PhD defence J.A.P. (Jan) van Zanten

This dissertation studies the role of companies in sustainable development. In 2015, the United Nations (UN) adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that aim to “free humanity from poverty, secure a healthy planet for future generations, and build peaceful, inclusive societies as a foundation for ensuring lives of dignity for all” (UN, 2017:4). Although all 193 UN member states have committed to the ambition of achieving the SDGs by the year 2030, success is unlikely without the support of the private sector. The studies comprising this dissertation aim to improve our understanding of the relationships between companies and sustainable development. Appreciating the interdisciplinary nature of this research topic, I draw from diverse literatures, which can be broadly categorized into the international business and management, and sustainability sciences disciplines, and I use a variety of methods, in order to shed light on companies’ engagement with, and their impacts on, the SDG Agenda. Overall, the dissertation is defined by the problems that it addresses rather than by its disciplinary embedding (cf. Clark, 2007), thus taking a phenomena-driven perspective that has recently been called for in the business and management literature (Buckley et al., 2017).

The PhD defences do not take place publicly in the usual way in the Senate Hall at campus Woudestein or in the Professor Andries Querido Room at the Erasmus MC. The candidates will defend their dissertation either in a small group or online.