From certified environmental management to certified SDG management: new sustainability perceptions and practices

Abstract

Environmental management has played an important role when organizations’ environmental practice has developed from strategies of cleaner production to environmental management systems and cleaner products. Lately a focus on sustainable development, e.g., through the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) has become an important perspective for organizations that want to integrate environmental and social sustainability. This paper presents a case study of the Danish trade union: The Danish Society of Engineers (IDA), which is both a service organization and political organization. IDA has moved from a strategy of doing less harm by reducing environmental impacts into a strategy focusing on creating a positive impact in the organization and wider society. An important initiative on this journey has been to supplement their ISO 14001 certification with an SDG certification, which enables a much more comprehensive perspective on their sustainability efforts compared to ISO 14001. This study investigates how sustainability perceptions and practices are affected in a service organization when supplementing an EMS with an SDG certification. The study indicates that adding an SDG certification leads to a more comprehensive sustainability strategy and new perceptions and practices of sustainability in the organization, as the wide range of goals and targets within the SDGs provide a comprehensive sustainability framework, which influence more elements of the core business, compared to stand-alone EMS. For service organizations, such comprehensive sustainability perception has a great value potential, as is becomes more relevant for the core business of service organizations compared to traditional EMS and cleaner production. Such SDG certification provides new opportunities for organizations to advance their sustainability perceptions and practices and increases the relevance of certifications for service organizations.