The Integration of Sustainable Development Goal 8 with in Private Sector Corporations in Zimbabwe: A Socially Sustainable Strategy

The private sector corporates in Zimbabwe seem to have limited commitment to implementing the global development agenda, as espoused by the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper reports on a study undertaken to critically evaluate the reasons for limited corporate social sustainability strategy implementation that is aligned to SDG 8.

A qualitative research design was adopted using the interpretivist paradigm. Key informant interviews were used to collect data by targeting eleven employees in a group of corporations from leadership to the shop floor level, five development organisation representatives which included the United Nations, as well as four community members within the business footprint.

Some of the corporate businesses have a social sustainability strategy due to compliance obligations that have little environmental contextualization and others have an embedded company strategy which is neither costed nor evidence-informed. Moreover, the programme is not needs-driven and has limited partnerships and technology integration. Some businesses lack a social sustainability strategy but are implementing unplanned, inequitable initiatives between the community and their employees, skewed in favour of the organization. Moreover, some businesses are implementing unplanned initiatives that amount to charity, rather than impactful investment for measurable return on investment. Most importantly, it was ascertained that there is no programme monitoring and evaluation system in place to measure progress and assess relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability.

The research findings contributed to developing an evidence-informed social sustainability strategy proposal that the management of private sector corporates could adopt to support the implementation of the SDG 8. The strategy encompasses the adoption of a transformational leadership style from strategy visioning and execution through to the integration of systems thinking and incorporation of a Corporate Social Impact Investment (CSII) model.

Keywords: Social Sustainability; Sustainable Development Goals; Strategy; Corporations; Systems Thinking.