  To achieve sustainable development worldwide, the United Nations set 17
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for humanity to reach by 2030. Society is
involved in the challenge, with firms playing a crucial role. Thus, a key
question is to what extent firms engage with the SDGs. Efforts to map firms'
contributions have mainly focused on analysing companies' reports based on
limited samples and non-real-time data. We present a novel interdisciplinary
approach based on analysing big data from an online social network (Twitter)
with complex network methods from statistical physics. By doing so, we provide
a comprehensive and nearly real-time picture of firms' engagement with SDGs.
Results show that: 1) SDGs themes tie conversations among major UK firms
together; 2) the social dimension is predominant; 3) the attention to different
SDGs themes varies depending on the community and sector firms belong to; 4)
stakeholder engagement is higher on posts related to global challenges compared
to general ones; 5) large UK companies and stakeholders generally behave
differently from Italian ones. This paper provides theoretical contributions
and practical implications relevant to firms, policymakers and management
education. Most importantly, it provides a novel tool and a set of keywords to
monitor the influence of the private sector on the implementation of the 2030
Agenda.
