UNSDGs and future quality management - Social policy for developing sustainable development mindset

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to review different ways of promoting a sustainable development (SD) mindset to engage employees and management to explore, to explain, to elaborate and to evaluate to become future sustainability leaders. After reviewing literature on sustainable development mindsets, sustainable development goals (SDGs), corporate social responsibility (CSR) and analysis of social dimension policy of 10 China-based listed companies (2006 to 2017) in Bloomberg database with members in UN Global Compact (2004 to 2017), it has been found that employee CSR training policy and consumer data protection policy are not common in selected organizations, except two communications related organizations. And, policies on equal opportunities, health & safety, and human rights are mostly in place. Among 10 selected organizations, Petro China and China Mobile Communications are found with these three policies in place in past 11 years (2007 to 2017). It is suggested that individual employee attributes, knowing and being in relation to social policy, need to be strengthened; perception of tasks, implementing CSR and consumer policies with inspirations on sustainability, need to be maintained in the organizational core activities; and value creation, realising the importance of consumer data protection with design thinking and system thinking in product/ service innovations, need to be enhanced for sustainable development. The findings provide insights for management in developing sustainable development mindset for employees and brand-building for organizations. The ultimate output of the paper is a model for promoting a Sustainable Development Mindset with employee CSR policy/consumer data protection relayed social policy for advancing quality management (QM). Therefore, academics, industry practitioners, NGOs and policy makers shall consider these findings when exploring the applications of UNSDGs related tools to advance quality outputs with brand-building effect in an innovative way.