Sustainable Development: Driving Factors and Impact Measurement

Abstract

Abstract: This theoretical research asks the question What forms of policymaking and protest lead to social changes nowadays? Social move¬ments for social responsibility are a vast topic and numerous examples with different outcomes can be given from all five continents. This article aims at giving an overview of the global understanding of sustainable develop¬ment and a structural approach to analyzing advocacy and protest cam¬paigns. Methods are content analysis of law, administrative documents prepared by international organizations, content analysis of publications in authoritative media as well as desk research concerning definitions of basic concepts. The hypothesis is that socially responsible behavior is as much governmental as organizational and individual responsibility. There are socio-economic and political systems that rely on direct democracy. Their citizens actively take part in national and federal referendums on issues concerning quality of life and public services, commonly referred to as social issues. The recommendations are that additional research could use combined heuristic and mathematical methods to suggest a system for measuring the vulnerability of political, economic, and technological en¬viron¬ments towards social risks, to achieve higher levels of prioritization be regions and crisis prevention. Keywords: sustainable development, socially responsible behavior, global reporting initiative, and corporate sustainability standards.