Corporate Social Responsibility

Currently social business responsibility is increasingly more important and is a crucial aspect for companies and their directors (^{Lu et al., 2014}; ^{Hernández & Sánchez, 2016}). ^{Kliksberg (2016)} mentions that from a company only and exclusively concerned with maximizing earnings in as little time as possible, it become a philanthropic company resulting from historical-social pressures, the donations from companies growing for specific causes.

According to the definition of the term Social Responsibility (SR) in the green book, it refers to “the voluntary integration by companies of social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their relations with their partners”, for which this definition was used in the decade of the 70s.

However, this term was not yet well known by companies at that time. Therefore, there were few business initiatives to contribute to SR at that time. Therefore, a significant conceptual leap took place with the pressure of broad sectors or social actors, establishing the theory of the stakeholders, which proposes that the company has the obligation of rendering account to all those involved in its actions, on which a great part of its success depends, these actors being their own employees, the consumers, public opinion, the government, mass media and civil society, which, together with a new growing protagonist, social networks, demand that the company break previous paradigms and become “The Company With High CSR” (^{Camarán, Barón & Rueda, 2019}).

To that effect, ^{Ojeda (2008)} indicates that companies, to meet this challenge, must implement strategies consistent with this view, for which they must develop actions that contribute to the wellbeing of all actors involved in a relationship of shared value (^{Gutiérrez, 2018}).

However, this idea has changed as companies have discovered therein the possibility of achieving an organizational benefit that allows them to generate value and obtain advantages, such as improving their corporate image, having marketing advantage that allow them to increase customer loyalty and in turn position themselves in the market, innovating from their processes, attracting new investors, ^{Jenkins (2009)}; having better performance in annual reports containing non-financial information and even obtaining tax or fiscal benefits upon presenting this kind of information publicly (^{Quintero & Ramírez, 2016}).

Therefore, it is here where a critical point can be addressed that cannot continue being overlooked when there will be many generations that will follow the example, they receive from those who are now at the helm of this ship that includes us all. In this sense, the proposal of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) aimed at orientating, encouraging, regulating, and promoting CSR through the 17 Sustainable Development Objectives (SDB) assumes special interest, which translate to 169 goals to be referenced hereafter

Sustainable Development Objectives (SDO)

In the year 2015 the UN announced the SDO, and the Global Reporting Initiative, the United Nations Global Impact and the World Council for Sustainable Development collectively published the compass of the SDOs (^{Johnsson et al., 2020}). The compass is a five-step guide to help understand, manage, and measure its contribution to the SDOs, and its presentation is linked to social responsibility, since it is part of the international standards and encourages companies to minimize negative impacts on the company and the environment (^{Remacha, 2017}).

The SDOs are the result of a joint effort between the government’s member countries, civil society, the academy, and the private sector. They include 17 objectives, 169 goals and 232 indicators of associated results, who shall define the agenda of the international community until 2030 (^{Camarán, Barón & Rueda, 2019}). The SDOs are specifically aimed at making known the importance of them being applied in such a manner that the organizations execute the promotion of sustainable development together with the intentions of the company De Villiers, Kuruppu and Dissanayake, (2021), always taking into account the factors that influence the organization when implementing objectives such as financial, since it is possible for there to be certain investments for them to change corporate practices, all of this in order to manage for organizations to reduce possible negative impacts hand in hand with the sustainable objectives portfolio (^{Caraballo, Muñoz & Parra, 2021}).

The summary of these objectives arises from the need to give continuity to the project that began at the start of century XXI, the majority of which were focused on resolving third world problems. They addressed economic, social, and environmental aspects, paying special attention to the importance of peace, justice, and solid institutions to achieve sustainable and equal development, this being their main roadmap (^{Sanahuja, 2015}; ^{Duarte, 2017}; ^{Remacha, 2017}).

Thus, the scope of the 2030 agenda is focused on and extends to all countries, independent of their degree of development, and each nation, based on their priorities, shall establish their guidelines to achieve compliance with this agenda (^{Cantú, 2016a}; ^{Cantú 2016b}).

In addition, it also covers the representatives of the business world, who have had a leading role in the formulation of the SDOs, the companies needing to assume key leadership for these SDOs to be able to be implemented (^{Red Española del Pacto Mundial de Naciones Unidas, 2016}).

The key to meeting the SDOs is the responsible behavior of companies. The international community expects for the companies to assume the SDOs as a central part of the business. Given the history of social responsible, companies have a preamble for meeting SDOs ^{Amodu (2020)}. Through social responsibility, the private sector addresses ethical, social, economic, and environmental challenges, as well as offering management tools to cover what is established in the SDOs. ^{Remacha (2017)} mentions the following management tools:

To recognize that an organization acts with social responsibility, it is required that the concept of Social Business Responsibility (SBR) be incorporated to its administrative and quality management processes and, therefore, that it be a fundamental part of its business strategies and business planning (^{Porter & Kramer, 2006}).

This companies’ role in the contribution of the SDOs can be addressed based on three non- excluding focuses with a different return, according to EY Mexico (2015):

For which, the companies move in such a way that the objective is to create and implement sustainable development models including all specific aspects of the SDOs that lead to implementing them in an organization with an aspect such as social inclusion, since it guarantees the success of the implementation and fulfilment of the SDOs, this in satisfaction of possible challenges existing in the process of carrying out in the organizations. Those objectives mainly address the eradication of poverty, protection of the planet and securing of prosperity for all (Graph 1). For which each objective has a goal described below in table 1.

Source: ^{UN (2022)}.

Graph 1 Sustainable Development Objectives 

Generally, considering the remaining time (minus 10 years) to achieve those Sustainable Development objectives, in the last Summit on the SDOs held September 2019, the world leaders requested a dozen actions and results in favor of sustainable development, and promoted mobilizing financing, improving the application on a national level and reinforcing institutions to achieve the objectives on the provided date, given that, in the 2020-2030 the need to act before growing poverty, empower women and girls and face climate emergency is fundamental. This was called the decade of action, which demands accelerating sustainable solutions aimed at the main challenges of the world; adding inequality and closure of financial gaps to those already mentioned.

Therefore, given the above, there is no doubt that the SBR has become an unavoidable priority for companies and their directors, for which the implementation of the SDOs is an imperative requirement, which justifies this investigation work.

Organizational performance

The performance of organizations is conceived in different ways in the theory of administration, in general, and in the theory of strategy. As ^{Camisón and Cruz (2008)} indicate, “the lack of consensus in literature on the content of this construct arises from the differences in the dimensions that form it and the adequate indicators to completely cover its domain”.

Organizational performance is linked to indispensable concepts for the company such as efficiency, effectiveness, and the financial part. For this, the inflow and outflow of resources, business growth, assets, investment return and profit growth are elements to measure organizational development. However, to this one must add the organization’s objectives with respect to operating profit, that is, the company’s profitability, the strategy regarding the increase of sales, market expansion and innovation in products, and finally the satisfaction of the customers and employees (^{Lee & Miller 1996}; ^{Gopalakrishnan 2012}).

For this, the traditional form of measuring performance is through economic-financial results (^{David, 2008}). If we take authors related to strategic planning, such as ^{Hill and Jones (2011)} or David (2008), performance is seen because of the competitive advantage of an organization and is related to value creation.

For this, companies relate organizational performance with fulfilling what is related to their mission, objectives, and goals; but it goes beyond this, toward growth in its totality in the organization, obtaining positive financial results (^{Langerak, Hultink & Robben, 2004}).

The performance then covers something more than the economic aspect and is the combination of many variables -related to costs, leadership, power, government, ethics, demand, competitors, adaptability, and others- that end up obtaining a result that is measured and evaluated to make decisions thereafter. These variables must be valued both in the economic plan and in the social and environmental plan to incorporate the notion of sustainability in the environment of the organizations (^{Amato, 2014}).

Thus, an organizational transformation is generated, that is, the organizations are information, communication, and decision-making systems, where the human being is he who marks the difference between each one of them to determine their approximation to success or failure.

Therefore, if a company is successful, it is due to the individuals responsible for carrying out the processes within the adequate communication, information management and decision- making schemes and, therefore, tangible, and final and/or intermediate deliverables as of the fulfillment of objectives (^{Tamayo, Del Río & García, 2014}).

It is here where that relationship between social responsibility, the SDOs and organizational performance begins to be found; that is, in the development of the strategic human resource (DHR).

It is extremely important to consider the strategic management of human resources since they impact the organization’s results. It is here where theories appear such as that of resources and capacities. ^{Barney (1991)} mentions the assumptions and capacities that guide these theories: “heterogeneity and immobility of resources, on the fulfillment of four conditions: valuable and scarce, competitive advantage generators, imperfectly imitable, and not substitutable, aimed at sustainability (^{Parra & Toro, 2014}).

Therefore, the organizational commitment defined by ^{Hernández and Castro (2015)},

“consists of the strong intrinsic of identification and involvement of a person with a certain organization, generating external conducts (the consequence of the commitment) of appropriation and defense which are ultimately beneficial for the organization to be made palpable and measurable”.

For this, the investigations of ^{Hernández and Castro (2015)}, where there is a high correlation between Internal Social Responsibility (ISR) and Organizational Commitment, given that the practice of ISR directly influences the worker’s wellbeing, and therefore their organizational commitment is greater. If an organization is not socially committed to its workers as a starting point, it will hardly do so externally.

Sustainable competitiveness

The concept of competitiveness has evolved over the years. The standard definition of competitiveness based on productivity and market shares has expanded, such that it now includes elements such as social prosperity, inclusion, environmental quality, and is increasingly more linked to the quality of products and technological innovation (^{Andreoni & Miola, 2016}).

The World Economic Forum defines sustainable competitiveness as “those factors that guarantee the long-term productivity (of a country) while ensuring social and environmental responsibility” (^{WEF, 2015}).

Thus, the concept of competitiveness incorporates new elements beyond a merely economic focus and includes aspects that contribute to wellbeing (^{WEF, 2015}). However, getting back a bit to the traditional concept of competitiveness, linking productivity and economic growth, it is found that more competitive countries are more sustainable and, therefore, they show better performance in the 2030 Agenda, and it is here where it begins being related to the SDOs (^{Walsh, Murphy & Horan, 2020}).

Therefore, the World Economic Forum has published since 1979 an annual evaluation of the competitiveness of countries, understood as “the set of institutions, policies and factors that determine a country’s level of productivity” (^{Thore & Tarverdyan, 2016}; ^{WEF, 2019}; ^{Alvino et al., 2020}); allowing economies to be evaluated based on indicators (131), grouped in subjects (12), which influence the productivity and economic growth of those countries. A scale of 1 to 100 is used for each indicator and shows how close an economic condition is to reaching the ideal frontier of competitiveness. The elements evaluated are the share capital, the macroeconomic stability, the financial system, the labor market, or the innovation capacity, among others (^{WEF, 2019}).

Based on the above it should be emphasized that according to that analysis, the comparison shows the level of competitiveness of those countries with a better performance in the SDOs and proves if there is really any corresponding between the two indices. Therefore, the existence of correlation between the development of the SDOs and the competitiveness of countries is extremely important (^{Zheng et al., 2021}).

Thus, according to the different investigations it can be inferred that the economic capacity of a country is fundamental in the development in the SDOs, and therefore the sustainability has an impact on the competitiveness of countries in the traditional sense, which concludes that it is extremely imperative for countries to bet on sustainability aligned with the SDOs for a better organizational performance, and therefore better competitiveness (^{Khan et al., 2021}).

The SDOs and their implementation in the organization

If a company acts according to and is aligned with the SDOs they will receive benefits in their operating strategy and management. Therefore, it is important to emphasize which of the SDOs have greater representation and importance in the organization. According to the analysis that has been developed throughout this article, it is important to indicate the strategies organizations are developing and implementing according to the SDOs (Table 2):

Table 2 SDOs that receive contribution from organizations 

SDOs and their goal	Strategies in organization that contribute to the SDOs
Put an end to poverty in all its forms in the entire world.	1. The economic benefits offered in the company recompense the needs of their employees. 2. Incentives are offered by the company to acknowledge good work. 3. Pays its employees fair wages.
Guarantee and healthy life and promote wellbeing for all at every age.	1. There are programs that promote and facilitate the healthcare of its employees, even outside the workplace. 2. A preventive culture in terms of health is promoted. Active pauses are held during the work shift for worker rest and relaxation. In addition, staff are trained in safety and health through discussions and workshops.
Guarantee inclusive, equal, and quality education, promote learning opportunities throughout life for each and all.	1. Conditions in professional progress in equal conditions are compensated and generated. 2. Investment is generated in staff training and ongoing learning of workers. 3. The staff is constantly learning in their company.
Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all.	1. Balance between work, family and leisure is generated. 2. There is flexibility with respect to delivery times and deadlines. 3. There are activities that promote labor relations, companionship, and union between employees. 4. Employees are treated fairly (without discrimination or abuses).
Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and promote innovation.	1. The facilities are resilient and of quality, also in the supply chain, to ensure the wellbeing of all company employees and providers. 2. In the company information technologies and communication (ITC) are available for all employees. 3. Uses local labor and providers. 4. Promotes the use of public transportation for its employees. 5. Employees have green areas and shares and accessible spaces in the facilities. This includes a dining area equipped with installations and utensils for enjoying meals.
Manage for human cities and settlements to be inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.	1. Programs are established to decrease the environmental impact of their operations, to avoid environmental crises that impact the population’s nutrition. 2. Respects current legislation. 3. Meets international standards.
Guarantee consumption modalities and sustainable production	1. Has minimized atmospheric, water, soil, and acoustic pollution in services processes. 2. Has promoted clean production through elements free of toxic substances. 3. The design of its products and packaging is reusable and recyclable. 4. There is preference for the use, purchase, and production of ecological products.
Promote pacific and inclusive companies for sustainable development, facilitate access to justice for all and create efficient, responsible, and inclusive institutions for all levels.	1. Complies with national and international legislation on human rights, both in its direct operations and through the supply chain. 2. Develops an ethics code. 3. Has a crime and fraud prevention policy. In the supply chain it uses anti-bribery policies and norms.

Source: Own elaboration.

As seen in the above table, there is in increasing business awareness toward social responsibility as well as the SDOs, organizations are increasingly more objective in understanding the benefits of aligning with the objectives of the 2030 agenda, such as:

Therefore, it is important that all companies, organizations, and public administrations of the world work to achieve the SDOs and ensure a sustainable future for all. The integration of the SDOs in the strategies of organizations is a fundamental element to increase the positive impact of organizations and manage relations with all groups of interest.

Sustainable companies, more competitive companies

According to the above information on the different contributions in the investigation, betting on sustainability offers large advantages to the companies ^{Rondinelli and Berry, (2000)}. First, it makes it possible to reduce the risks due to the emergence of legislation on non-financial information throughout the world that is taking place today, obligating companies to adapt sustainability reporting processes to the financial report. For this, it is recognized that the company generates a risk premium such that those sustainable activities shall enjoy a competitive advantage and the more sustainable companies may obtain more financing in better conditions. On the other hand, those less sustainable companies would obtain less financing at higher costs (^{Forética, 2018}).

In addition, addressing matters related to sustainability allows companies to improve their brand image and obtain reputational advantages, as well as reinforce trust by the company, save costs, increase employee satisfaction, and improve talent attraction, promote innovation of their products and services, access new financing resources and improve relations with groups of interest (^{Berns et al., 2009}). For this, following the SDOs, organizations must focus on four elements:

As mentioned above, the SDOs have been consolidated in recent years as the roadmap for global sustainability and companies can obtain significant advantages by incorporating the SDOs in their business strategies (Rubio, García & Fuentes, 2019). The SDOs on a micro level allow the company’s progress to be evaluated in terms of sustainability, and thus allow it to establish internal objectives in the response to the SDOs, thereby showing what the business case is for integrating this agenda in the corporate strategy. Now, on the contrary, on a macro level, guidelines are offered to the organizations and to all business sectors to carry out systemic changes that help the company prepare for future challenges (^{Scott et al., 2019}).

At the same time, the SDOs allow companies to structure their sustainability plans. Due to the existing synergies between the different SDOs, improvements in some aspects of the organization may impact the achievement of other objectives. For this, there are strategic opportunities for the organizations by incorporating the SDOs, for they can improve their internal management (relations with employees, customers, and providers) and the external impacts of the company (relations with groups of interest and communities in which it works). Thus, SDOs make it possible to generate new alliances in the business environment with groups of interest (^{Zimon, Tyan and Sroufe, 2020}). Confronting both subjects and recognizing the above, it is important to recognize two positions: the first is from an anonymous author- EY (2015), which proposes that the development of philanthropic actions is not related to the company’s activities, for through them it is sought to improve the social and environmental conditions of the environments in which the company operates or not. On the other hand, ^{Duarte (2017)} indicates that among other advantages organizations achieve by adhering to sustainable development objectives are those of attracting capital, good relationships with groups of interest, brand strengthening and to that effect customer loyalty, among others (^{Camarán, Barón & Rueda, 2019}). Which confirms for us the initial objective of entities, which is to generate value for their shareholders (^{Correa, 2020}).

Therefore, there is consensus in the examined works, in that SDOs offer new business opportunities for companies through a business strategy that incorporates aspects of sustainability (^{Red Española del Pacto Mundial de Naciones Unidas, 2017}). Companies can benefit in different ways by incorporating SDOs in their business strategy, and at the same time the business sector can contribute to achieving the objectives. Therefore, the 2030 agenda is due to several factors such as: change agents, social responsibility, and financing.