by 2030.
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