IRGA 2023 - SUSPRS

As environmental issues have taken on increasing importance, the concept of sustainable development has become a major concern for our societies. This concept was first mentioned in 1987 in the Brundtland Report (“Our Common Future”), drafted under the auspices of the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development. This issue is all the more urgent given that climate change is projected in the reports of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

In 2015, the United Nations promoted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the 2030 Agenda. With 17 holistic goals and 169 targets, the SDG Agenda aims to spur action in areas of critical importance to humanity and the planet (United Nations, 2015). In line with this, on August 2, 2015, 193 countries adopted the 17 SDGs, issued by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

The project proposal submitted jointly by Professors David Pickernell and Paul Jones under the Swansea University Strategic Partner Research Scholarship (SUSPRS) fits directly into this context. The focus is specifically on Goals 9 and 12 (Build Resilient Infrastructure; Promote Inclusive and Sustainable Industrialization and Foster Innovation; and Ensure Responsible Consumption and Production). They also emphasize target 9.C: “Significantly increase access to information and communications technologies and ensure that all people in the least developed countries have access to the Internet at an affordable cost by 2020”; this deadline still appears on the UN website even though it has long since passed.

Objectives

The project's research objectives are as follows:

1. To examine the links between financial reporting and the SDGs. In particular, the focus is on digital activities—as a category of innovative activities—and their sustainability. Digital activities encompass any dematerialized activity along the value chain that involves producing data or information—that is, storing it, distributing it, authorizing access to it, and managing, directing, and controlling access to it and related transactions. More broadly, these issues raise governance challenges related to the expansion of digital markets, particularly the European “digital single market.” Given the exponential growth in digital needs, issues of equality, innovation, and other core concerns of the SDGs would help build an ecosystem based on trust and thus enable a more effective allocation of funds, whether private or public.
2. Examine the impacts and opportunities in these areas for British and French SMEs (including how they may enhance or hinder one another). The overall objective is to produce an in-depth analysis of the structural approaches and the interrelationships between digitalization, sustainability, and SME performance (growth, innovation, etc.).
3. Finally, we wish to assess the “resilience” of the companies in question, following the approach of Battisti, Beynon, Pickernell, and Deakins (2022), as requested by our British partners:

The comparative analysis between France and the United Kingdom—countries that have been little studied in the existing literature on this area of research—gives this project a unique international perspective. The choice of the United Kingdom and France is justified for several reasons. First, both countries were subject to the Non-Financial Reporting Directive 2014/95/EU. Since this common regulation came into force, the United Kingdom has, in fact, left the European Union. Furthermore, the European Parliament has just adopted the CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive), which replaces Directive 2014/95/EU. Thus, it is possible that, due to regulatory differences, organizational practices regarding disclosure may begin to diverge between these two countries.