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Addressing the Sustainable Development Goals in Sustainability Reports: The Relationship with Institutional Factors, Organizational Factors, and Artificial Intelligence

Parsa, Amir Hossein | 2025

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 58612 (44)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Management and Economics
  6. Advisor(s): Khalili Nasr, Arash
  7. Abstract:
  8. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires the active engagement of corporations as key actors in the global economy. Nearly a decade after the adoption of the SDGs by the United Nations, evidence indicates that corporate attention to different dimensions of sustainability has remained unbalanced, revealing a significant gap between global commitments and practical actions. Moreover, although emerging technologies—particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI)—hold great potential for enhancing transparency and efficiency in this process, their actual adoption in corporate sustainability practices remains limited. This study systematically examines corporate attention to the SDGs and the role of institutional, organizational, and technological factors in shaping this attention. To this end, more than 3,000 sustainability reports from S&P500 companies between 2015 and 2023 were analyzed and scored using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. Panel econometric models were then employed to assess the impact of external (legal systems, development and innovation indicators, national vulnerabilities) and internal (financial performance, firm size, board characteristics) factors on the degree of corporate attention to the SDGs. In addition, the role of AI in sustainability reporting and its connection to the SDGs was investigated. The findings reveal that corporate attention to the SDGs has neither increased consistently nor stabilized over the study period and has remained predominantly focused on economic dimensions. At the institutional level, factors such as labor market volatility and national vulnerabilities significantly reduced attention to the SDGs. At the organizational level, return on assets showed a positive and significant effect, while profit margins and average board age had negative effects. The results also show that references to AI in sustainability reports are still minimal, highlighting a gap between its theoretical potential and practical application in advancing the SDGs .Overall, the study demonstrates that achieving the SDGs requires not only institutional reforms and strengthened national resilience but also a shift in corporate decision-making logic—from a narrow focus on short-term profitability toward sustainable efficiency and technological innovation. These findings provide valuable insights for policymakers, managers, and researchers in designing effective strategies to align financial objectives with sustainability goals and to better leverage emerging technologies, particularly AI
  9. Keywords:
  10. Sustainable Development ; Corporate Sustainability ; Artificial Intelligence ; Organizational Factors ; Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ; Institutional Factors

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