By Ivan Montiel

With the exception of January and February, the first semester of 2020 has turned out to be a rollercoaster of unprecedented global events. Back in 2019, which seems so long ago right now, the world seemed to finally be on the right track to tackle one of the most pressing grand challenges —climate change— thanks mainly to the big push by both the climate change social movements led by Greta Thunberg and youth activism and the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports calling for urgent action to prevent drastic negative consequences due to rising temperatures. Among the set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that the United Nations launched in 2015 as priorities to be addressed towards becoming a more sustainable society by 2030, SDG 13 on Climate Action seemed to be one of the most salient SDGs, one that most organizations were finally willing to address.

Then, in March 2020, a global virus made us all recalibrate completely our priorities towards trying to save human lives urgently. COVID-19 was spreading globally and, in a matter of days, global human health goals became the #1 priority. In terms of SDGs, SDG 3 on Good Health and Wellbeing transformed from being only one of the 17 SDGs, out of business radar and more seen as a goal for governmental action, into a business priority. We witnessed the fast response of companies that jumped quickly into fighting COVID-19  by engaging in rapid responsible innovations including, but not limited to, manufacturing medical and sanitary supplies and facilitating distance activities such as education, procurement, food delivery, and entertainment (Montiel, Gutierrez & Castillo, 2020; Nwagwu, 2020). Some voices questioned whether the COVID-19 crisis will delay climate action not only during the pandemic, but also during the subsequent economic recovery (Pinkse, 2020).

However, on May 25th, George Floyd was violently murdered by four police officers in Minneapolis, in front of the eyes of quarantined audiences across the globe who up until now were mainly, or solely, concerned about the pandemic. Attention was redirected towards police brutality, racism, and injustice faced by the black population in the United States for decades. The virus was still alive, but racial injustice and #BlackLivesMatter was now a more urgent grand challenge to address. Attention quickly moved from COVID-19 to issues embraced under SDG 10 on Reduced Inequalities and SDG 16 on Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions as people all over the world took to the streets to fight for police reform and against systemic racism. Businesses were no different and rapid statements and actions were quickly put in action in support of #BlackLivesMatters and to fight a “new” pandemic —systemic racism. Managers are now facing pressure from all their stakeholders to not only commit to racial justice, but also to take action with detailed plans on how to move forward. If we were to measure attention merely with media coverage, especially in the US, the SDG salience shifted from COVID-19 and SDG 3 to systemic racism and SDGs 10 and 16.

Based on these preliminary observations, some research questions crossed my mind:

• Drawing on attention-based view (Ocasio, 1997), which explains how managers devote attention to issues, what aspects of this constantly changing environment are managers attending to? And how are these global challenges being prioritized?
• Can organizations and their leaders devote sufficient simultaneous attention to several grand challenges, such as climate change, human health, and systemic racism, especially when they are highly interconnected?
• Are we already experiencing trade-offs and unequal prioritization between the various SDGs in different organizations?

In a time when managers and CEOs are voluntarily or somehow forced to be activists, their attention to social and environmental issues and the grand challenges of 2020 is now under the society’s microscope. We, as business & society scholars, now have both an opportunity and a  responsibility to analyze these business responses not only carefully, but also rapidly, with the hope of providing insights on how organizations need to advance towards a more environmentally sustainable, healthy, just, and equal society. In 2020, we are surely living a series of natural experiments!

References

Montiel, I., Gutierrez, L., & Castillo, A. 2020. Rapid Responsible Innovation in Times of Corona: Three Months Later. Business & Society COVID-19 Insights.  https://businessandsociety.org/2020/06/05/rapid-responsible-innovation

Nwagwu, I. 2020. How COVID-19 is Changing Philanthropy and Responsible Business Practices in Africa. Organizations & Natural Environment, Academy of Management , Covid-19 Insights from Business Sustainability Scholars. http://one.aom.org/covid-19-insights-from-business-sustainability-scholars/nwagwu-covid19-insights

Ocasio, W. 1997. Towards an Attention‐based View of the Firm. Strategic Management Journal, 18(1): 187-206.

Pinkse, J. 2020. Climate Change in the Time of Corona: That’s so 2019. Organizations & Natural Environment, Academy of Management, Covid-19 Insights from Business Sustainability Scholars. https://one.aom.org/covid-19-insights-from-business-sustainability-scholars/pinkse