Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS): Content, Importance, Implementation Challenges and the Roles of the Management Scientist

Abstract

This paper examines the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) also known as the Global Goals (GGs) initiated by the United Nations Conference in 2012 and by September 2015 adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. The SDGs constitute the focus of the UN Agenda 2030 in the belief that they would have been achieved by the year 2030. The aim is to the paper is to rethink the SDGs through a discourse on their content, importance, challenges faced in implementing them and the roles of management scientists. The study’s methodology is a review of literature, drawing largely from the existing body of knowledge for a new perspective, the re-thinking perspective. The study findings include what the SDGs seek to address, the importance of the SDGs, the challenges faced in the implementation of these goals and the roles of management scientists in ensuring the realization of these goals. The identified roles of the management scholar cut across advocacy and the various fields of management within the framework of the 17 SDGs. Thus, the paper recommends that scholars should bring their expertise in entrepreneurship, investment, human resource, green, financial, product, process, conflict, and international management to bear in the pursuit of these goals. This is what “rethinking the SDGs” involves on the part of management scholars or scientists. It is the expectation of this paper that this rethinking facilitates the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).