The world is undergoing dramatic transformations, and there is an urgent need to address emerging societal and environmental problems of significant scale and impact. Explicit, shared visions of the future are necessary to motivate and guide these grand challenges. Thus, we conceptualize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as dialogic zones where stories of efforts to address grand challenges are discussed—and we explore the possible creation of a shared vision of sustainable development and the role of dialogic accounting tools in this process.
Through a single case study, we analyze Nestlé’s sustainability report to explore such imaginaries of sustainable development. To establish the imaginaries of stakeholders we use Twitter/X data. We employ a materiality matrix and map interconnectedness across different SDGs to compare individual visions of this company and its stakeholders.
Our findings reveal a lack of collective imaginary for addressing grand challenges, as the visions of sustainable development within this company and among its stakeholders do not fully converge. Moreover, the stakeholders diverge in their visions of sustainable development. The creation of a collective imaginary for addressing grand challenges therefore requires a more collaborative approach and the consideration of the multiple voices of all relevant actors.
Hence, the SDGs comprise a useful dialogic space where dialogic accounting tools can serve as a stimulus for discussion.
Charles H. Cho is Professor of Sustainability Accounting and the Erivan K. Haub Chair in Business & Sustainability at the Schulich School of Business, York University.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in Accounting, a Master of Science in Accounting, and a PhD in Business Administration (Accounting Track) from the University of Central Florida. He also worked for KPMG LLP and other public accounting firms for several years in auditing and taxation.
His research interests include Social and Environmental Accounting; Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR); and Accounting and the Public Interest. Professor Cho has published his work in leading academic journals such as Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, the European Accounting Review, and the Journal of Business Ethics.
He currently serves as an Editor of Accounting Forum; the Accounting and Business Ethics Section Co-Editor of the Journal of Business Ethics; and as an Associate Editor of Business & Society. He is actively involved in the academic community with the Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (former Council member), the European Accounting Association (member of two committees) and the Canadian Academic Accounting Association (member of the Board of Directors) as well as the business community with CPA Ontario (member of the Sustainability Strategic Advisory Committee), the Club Canadien de Toronto (member of the Board of Directors), the French Tech and the AAGEF (French Graduate Schools Alumni Association in Ontario).
He is also regularly invited as plenary keynote speaker at international conferences and professional events, and solicited by the media. Recently, he was selected as one of the “Top 50 Academic and Research Support Project” from the Republic of Korea’s Prime Minister and Minister of Education; received the Honorable Knight Award from the University of Central Florida’s Hall of Fame; and was recognized as one of the top 2% most cited scholars within discipline worldwide (34th in the world and 1st in Canada) in the Accounting field for 2022.
Charles H. Cho - Schulich School of Business (yorku.ca)
The seminar will be held in English.
Major Information: Eleonora Monaco (e.monaco@unibo.it).