The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/1741-0398.htm

Influence of political leaders on Influence of

political
sustainable development goals – leaders on
SDGs
insights from twitter
Purva Grover 1893
Information Systems, International Management Institute, New Delhi, India
Received 26 July 2020
Arpan Kumar Kar Revised 8 October 2020
Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, 21 February 2021
Accepted 25 February 2021
New Delhi, India
Shivam Gupta
Department of Information Systems, Supply Chain and Decision Making,
NEOMA Business School, Mont-Saint-Aignan, France, and
Sachin Modgil
International Management Institute – Kolkata, Kolkata, India

Abstract
Purpose – The importance and criticality of sustainable development goals is witnessed by 195 member
countries. For its full-fledged adoption and implementation, it needs to be understood by masses and political
leaders are critical agents those engage diverse communities through social media such as twitter. Therefore, in
this study focuses on how political leaders can influence the sustainable development goals through Twitter.
Design/methodology/approach – This study examines the social media conversations of political leaders
on Twitter. Social media analytics methods such as sentiment mining, topic modelling and content analysis-
based methods have been used.
Findings – The findings indicate that most political leaders are primarily discussing the sustainable
development goals (SDGs) “partnership for goals” and “peace, justice and strong institutions”. Many other
goals such as “clean water and sanitation”, “life below water”, “zero hunger”, “no poverty” and “educational
quality” are not being focused on.
Research limitations/implications – This study offers implications in terms of collective decision making
and the role of policy makers towards the goals of promoting SDGs. The authors highlight how political leaders
need to involve key stakeholders in this journey.
Originality/value – This study scores and provides a cohort-specific prioritization of the leadership within
these countries with regard to SDGs, which could be beneficial to the society.
Keywords Social media analytics, Influencer marketing, Political leadership, Sustainable development goals,
Public policy
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
On 25 September 2015, the United Nations (UN) issued its sustainable development goals
(SDGs) after a comprehensive preliminary round of discussions in New York. The SDGs are
classified into 17 main goals, 169 targets and more than 300 indicators to be achieved by all
the countries. It includes environmental protection, economic growth and social inclusion
(Costanza et al., 2016). It was a wake-up call for politicians, non-governmental organisation
(NGOs) and business organisations across the world (PwC, 2015). It has brought them to a
crossroads where they must consider “what can we do”? Now, it is time to implement policies
Journal of Enterprise Information
and regulations to ultimately achieve the SDGs (Paletta et al., 2019; Fleming et al., 2017). The Management
ambitious 2030 agenda of SDGs is a plan of action with a special focus on the planet, people Vol. 34 No. 6, 2021
pp. 1893-1916
and prosperity (Schramade, 2017; Moore, 2015). The indicators, targets and goals need to be © Emerald Publishing Limited
1741-0398
ingrained in the governing systems for the next 10 years. Governance in terms of the DOI 10.1108/JEIM-07-2020-0304
JEIM ecosystem needs to focus on the big picture of humanity and the planet (Haas and Stevens,
34,6 2011). Therefore, peace, prosperity, planet and people need to become the part of this initiative
(Ramcilovic-Suominen and P€ ulzl, 2018). This plan requires active participation at the national
level as well as the organisational level through policy-level changes (Chakraborty, 2020).
Therefore, a period of around 15 years was dedicated to the SDGs, so that even if there is a
government change in 5 years, the subsequent government can continue working on them
(Watts et al., 2017).
1894 The SDGs have different challenges in terms of adoption and implementation (Dang and
Serajuddin, 2020). One of the major challenges lies in the identification of champions who can
act as leaders in terms of the goals, not only in a specific geographic area, but in the entire
world and in a localised manner (Scherer and Palazzo, 2011). Therefore, governments and the
UN require actors who can lead the context-specific application of the goals and influence
organisations and individuals to pursue them judiciously (Ali et al., 2019). Political leaders can
be the best actors in this role and help with e-governance (Vakeel and Panigrahi, 2018).
We therefore selected political leaders and influencers for this study.
The role of political leaders in the design of policy formulation and public services has
been highlighted in the literature (Clayton, 2014). Studies on SDGs have demonstrated the role
of government, private and civil society (Vakeel and Panigrahi, 2018; Scheyvens et al., 2016;
Carroll, 2016). Studies also highlight the role of individual SDGs, for example, Nhamo et al.
(2019) measured clean water and sanitation progress (goal 6) for Africa. Communication style
and format have also been highlighted in studies that consider different leaders (Muff et al.,
2020; Storey et al., 2017). However, studies are limited when it is critical to communicate with
each individual to achieve the desired outcome, including achievement of SDGs. The past
studies lack in identifying trends and platforms that political leaders use to reach out to the
masses and motivate them to work towards a common goal (Muff et al., 2020; Liverman, 2018).
Since SDGs are not the responsibility of a single country, a multi-country view is critical,
along with how their leaders emphasize different SDGs. The existing literature does not
identify the influence of political leaders via social media communication in prioritizing
different SDGs in different regions (developed, in-transition and developing) (Muff et al., 2020;
Winkler and Williams, 2017; Fukuda-Parr, 2016). In summary, we find that the existing gaps
revolve around “the mechanism adopted by the world’s political leaders to discuss and
promote the SDGs. This includes “the influence of debates on SDGs”, “the impact of social
influence on SDG prioritisation” and “the prioritisation of SDGs among different economies”.
Editorial directions surrounding national digital transformation agendas such as digital
identity, digital nations and smart cities also indicate the need to connect them with other
initiatives. These initiatives address sustainability, technology, development, inclusion and
empowerment, which are directly connected to the scope of this study (Mir et al., 2020;
Kar et al., 2019). Building on this, our study formulated the following research questions:
RQ1. How do world leaders discuss and promote SDGs and what sentiments are
communicated in such discussions surrounding SDGs?
RQ2. How do the topics debated by leaders impact the nature of the discussion
about SDGs?
RQ3. How do political leaders as social media influencers of SDGs demonstrate
prioritisation among SDGs?
RQ4. How do the different economies (developed economies, economies in transition,
developing economies) prioritise the achievement of the various SDGs differently?
The rest of this paper is arranged as follows: Section 2 presents the theoretical background.
Section 3 presents the purpose of each research question. Section 4 displays the research
methodology adopted for this study. Analysis and results are presented in Section 5. Section 6 Influence of
provides the discussion and Section 7 showcases the limitations and scope for future research. political
leaders on
2. Related work SDGs
It has been observed and highlighted in the various UN sessions and meetings that the
implementation of SDGs and their achievement by 2030 will be driven by countries and
governments (Rosati and Faria, 2019). Governments can adopt SDGs from their region and 1895
geography-specific contextual view, which is strongly linked to national priorities and values
(Antwi-Agyei et al., 2018; Allen et al., 2017a). Moreover, SDGs can be achieved if individuals
understand them and find it logical to pursue them. It will be very difficult to implement and
achieve SDGs without the involvement of diverse stakeholders, and a sense of ownership
cannot be developed by imposing them forcefully (Jabbour et al., 2019b). Therefore, a formal
and specified communication channel or strategy may not be the best choice for spreading
awareness of SDGs (Mojtahedi and Katsui, 2018). The SDG guidelines emphasize the
involvement of every facet of society, moving everyone forward and leaving no one behind
(Mohammed et al., 2018; Gupta et al., 2019). Paragraph 5 of the 2030 agenda indicates the scale
and magnitude offered by social media:
This is an agenda of unprecedented scope and significance. It is accepted by all countries and is
applicable to all, considering different national realities, capacities and levels of development and
respecting national policies and priorities. These are universal goals and targets which involve the
entire world, developed and developing countries alike. They are integrated and indivisible and
balance the three dimensions of sustainable development. (Division for Sustainable
Development, 2015)
This ensures and reinforce SDGs, the independence of an economy is critical. Furthermore, it
emphasizes that not only should countries try to achieve the specified SDGs, but they also need
to integrate them with their national interest, policies and context (Allen et al., 2017b). Therefore,
SDGs agenda is clear in communicating to member states that they themselves are responsible
for achieving it. This will enable member states to develop and create policies that facilitate
effective communication at the lowest level (Wu et al., 2018). This communication should ensure
effectiveness between governments, policymakers and society at large (Jabbour et al., 2019a).
The education and communication with stakeholders makes it possible to disseminate
extensive information on SDGs via mobile phones, social media accounts or computer screens
(Wu et al., 2018; Grover et al., 2018; Fukuda-Parr, 2016). With regard to social media, there are
several platforms available (Bossetta, 2018). Twitter has emerged as a dominant and effective
platform to allow trending topics to reach a large audience in just a few hours or days (Aswani
et al., 2018). Many political leaders and corporations today use Twitter as their social media
platform to express their viewpoints and opinions (Grover et al., 2019). We therefore selected
Twitter as the media we would use to examine the research questions.

2.1 Taxonomies
Overall, SDGs discuss the social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainable
development. SDGs offer an opportunity to build a sustainable future in today’s
interconnected world. With 17 main goals and around 169 targets and 300 indicators, it
has become very complex for an individual to understand and contribute. Therefore, a
simplified classification may help not only the citizens of a country, but also its political
leaders to target specific SDGs for particular aspects. Figure 1 classifies the means, ends and
facilitator to achieve SDGs.
Means for maintaining and monitoring along with facilitators can help countries meet the
ultimate objectives of the SDGs. The existing studies highlighted the overall approach
JEIM
34,6

1896

Figure 1.
The continuum of an
equally shared and
sustainable society

towards achieving the SDGs, and this approach via means and facilitators can help leaders
inspire and motivate society and citizens to structure their actions. Studies indicate the role of
private, government and citizen efforts to make SDGs a success. For example, Modgil et al.
(2020) conducted a study to assess the role of manufacturing firms in developing a living
economy. They highlighted the importance of goals 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12 towards a net economic
contribution. Studies have been conducted on supply chain design and business process
organisation according to the SDGs guidelines (Tsolakis et al., 2020; Choudhary et al., 2019).
However, existing studies lack in analysing the role of political leaders, since they are in
charge of the region and can inspire people through different communication media.
For the adequate execution and adoption of SDGs at the ground level, one needs to
understand the important people involved in the journey and classify what needs to be
sustained and what needs to be developed. The elements can be classified between those that
need to be sustained and those that need to be developed to achieve the SDGs. Figure 2
presents a classification of these elements.
Along with the elements that need to be sustained, it is the responsibility of federal
government and political leaders to implement policies that can help develop citizens, the

Figure 2.
Classification of
elements that need to
be sustained or
developed to achieve
the SDGs
economy and society at large. The role of regional political leaders becomes very crucial when Influence of
developing people, a system and the necessary infrastructure to support the SDGs, which has political
been ignored in the literature. Therefore, our study explores the influence of political leaders’
discussions regarding SDGs.
leaders on
SDGs

3. Rationale of the study

The rationale of this study is to analyse the inclination of national leaders to act as influencers 1897
surrounding SDGs based on social media posts. Today, 193 countries are member states of
the UN and 2 countries are observers. It is important to understand and investigate what kind
of features the leaders use to discuss and comment on SDGs and the types of words they use.
This needs to be investigated because Twitter audiences are broad, diverse and information
can spread quickly (Cook et al., 2014). Twitter trends and discussions help the public and
users follow influential profiles such as political leaders, celebrities and thought leaders
(Shao, 2019a, b; Sedera et al., 2017; Pappas et al., 2017). The influence of a topic and discussion
can be measured through the number of likes, shares, mentions and retweets. The literature
indicates the growing requirement and need for spreading awareness among stakeholders on
subjects like SDGs (Duxbury et al., 2017). Twitter can be useful to obtain an overall view of the
sentiment and behaviour of the public based on emotional and polarity analysis (Aswani
et al., 2018). This analysis helps extract information that is subjective in nature from tweets.
Tweets can be classified as positive, negative or neutral for polarity analysis, whereas
emotion analysis categorizes tweets into eight types, i.e. trust, anger, anticipation, sadness,
fear, joy, disgust and surprise (Jackson, 2018; Sinnenberg et al., 2017). Bearing this in mind,
what kind of topics regarding the SDGs are discussed on Twitter by leaders and what is the
nature of the discussion? Furthermore, topic modelling can help generate themes by
classifying documents (M€antyl€a et al., 2018). Population discussion topics can be identified
through modelling tools. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) can be used to identify themes
with respect to each geographical area for SDGs (Singh et al., 2020). This can be done using
the principle of content analysis that is often exploited in social science literature (Jaakonm€aki
et al., 2018). Qualitative data can be converted into quantitative data with the help of inherent
semantics and content (Rathore et al., 2016; Mohamed et al., 2010).

4. Research design
The list (United Nations: Protocol and Liaison Service – Public List) of all 522 major political
heads of 195 countries recognized by the UN was collected from their website. The study
focused on three major heads of each government, i.e. the Head of State, the Head of
Government and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. These leaders were individually identified
and located on Twitter. A total of 122 leaders with Twitter accounts were confirmed using the
Twitter verified sign as well as through secondary research from the web. Twitter handles
were then documented for further research. Timeline-based Tweet extraction was
undertaken using Twitter’s application program interface. For each verified Twitter
account of a national leader, basic account information was collected whereby attributes like
the Twitter handle, Tweets, followers, following, likes, lists and moments, were documented
in a spreadsheet. In general, a few thousand tweets were collected for each political head to
obtain enough information based on timeline extraction. Not all national leaders had similar
levels of activity, and the number of tweets varied based on activity, which needed to be
controlled. Furthermore, non-English tweets were removed from the initial corpus of tweets
that were used for the analysis. A total of 259,591 tweets were initially collected and analysed.
Figure 3 depicts the research design stages adopted in this study. To address the research
questions, we investigated the tweeting frequency of national leaders along with the number
JEIM of followers, likes, moments and lists. We also used word clouds to understand the most
34,6 popular words for SDGs promotion. Furthermore, to view the sentiments of leaders, we
considered the polarity (positive, negative or neutral) and emotional elements of their tweets.
We further explored country and continent-specific tweets to analyse their popularity and
focus. Finally, we presented the scope of improvement of different continents in terms of
various SDGs. The research methodology undertaken follows the guidelines on inductive
exploration of social media big data for management decision making based on big data
1898 research methodology (Kar and Dwivedi, 2020). Big data analytics have been also used to
explore sustainable development in recent literature (Sivarajah et al., 2020; Weerakkody et al.,
2020). The current study attempts to extend this focus to the recent literature on SDGs.

4.1 Choice of research strategy

The research strategy is a structured approach adopted to conduct a study to facilitate the
efforts towards comprehensive reporting and appropriate conclusions. The existing studies
indicate discussions on SDGs from different stakeholders such as public, private and non-
government players. Some studies were conducted despite challenges and barriers in rural
and urban set-ups. However, the role of political leaders is critical, since they are chosen by the
people to represent their region and their problems on the national and international level.
Political leaders have command of their region and can promote sustainable activities
effectively (Weerakkody et al., 2011). This role of political leaders has not been explored in the
existing studies related to SDGs. Therefore, we considered political leaders by analysing their
tweets for SDGs. We chose Twitter as a social media platform as many political leaders and
their followers are on it. We primarily chose three categories of leaders (state, government
and foreign affairs) and examined how they tweeted to promote SDGs in their regions. We
followed a five-stage process to conduct our study, which is presented in Figure 3.

4.2 Data analysis

A sufficient amount of pre-processing was done before performing content analysis on the
tweets. Since the extracted tweets were found in 51 languages, only English Tweets were
considered for further analysis. In all, 98,881 (around 38% of the total tweets collected) tweets
from 115 political leaders (only leaders with English tweets considered) were utilised for
analysis. Furthermore, the Tweets were cleaned by removing hyperlinks, hashtags,
mentions, citations, stop words, punctuation, URLs, quotes, RTs, line breaks, tabs and
returns. Stemming and lemmatization were applied to some extent to retain only the base
form of the words. The tweets were further categorized according to geography and type of
economy. Out of 195 member countries of United Nations, twitter data from 59 countries was
found in English and thus considered for analysis. Figure 4 indicates a detailed data analysis
process.
Twitter data analysis can have three broad approaches: descriptive, content and network
analysis. In this study, we applied the descriptive and content analysis approach to recognize

Figure 3.
Flow diagram of the
research process
 Influence of
Identification of countries and
political heads (head of state, head 195- Countries political
Stage 1 522- Political leaders on
of government, minister of foreign
heads SDGs
affairs): #1

1899
Stage 2 Identification and verification of N = 122
political leaders on Twitter: #2

Collection of information about

Stage 3 N = 122
Twitter handle (Tweets, Followers,
Following, Likes, Lists and
Moments): #3

Collection of 3000 tweets from

Stage 4 Tweets = 2,
each political head: #4
59,591

Stage 5 Limit to English Tweets: #5 Tweets =

98,881
Heads = 115

Stage 6 Cleaning of tweets using 59- Countries

stemming and lemmatization: #6

Stage 7 Classification and analysis of data 59-

and reporting: #7 Countries Figure 4.
Heads = 115 Stages of data
collection
Source(s): Author’s compilation

salient features of political leaders’ views regarding SDGs on Twitter. The first research
question was investigated using descriptive analysis whereas the other three research
questions were investigated using the content analysis of the tweets. Furthermore, we
classified the economies according to world economic situation and prospects (WESP) into
three categories, i.e. developed, in transition and developing economies. We used this
classification to analyse the popularity of SDG topics based on the economic status of the
countries.
JEIM 4.3 Addressing data bias
34,6 Qualitative research is about exploring an issue, whether it is primary data or secondary data.
Compared to quantitative studies, qualitative studies revolve around the description of
things, their elements and interpretation. It is important for a researcher to minimize and
avoid bias in the data. Bias can be caused by inclinations or assumptions for or against a
group or a person and can hamper the scientific enquiry and have an overall impact on
research findings. Since our study is a re-analysis of secondary data that is qualitative in
1900 nature, it is important to check for bias in the data collection process. Since this data is in the
form of Tweets and is self-reported by political leaders, there is a smaller chance of bias.
Furthermore, inter-coder reliability has been undertaken to create the cluster of words used
for the analysis. This ensures that the cluster of words used by the machine learning
algorithm for the model specification and typology mapping has better convergence in
outcome (Kar and Dwivedi, 2020). However, to further address the issue of bias, we adopted a
triangulation approach (Anderson et al., 1991), where we checked if the mentioned words are
related to SDGs or if they are outdated. We also checked the SDG business hub, where
country-specific insights related to SDGs are checked and verified with regard to the related
tweets of regional political leaders. Furthermore, we checked the consistency and alignment
among state, federal and foreign minister tweets to address bias in the data.

5. Analysis and results

Online media technologies and platforms have changed the dynamics of politics and
administrations. Political leaders use these platforms to put forward their opinions and
expect reactions from citizens (He et al., 2019). Platforms like Twitter are empowered as tools
those are helpful in magnifying, recording and disseminating information such as SDGs. In
this regard, we collected the data of political leaders from different regions.
Figure 5 depicts the presence of political leaders from each continent and both genders on
Twitter. Figure 5a indicates that the data set being considered in this study has the highest
representation from European nations and the lowest representation from the countries of
Oceania. Figure 5b specifies that South America has the highest ratio of political leaders on
Twitter in comparison to Europe. Apart from this, male political leaders clearly have a higher
percentage of Twitter accounts than female leaders (Figure 5c). Although the difference is
small in terms of percentage, it is high in terms of the actual count due to overall poor
representation of females in the list of leaders.
Political leaders utilize networked platforms like Twitter to disseminate and receive
information from the public. To quickly spread information, these tools are equipped with a
number of features such as the re-tweet, follow, like and moments functions. Figure 6
illustrates how Twitter is used by the political leaders considered in this study. Twitter
attributes including tweets, followers, following, likes, moments and lists were analysed in
the representation (Figures 6a–f).
The word count in a speech or statement by a leader indicates emphasis and importance.
Figures 7a and b below show a word cloud of all of the topics derived from all 98,881 tweets
extracted from 115 leaders. We can deduce that some of the most tweeted words in social
media discussions by political leaders are: people, country, support, need, EU and meetings.
Apart from the frequency of words and emphasis on certain text, it is also critical to
understand the tone and sentiments echoed. These sentiments can be positive, negative or
neutral. We therefore performed sentiment analysis on all the English tweets, and two
aspects were examined: polarity and emotions. Figure 8 illustrates the polarity analysis done
on the data.
Political leaders can display different emotions when discussing or assessing the current
growth toward SDGs. Figure 9 illustrates the emotion analysis of their Tweets. From the bar
 Influence of
political
leaders on
SDGs

1901

Figure 5.
(a) Count of political
leaders in each
continent having a
Twitter account; (b)
Political leaders from
each continent having
a Twitter account vs.
those not having it; (c)
Political leaders from
each gender having a
Twitter account vs.
those not having it

graph, it is clear that “joy” and “surprise” are the most common emotions exhibited by
political leaders on Twitter. However, the graph does not indicate the kind of issues or topics
these leaders are talking about with the respective emotions.
JEIM
34,6

1902

Figure 6.
(a) Tweeting frequency
of leaders; (b) Count of
followers following the
leaders; (c) Count of
people followed by the
leaders; (d) Number of
likes; (e) Number of
moments; (f) Number
of lists

Figure 7.
(a) Word cloud with
prioritized topics; (b)
Word cloud with
diversity of coverage

For this level of detail, we need to examine Figure 10, which clearly depicts the word clouds
generated from the Tweets containing the different emotions. Using these word clouds, we
can identify the reason for related emotions. Emotion such as anger and disgust can be
expressed for events such as killings, violence, refugees, sexual violence, rape, etc. In contrast
to this, “joy” is expressed over topics such as family, cooperation, support, development and Influence of
pride, etc. political
Figure 11 below shows the inclination of political leaders towards the SDGs and also the
mapping of SDGs and their frequency in terms of SDG categorization. Twenty topics were
leaders on
identified for each of the 77 countries comprising tweets from 115 political leaders. The SDGs
inclination of the political leaders towards the SDGs was found by mapping the topics to
SDGs. If any of the topics matched the SDG themes, then the countries were awarded a score.
This way, each SDG was assigned a score depending on the percentage of countries that 1903
tweeted about that SDG. The two most popular SDGs among the leaders were “partnership
for the goals” and “peace, justice and strong institutions” across countries. The potential was
calculated for each parameter, based on primary and secondary follower network size of the
user profile that created the tweet and those who retweeted them. It is identified that policy-
related SDGs had the highest potential reach, followed by planet and human conditions.
Table 1 assigns SDG scores to each of the 77 countries for which tweets were analysed.
The top 4 countries with the highest SDG scores were Uganda (64.71%), Chile (64.71%),
Canada (58.82%) and India (58.82%). It is interesting to note that except for Canada, which is
a developed economy, the other three countries are developing economies.

Histogram of polarity
5

Positive
Probability

3 40.0%

52.2% Negative
Figure 8.
2
(a) Histogram depicting
polarity versus
7.9% probability of tweets;
1
(b) Pie chart depicting
Neutral the percentage of
0
-1.00 -0.75 -0.50 -0.25 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 tweets falling into each
Polarity category: positive,
negative and neutral
(a) (b)

45% 42%

40%

35% 32%

30%

25%
Score

20%
15%
15%

10%
5%
5% 3% 3% Figure 9.
Bar graph depicting
0% the percentage score of
Anger Disgust Fear Joy Sadness Surprise six common emotions
in the tweets
Emotion
JEIM
34,6

1904

Figure 10.
Word clouds for
different emotions in
tweets about SDGs in
consecutive order of
anger, fear, disgust,
surprise, sadness
and joy

After combining the individual scores of each country of a particular continent, scores were
assigned to each continent (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania and South
America), and similarly, for each economic category (developed, in-transition and
developing). These scores are shown in percentages at the top of each bar in Figures 12a
and b. Each bar in the two graphs represents the total score that can be assigned to the
category. The blue-labelled part represents the current SDG score while the red part of the bar
represents the untapped potential or scope for improvement. From Figure 12a, it is evident
that African and European countries are spreading awareness about SDGs, and Asian
countries are not far behind (ignoring Oceania due to poor representation). Figure 12b,
indicate that developed economies are clearly ahead in terms of showing concern about SDG
topics. Although several developing economies have a higher individual SDG score as seen in
Table 1, such as India, Uganda and Chile. Still, there is considerable room for improvement in
achieving SDGs. The scope of improvement is captured in terms of potential first order and
second order network reach, provided the influencers share information on SDGs.

5.1 Research summary

It is important to connect the nature of development of an economy and its focus towards
specific types of SDGs among the seventeen SDGs. Nations, especially developing and
emerging economies, need to demonstrate a focused national initiative to fulfil the UN’s SDG
agenda. World that is free of hunger and poverty will lead to a healthy society and thriving
citizens (Pappas et al., 2020; Irani and Sharif, 2016). To be healthy, we need to ensure the
 Influence of
political
leaders on
SDGs

1905

Figure 11.
(a) Percentage of
countries discussing
each SDG; (b)
Illustration of the
potential reach that can
be achieved for each
category

availability of clean water and sanitation facilities for everyone. Energy consumption is
important for day-to-day activities, and it needs to be clean and green in terms of
consumption and affordable for all classes of society (Shao, 2019a, b; Jongsaguan and
Ghoneim, 2017). A number of countries and institutions are emphasizing clean energy
creation and waste usage in the circular economy (Hussain et al., 2020).
Apart from energy consumption, the consumption and production of other goods and
services need to be addressed, as they involve the use of non-renewable resources and
pollution generated after consumption and production (Sharma et al., 2020; Chen et al., 2018;
Tseng et al., 2018; de Oliveira Neto et al., 2020; de Sousa Jabbour et al., 2018). Today, cities are
more polluted than villages. Therefore, cities and other communities must be made more
sustainable (Maestre-Gongora and Bernal, 2019). Political leaders who are handling different
portfolios and who are closely related to industry can act as influencers and guide industry
towards the SDGs (Weerakkody et al., 2011). Furthermore, political leaders need to adopt a
multi-stakeholder and multi-layered approach for SDGs. Apart from this, it is necessary to
collectively contribute to strengthening the capacity of the ecosystem to deal with hazardous
and natural disasters. It is important to have a demographic balance in the participation of
different disciplines in life. Therefore, gender equality in the workplace, education and
leadership positions is needed. This should eradicate all forms of discrimination against
women to achieve the target of gender equality. The 2030 agenda also focuses on empowering
and promoting economic, social and political inclusion while masking age, sex, ethnicity,
JEIM SDG SDG SDG
34,6 Country score Country score Country score

Chile 64.71 Cameroon 23.53 Fiji 11.76

Uganda 64.71 Lithuania 23.53 Finland 11.76
Canada 58.82 Mongolia 23.53 France 11.76
India 58.82 Serbia 23.53 Holy see 11.76
1906 Australia 52.94 Sri Lanka 23.53 Israel 11.76
Namibia 52.94 The Former Yugoslav Republic 23.53 Japan 11.76
of Macedonia
Norway 47.06 Afghanistan 17.65 Latvia 11.76
Austria 41.18 Bahrain 17.65 Mozambique 11.76
Nigeria 41.18 Belgium 17.65 Oman 11.76
Slovenia 41.18 Brazil 17.65 Pakistan 11.76
Albania 35.29 Colombia 17.65 Rwanda 11.76
Andorra 35.29 Croatia 17.65 Singapore 11.76
Bhutan 35.29 Ghana 17.65 Somalia 11.76
Cyprus 35.29 Haiti 17.65 State of Palestine 11.76
Ireland 35.29 Lebanon 17.65 Turkey 11.76
Slovakia 35.29 Liechtenstein 17.65 United States of 11.76
America
Costa Rica 29.41 Luxembourg 17.65 Venezuela 11.76
Denmark 29.41 Nepal 17.65 Djibouti 5.88
Honduras 29.41 Panama 17.65 Germany 5.88
Iran 29.41 Togo 17.65 Italy 5.88
Kenya 29.41 Ukraine 17.65 Poland 5.88
Mexico 29.41 United Kingdom 17.65 Senegal 5.88
Table 1. Russian 29.41 United Republic of Tanzania 17.65 Spain 5.88
SDG Score for each of Federation
the 77 countries in Sweden 29.41 Zambia 17.65 Ecuador 0.00
percentages (arranged Bangladesh 23.53 Argentina 11.76 Syrian Arab 0.00
in descending order of Republic
scores) Bulgaria 23.53 Equatorial Guinea 11.76

disability, religion, origin and economic status. Regions like, Africa, North America and Asia
need to improve aggressively in “reducing inequalities” within and among countries.
Figure 13 displays the progress and spoken topics in SDGs. This diagram indicates that there
are differences in the levels of intent concerning the achievement of SDGs, based on how
national leaders prioritize them in their social media discussions.
From the analysis, it can be seen that political leaders are primarily concerned with two
topics, which are “partnership for goals” and “peace, justice and strong institutions”, whereas
SDGs including “clean water and sanitation”, “zero hunger” and “life below water” clearly
need an increase in awareness, because these ignored and difficult goals are an important part
of overall sustainability. It is surprising to see that apart from the bottom three goals, even
other important goals such as “quality education” and “no poverty” have a very low SDG
score, especially in developing economies.

6. Discussion
The research focuses on analysing the behaviour of political leaders around the world on the
Twitter platform. It has been found that political leaders can act as change agents and enrich
citizens understanding towards SDGs (Tolliver et al., 2019; Kousser and Tranter, 2018).
This study leverages the data collected from Twitter to gauge awareness of SDGs in the
respective countries and the amount of effort put in by them for same. The research findings
 Influence of
political
leaders on
SDGs

1907

Figure 12.
(a) SDG score of each
continent along with
scope of improvement;
(b) SDG score of each
economic category
along with scope of
improvement

can be helpful to governments across the world in implementing SDGs at the local level.
Through the dissemination of information about the SDGs, not only achieving 2030 agenda
will become easier, but the political leaders themselves can also benefit from this by showing
support for such important and critical issues. In the end, it will benefit the respective
countries and consequently make the world a more sustainable place. The study has
scholarly and practical implications.

6.1 Academic implications

Government policies drive economic development through industry, infrastructure and social
development. Political leaders and industry can play an important role in achieving SDGs.
Political leaders have the power to negotiate with industry and mould regulations in favour of
SDGs (Scheyvens et al., 2016; Abbott and Bernstein, 2015). Apart from regional leaders, well-
established economies can also partner with developing ones to make a significant move
towards the 2030 agenda (Dong et al., 2017). In the cyber and digital era, it is crucial for
political leaders to have a social media presence to share their views and make their point
(Pappas et al., 2018; Bennett, 2012; Weerakkody et al., 2011). It is also important to make use of
the right words and emotions to make a significant impact on the audience (Casero-Ripolles
et al., 2016; Balzacq, 2005; Conger, 1991). It has been found that words like violence, people,
issue, don’t, aggression and fight are used by political leaders to show the emotion “anger”.
Other words like terrorism, election, discussed, need, security and meeting are used by
political leaders to show the emotion “fear”. In addition, words like support, teamwork,
JEIM
34,6

1908

Figure 13.
Score of each SDG in
percentages in terms of
overall score, continent
score and level of
economic
development score
happy, foreign minister, cooperation and welcome are used by political leaders to show the Influence of
emotion “joy”, whereas the emotion “sadness” is represented by using words such as political
condolence, attack, tragedy, loved one and deepest. The findings suggest that political
leaders share “joy” type emotions the most on social media. Joy type emotions help people
leaders on
connect with nature and the spiritual world. If we co-relate them to SDGs, then goals 16 and 17 SDGs
could be seen as belonging to the spiritual category, whereas goals 11 to 15 are directly linked
to nature and ecology. Furthermore, goals 1 to 10 are more about people, society and
happiness. Political leaders link SDGs to these three realms of joy, hence answers the first 1909
research question. Social media is effective at reaching people quickly (Corbett and Mellouli,
2017). Of the 17 SDGs, the study indicates that political leaders are in favour of partnering and
strengthening domestic resource mobilisation with the help of the UN, and with developed
countries helping developing ones. Political leaders have been seen emphasizing
collaboration among the private sector, government and civil society. These partnerships
are built on the basis of shared vision by keeping the planet and people at the centre, which is
required at both the global and very local level. With regard to strengthening this process,
audit institutions, administrations and legislatures need to play a critical role in oversight
mechanisms. Furthermore, political leaders are in favour of reducing corruption and bribery
in their various forms. This is because corruption potentially creates instability in the system
and decreases trust. Political leaders offer their opinion from time to time with respect to
corruption because it restricts fair competition and frustrates the investment and trade
policies of their economy. These steps help in the development of an inclusive society thus
answering the second research question.
Our study coincides with the earlier studies and reinforces the need to push forward
further with the SDGs. For example, Nhamo et al. (2019) highlighted the slow progress of the
African region for “clean water and sanitation”, which is evident from Figure 13. Asian
regions struggle in developing sustainable and low-carbon smart cities with a low score in our
study and as reported by Michael (2014). The partnerships for SDGs has been observed as
one of the key strategies among organisations, institutions and governments (Addo-Atuah
et al., 2020; Beisheim et al., 2018). Life below water (goal 14) is ignored by most developed
countries, and developing countries do not score very high on this either, but the government
of Dubai has a special focus on achieving sustainability in the marine world (Gulseven, 2020).
Inclusive growth is possible in the world if it is affects the entire world. It therefore
becomes important to understand the popularity of and focus on a particular SDG in any
economy. Our findings indicate that developing economies like Uganda, Chile and India are
moving at the same pace. Of the developed countries, only Canada has a high score regarding
SDG popularity. From a continental perspective, Europe and Africa have the highest SDG
scores, followed by Asia. Europe has a high scope of improvement, followed by Asia. Topics
like life on land for Africa, responsible consumption and production for Asia, quality
education for Asia and gender equality for Africa need more attention. Furthermore,
sustainable cities and communities for South America and Asia, affordable and clean energy
for Africa, zero hunger for Africa, good health and well-being for Asia. Poverty is one of the
main goals that needs more attention in North America, South America and Asia. Africa
needs to focus on reducing inequalities and improving in terms of climate change, clean water
and sanitation. Europe needs to place more attention on clean water and sanitation, whereas
Asia needs to accelerate its action for life below water. This therefore answers the third
research question, i.e. where should continents and countries focus more of their attention. It
is important to view the world from the view of developing, developed and in-transition
countries (Liu et al., 2018). Analysis of the data on SDGs indicates that economies in transition
must pay attention to “life on land”, “gender equality”, “zero hunger”, “no poverty”,
“clean water” and “sanitation” (Pappas et al., 2018). Governments can employ big data
analytics techniques to further analyse the gaps in SDGs (Pappas et al., 2020). Developed
JEIM economies can push for SDGs related to “life below water” and “clean water and sanitation”.
34,6 Apart from the strong growth pressure on developing economies, they need to pay attention
to “zero hunger”, “quality education” and “clean water and sanitation”. This therefore
answers the fourth research question. Five years after the announcement of the SDGs, many
countries are lagging behind in most of the goals and need to fasten from the bottom to the
top-tier activities to witness changes. Our study also strongly emphasizes the involvement of
stakeholders and allocation of appropriate resources in the achievement of SDGs (Islam and
1910 Managi, 2019). Therefore, stakeholder theory and resource-based view can play an important
role in the journey towards the 2030 agenda.

6.2 Practical implications

The findings of the study may be helpful for governments, political heads, state heads and
foreign ministers who are active on social media. Our study can be utilized by policy makers
and political leaders to view their geographical area and compare themselves with other
similar economies in terms of the 2030 SDG agenda. The findings can help authorities to
prioritize and align SDGs with their existing plans, culture and traditions. Political leaders
can learn from their counterparts, how they can make the audience aware of a particular SDG
during their five-year tenure. Developed, developing and in-transition economies have
different areas of concern and can be aligned to 2030 SDGs agenda. Political leaders can make
good use of cyber technology to disseminate awareness and their intentions with regard to
SDGs. Furthermore, political leaders can align SDGs with social media and public meetings
for the well-being of the community, country and world at large. Governments, political
leaders and policy makers also need to review their progress periodically to measure the
impact of initiatives and to take further action. Awareness and campaigns can be community-
specific in order to effectively adopt sustainable practices. For example, political leaders can
involve coastal communities to monitor and channelize life below water more effectively. This
way, the SDGs need to be integrated into a management framework for government and
political leaders. Once progress is measured, this progress can be shared with stakeholders,
who can be asked for their views to achieve the next level of the 2030 SDGs agenda. Moreover,
practicing managers from industry can work on aligning SDGs to their vision and mission of
the business. The policies of a business can be tweaked every financial year to work on a few
SDGs. Firms can allow certain funds to be invested in activities related to sustainable
development. Industry can play a key role in contributing not only to the country in which it is
operating, but also to the entire end-to-end supply chain. This does not end with the supply
chain; practicing executives also need to consider their future strategy to enter new markets
and territories while keeping SDGs in mind.

7. Limitations and scope for future research

The current research is at nascent stage in the direction of mapping the intentions of political
leaders, continents and countries with regard to SDGs. We understand that the study is based
solely on secondary data and builds on the opinions of individuals. These individuals have
been elected by the people and are responsible for the well-being of society and the world as a
whole. In our study, we used qualitative data to yield the findings and answer the research
questions. The study can be further enhanced by mapping additional views and posts about
SDGs on other platforms, such as LinkedIn and Facebook to name a few. Furthermore,
despite only considering political leaders, it would be interesting to conduct a study that
included thought leaders and celebrities, which could present a bigger picture. The future
studies can consider a few important stakeholders, such as NGOs, community-level leaders
and policy makers that could provide a new angle to the findings. It would be beneficial to
explore other platforms used by leaders to interact with masses. Apart from this, if a leader Influence of
has his or her profile on two or more platforms, it could also be investigated whether there is political
any change in style or language to address the same topic differently on the different
platforms.
leaders on
SDGs

ORCID iDs
Purva Grover http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5191-891X
1911
Arpan Kumar Kar http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4186-4887
Shivam Gupta http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2714-4958
Sachin Modgil http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7816-6594

References
Abbott, K.W. and Bernstein, S. (2015), “The high-level political forum on sustainable development:
orchestration by default and design”, Global Policy, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 222-233.
Addo-Atuah, J., Senhaji-Tomza, B., Ray, D., Basu, P., Loh, F.H.E. and Owusu-Daaku, F. (2020), “Global
health research partnerships in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”,
Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy, Vol. 16 No. 11, pp. 1614-1618, doi: 10.1016/j.
sapharm.2020.08.015.
Ali, M., Azab, N., Sorour, M.K. and Dora, M. (2019), “Integration v. polarisation among social media
users: perspectives through social capital theory on the recent Egyptian political landscape”,
Technological Forecasting and Social Changes, Vol. 145, pp. 461-473, doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2019.
01.001.
Allen, C., Metternicht, G. and Wiedmann, T. (2017a), “An iterative framework for national scenario
modelling for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”, Sustainable Development, Vol. 25
No. 5, pp. 372-385.
Allen, C., Nejdawi, R., El-Baba, J., Hamati, K., Metternicht, G. and Wiedmann, T. (2017b), “Indicator-
based assessments of progress towards the sustainable development goals (SDGs): a case study
from the Arab region”, Sustainability Science, Vol. 12 No. 6, pp. 975-989.
Anderson, N.J., Bachman, L., Perkins, K. and Cohen, A. (1991), “An exploratory study into the
construct validity of a reading comprehension test: triangulation of data sources”, Language
Testing, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 41-66.
Antwi-Agyei, P., Dougill, A.J., Agyekum, T.P. and Stringer, L.C. (2018), “Alignment between nationally
determined contributions and the sustainable development goals for West Africa”, Climate
Policy, Vol. 18 No. 10, pp. 1296-1312.
Aswani, R., Kar, A.K., Ilavarasan, P.V. and Dwivedi, Y.K. (2018), “Search engine marketing is not all
gold: insights from Twitter and SEOClerks”, International Journal of Information Management,
Vol. 38 No. 1, pp. 107-116.
Balzacq, T. (2005), “The three faces of securitization: political agency, audience and context”,
European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 171-201.
Beisheim, M., Ellersiek, A., Goltermann, L. and Kiamba, P. (2018), “Meta-governance of partnerships
for sustainable development: actors’ perspectives from Kenya”, Public Administration and
Development, Vol. 38 No. 3, pp. 105-119.
Bennett, W.L. (2012), “The personalization of politics: political identity, social media, and changing
patterns of participation”, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,
Vol. 644 No. 1, pp. 20-39.
Bossetta, M. (2018), “The digital architectures of social media: comparing political campaigning on
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in the 2016 US election”, Journalism and Mass
Communication Quarterly, Vol. 95 No. 2, pp. 471-496.
JEIM Carroll, N. (2016), “So that’s what the impact of IT innovation looks like? Examining the socio-
technical dynamics of public service innovation”, Journal of Enterprise Information
34,6 Management, Vol. 29 No. 5, pp. 677-705.
Casero-Ripolles, A., Feenstra, R.A. and Tormey, S. (2016), “Old and new media logics in an electoral
campaign: the case of Podemos and the two-way street mediatization of politics”, The
International Journal of Press/Politics, Vol. 21 No. 3, pp. 378-397.
Chakraborty (2020), “Leadership needs to drive SDGs for sustainable growth”, available at: https://
1912 www.business-fundas.com/2020/leadership-needs-to-drive-sdgs-for-sustainable-growth/
(accessed 3 April 2020).
Chen, W., Geng, Y., Hong, J., Yang, D. and Ma, X. (2018), “Life cycle assessment of potash fertilizer
production in China”, Resources, Conservation and Recycling, Vol. 138, pp. 238-245.
Choudhary, S., Nayak, R., Dora, M., Mishra, N. and Ghadge, A. (2019), “An integrated lean and green
approach for improving sustainability performance: a case study of a packaging manufacturing
SME in the UK”, Production Planning and Control, Vol. 30 Nos 5-6, pp. 353-368.
Clayton, A. (2014), “Electoral gender quotas and attitudes toward traditional leaders: a policy
experiment in Lesotho”, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 33 No. 4,
pp. 1007-1026.
Conger, J.A. (1991), “Inspiring others: the language of leadership”, Academy of Management
Perspectives, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 31-45.
Cook, D.M., Waugh, B., Abdipanah, M., Hashemi, O. and Rahman, S.A. (2014), “Twitter deception and
influence: issues of identity, slacktivism, and puppetry”, Journal of Information Warfare,
Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 58-71.
Corbett, J. and Mellouli, S. (2017), “Winning the SDG battle in cities: how an integrated information
ecosystem can contribute to the achievement of the 2030 sustainable development goals?”,
Information Systems Journal, Vol. 27 No. 4, pp. 427-461.
Costanza, R., Daly, L., Fioramonti, L., Giovannini, E., Kubiszewski, I., Mortensen, L.F. and Wilkinson,
R. (2016), “Modelling and measuring sustainable wellbeing in connection with the UN
Sustainable Development Goals”, Ecological Economics, Vol. 130, pp. 350-355.
Dang, H.A.H. and Serajuddin, U. (2020), “Tracking the sustainable development goals: emerging
measurement challenges and further reflections”, World Development. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.
2019.05.024.
de Oliveira Neto, G.C., Santana, J.C.C., Godinho Filho, M. and Chiappetta Jabbour, C.J. (2020),
“Assessment of the environmental impact and economic benefits of the adoption of cleaner
production in a Brazilian metal finishing industry”, Environmental Technology, Vol. 41 No. 14,
pp. 1814-1828, doi: 10.1080/09593330.2018.1551426.
De Sousa Jabbour, A.B.L., Jabbour, C.J.C., Godinho Filho, M. and Roubaud, D. (2018), “Industry 4.0 and
the circular economy: a proposed research agenda and original roadmap for sustainable
operations”, Annals of Operations Research, Vol. 270 Nos 1-2, pp. 273-286.
Division for Sustainable Development, UN-DESA (2015), Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda
for Sustainable Development. 2030 Agenda: UN GA Resolution A/RES/70/1, pp. 5-18.
Dong, L. (2017), “Bound to lead? Rethinking China’s role after Paris in UNFCCC negotiations”, Chinese
Journal of Population Resources and Environment, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 32-38.
Duxbury, N., Kangas, A. and De Beukelaer, C. (2017), “Cultural policies for sustainable development:
four strategic paths”, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Vol. 23 No. 2, pp. 214-230.
Fleming, A., Wise, R.M., Hansen, H. and Sams, L. (2017), “The sustainable development goals: a case
study”, Marine Policy, Vol. 86, pp. 94-103.
Fukuda-Parr, S. (2016), “From the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development
Goals: shifts in purpose, concept, and politics of global goal setting for development”, Gender
and Development, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 43-52.
Grover, P., Kar, A.K. and Ilavarasan, P.V. (2018), “Analyzing whether CEOs can act as influencers for Influence of
sustainable development goals”, in Digital India, Springer, Cham, pp. 117-131.
political
Grover, P., Kar, A.K., Dwivedi, Y.K. and Janssen, M. (2019), “Polarization and acculturation in US
Election 2016 outcomes–Can twitter analytics predict changes in voting preferences”,
leaders on
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 145, pp. 438-460, doi: 10.1016/j.techfore. SDGs
2018.09.009.
Gulseven, O. (2020), “Measuring achievements towards SDG 14, life below water, in the United Arab
Emirates”, Marine Policy. doi: 10.1016/j.marpol.2020.103972. 1913
Gupta, S., Chen, H., Hazen, B.T., Kaur, S. and Gonzalez, E.D.S. (2019), “Circular economy and big data
analytics: a stakeholder perspective”, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 144,
pp. 466-474, doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2018.06.030.
Haas, P.M. and Stevens, C. (2011), “Organized science, useable knowledge, and multilateral
environmental governance”, in Governing the Air: The Dynamics of Science, Policy, and
Citizen Interaction, pp. 125-161.
He, W., Zhang, W., Tian, X., Tao, R. and Akula, V. (2019), “Identifying customer knowledge on social
media through data analytics”, Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 32 No. 1,
pp. 152-169.
Hussain, Z., Mishra, J. and Vanacore, E. (2020), “Waste to energy and circular economy: the case of
anaerobic digestion”, Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 33 No. 4, pp. 817-838,
doi: 10.1108/JEIM-02-2019-0049.
Irani, Z. and Sharif, A.M. (2016), “Sustainable food security futures”, Journal of Enterprise Information
Management, Vol. 29 No. 2, pp. 171-178.
Islam, M. and Managi, S. (2019), “Green growth and pro-environmental behavior: sustainable resource
management using natural capital accounting in India”, Resources, Conservation and Recycling,
Vol. 145, pp. 126-138.
Jaakonm€aki, R., Simons, A., M€uller, O. and vom Brocke, J. (2018), “ECM implementations in practice:
objectives, processes, and technologies”, Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 31
No. 5, pp. 704-723.
Jabbour, C.J.C., de Sousa Jabbour, A.B.L. and Sarkis, J. (2019a), “Unlocking effective multi-tier supply
chain management for sustainability through quantitative modeling: lessons learned and
discoveries to be made”, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 217, pp. 11-30, doi:
10.1016/j.ijpe.2018.08.029.
Jabbour, C.J.C., Sarkis, J., de Sousa Jabbour, A.B.L., Renwick, D.W.S., Singh, S.K., Grebinevych, O.,
Kruglianskas, I. and Godinho Filho, M. (2019b), “Who is in charge? A review and a research
agenda on the “human side” of the circular economy”, Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 222
No. 10, pp. 793-801.
Jackson, T.P. (2018), “Not far from the Kingdom: Martha Nussbaum on anger and forgiveness”,
Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 46 No. 4, pp. 749-770.
Jongsaguan, S. and Ghoneim, A. (2017), “Green IT/IS investments evaluation within the aviation
industry”, Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 30 No. 2, pp. 206-225.
Kar, A.K. and Dwivedi, Y.K. (2020), “Theory building with big data-driven research–Moving away
from the “What” towards the “Why””, International Journal of Information Management,
Vol. 54, p. 102205, doi: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2020.102205.
Kar, A.K., Ilavarasan, V., Gupta, M.P., Janssen, M. and Kothari, R. (2019), “Moving beyond smart cities:
digital nations for social innovation and sustainability”, Information Systems Frontiers, Vol. 21
No. 3, pp. 495-501.
Kousser, T. and Tranter, B. (2018), “The influence of political leaders on climate change attitudes”,
Global Environmental Change, Vol. 50, pp. 100-109.
JEIM Liu, L., Zhou, C., Huang, J. and Hao, Y. (2018), “The impact of financial development on energy
demand: evidence from China”, Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Vol. 54 No. 2,
34,6 pp. 269-287.
Liverman, D.M. (2018), “Geographic perspectives on development goals: constructive engagements
and critical perspectives on the MDGs and the SDGs”, Dialogues in Human Geography, Vol. 8
No. 2, pp. 168-185.
M€antyl€a, M.V., Graziotin, D. and Kuutila, M. (2018), “The evolution of sentiment analysis—a review of
1914 research topics, venues, and top cited papers”, Computer Science Review, Vol. 27, pp. 16-32.
Maestre-Gongora, G.P. and Bernal, W.N. (2019), “Conceptual model of information technology
management for smart cities: SmarTICity”, Journal of Global Information Management, Vol. 27
No. 2, pp. 159-175.
Michael, F.L., Noor, Z.Z. and Figueroa, M.J. (2014), “Review of urban sustainability indicators
assessment–case study between Asian countries”, Habitat International, Vol. 44, pp. 491-500.
Mir, U.B., Kar, A.K., Dwivedi, Y.K., Gupta, M.P. and Sharma, R.S. (2020), “Realizing digital identity in
government: prioritizing design and implementation objectives for Aadhaar in India”,
Government Information Quarterly, Vol. 37 No. 2, p. 101442, doi: 10.1016/j.giq.2019.101442.
Modgil, S., Gupta, S. and Bhushan, B. (2020), “Building a living economy through modern information
decision support systems and UN sustainable development goals”, Production Planning and
Control, Vol. 31 Nos 11/12, pp. 967-987.
Mohamed, U.A., Galal-Edeen, G.H. and El-Zoghbi, A.A. (2010), “Building an integrated B2B
e-commerce hub architecture based on SOA and semantic ontology”, Journal of Enterprise
Information Management, Vol. 23 No. 6, pp. 775-812.
Mohammed, E.Y., Steinbach, D. and Steele, P. (2018), “Fiscal reforms for sustainable marine fisheries
governance: delivering the SDGs and ensuring no one is left behind”, Marine Policy, Vol. 93,
pp. 262-270.
Mojtahedi, M.C. and Katsui, H. (2018), “Making the right real! A case study on the implementation of
the right to sport for persons with disabilities in Ethiopia”, Sport in Society, Vol. 21 No. 1,
pp. 40-49.
Moore, H.L. (2015), “Global prosperity and sustainable development goals”, Journal of International
Development, Vol. 27 No. 6, pp. 801-815.
Muff, K., Liechti, A. and Dyllick, T. (2020), “How to apply responsible leadership theory in practice: a
competency tool to collaborate on the sustainable development goals”, Corporate Social
Responsibility and Environmental Management, Vol. 27 No. 5, pp. 2254-2274.
Nhamo, G., Nhemachena, C. and Nhamo, S. (2019), “Is 2030 too soon for Africa to achieve the water
and sanitation sustainable development goal?”, Science of the Total Environment, Vol. 669,
pp. 129-139.
Paletta, A., Fava, F., Ubertini, F., Bastioli, C., Gregori, G., La Camera, F. and Douvan, A.R. (2019),
“Universities, industries and sustainable development: outcomes of the 2017 G7 environment
ministerial meeting”, Sustainable Production and Consumption, Vol. 19, pp. 1-10.
Pappas, I., Jaccheri, M.L., Mikalef, P. and Giannakos, M. (2017), “Social innovation and social
entrepreneurship through big data: developing a research agenda”, The 11th Mediterranean
Conference on Information Systems (MCIS), Genoa.
Pappas, I.O., Mikalef, P., Giannakos, M.N., Krogstie, J. and Lekakos, G. (2018), “Big data and business
analytics ecosystems: paving the way towards digital transformation and sustainable
societies”, Information Systems and E-Business Management, Vol. 16, pp. 479-491.
Pappas, I.O., Mikalef, P., Dwivedi, Y.K., Jaccheri, L., Krogstie, J. and M€antym€aki, M. (2020), Digital
Transformation for a Sustainable Society in the 21st Century, Springer International Publishing,
Trondheim.
PwC (2015), “Make it your business: engaging with the sustainable development goals. London: PwC”, Influence of
available at: https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/sustainability/SDG/SDG%20Research_FINAL.pdf
(accessed 19 February 2019). political
ulzl, H. (2018), “Sustainable development–a “selling point” of the
Ramcilovic-Suominen, S. and P€
leaders on
emerging EU bioeconomy policy framework?”, Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 172, SDGs
pp. 4170-4180.
Rathore, A.K., Ilavarasan, P.V. and Dwivedi, Y.K. (2016), “Social media content and product
co-creation: an emerging paradigm”, Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 29 1915
No. 1, pp. 7-18.
Rosati, F. and Faria, L.G. (2019), “Addressing the SDGs in sustainability reports: the relationship with
institutional factors”, Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 215, pp. 1312-1326.
Scherer, A.G. and Palazzo, G. (2011), “The new political role of business in a globalized world: a review
of a new perspective on CSR and its implications for the firm, governance, and democracy”,
Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 48 No. 4, pp. 899-931.
Scheyvens, R., Banks, G. and Hughes, E. (2016), “The private sector and the SDGs: the need to move
beyond ‘business as usual’”, Sustainable Development, Vol. 24 No. 6, pp. 371-382.
Schramade, W. (2017), “Investing in the UN sustainable development goals: opportunities for
companies and investors”, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Vol. 29 No. 2, pp. 87-99.
Sedera, D., Lokuge, S., Atapattu, M. and Gretzel, U. (2017), “Likes—the key to my happiness: the
moderating effect of social influence on travel experience”, Information and Management,
Vol. 54 No. 6, pp. 825-836.
Shao, J. (2019a), “Sustainable consumption in China: new trends and research interests”, Business
Strategy and the Environment, Vol. 28 No. 8, pp. 1507-1517, doi: 10.1002/bse.2327.
Shao, Z. (2019b), “Impact mechanism of direct supervisor’s leadership behaviors on employees’
extended use of information technologies”, Journal of Enterprise Information Management,
Vol. 32 No. 4, pp. 626-645.
Sharma, R., Jabbour, C.J.C. and de Sousa Jabbour, A.B.L. (2020), “Sustainable manufacturing and
industry 4.0: what we know and what we don’t”, Journal of Enterprise Information
Management, Vol. 34 No. 1, pp. 230-266, doi: 10.1108/JEIM-01-2020-0024.
Singh, A., Jenamani, M. and Thakkar, J. (2020), “Do online consumer reviews help to evaluate the
performance of automobile manufacturers?”, Journal of Enterprise Information Management,
Vol. 33 No. 5, pp. 1153-1198, doi: 10.1108/JEIM-09-2019-0292.
Sinnenberg, L., Buttenheim, A.M., Padrez, K., Mancheno, C., Ungar, L. and Merchant, R.M. (2017),
“Twitter as a tool for health research: a systematic review”, American Journal of Public Health,
Vol. 107 No. 1, pp. e1-e8.
Sivarajah, U., Irani, Z., Gupta, S. and Mahroof, K. (2020), “Role of big data and social media analytics
for business to business sustainability: a participatory web context”, Industrial Marketing
Management, Vol. 86, pp. 163-179.
Storey, M., Killian, S. and O’Regan, P. (2017), “Responsible management education: mapping the field
in the context of the SDGs”, The International Journal of Management Education, Vol. 15 No. 2,
pp. 93-103.
Tolliver, C., Keeley, A.R. and Managi, S. (2019), “Green bonds for the Paris Agreement and sustainable
development goals”, Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 14 No. 6, pp. 1-14, doi: 10.1088/1748-
9326/ab1118.
Tseng, M.L., Chiu, A.S. and Liang, D. (2018), “Sustainable consumption and production in business
decision-making models”, Resources, Conservation and Recycling, Vol. 128, pp. 118-121.
Tsolakis, N., Niedenzu, D., Simonetto, M., Dora, M. and Kumar, M. (2020), “Supply network design to
address United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: a case study of blockchain
implementation in Thai fish industry”, Journal of Business Research. doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.
2020.08.003.
JEIM Vakeel, K.A. and Panigrahi, P.K. (2018), “Social media usage in E-government: mediating role of
government participation”, Journal of Global Information Management, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 1-19.
34,6
Watts, N., Adger, W.N., Ayeb-Karlsson, S., Bai, Y., Byass, P., Campbell-Lendrum, D. and Depoux, A.
(2017), “The Lancet Countdown: tracking progress on health and climate change”, The Lancet,
Vol. 389 No. 10074, pp. 1151-1164.
Weerakkody, V., El-Haddadeh, R. and Al-Shafi, S. (2011), “Exploring the complexities of e-government
implementation and diffusion in a developing country”, Journal of Enterprise Information
1916 Management, Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 172-196.
Weerakkody, V., Sivarajah, U., Mahroof, K., Maruyama, T. and Lu, S. (2020), “Influencing subjective
well-being for business and sustainable development using big data and predictive regression
analysis”, Journal of Business Research. doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.07.038.
Winkler, I.T. and Williams, C. (2017), “The Sustainable Development Goals and human rights: a
critical early review”, The International Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 21, pp. 1023-1028.
Wu, J., Guo, S., Huang, H., Liu, W. and Xiang, Y. (2018), “Information and communications
technologies for sustainable development goals: state-of-the-art, needs and perspectives”, IEEE
Communications Surveys and Tutorials, Vol. 20 No. 3, pp. 2389-2406.

Further reading
Allen, C., Metternicht, G. and Wiedmann, T. (2016), “National pathways to the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs): a comparative review of scenario modelling tools”, Environmental
Science and Policy, Vol. 66, pp. 199-207.
Bexell, M. and J€onsson, K. (2019), “Country reporting on the sustainable development goals—the
politics of performance review at the global-national nexus”, Journal of Human Development
and Capabilities, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 403-417, doi: 10.1080/19452829.2018.1544544.
Enli, G. (2017), “Twitter as arena for the authentic outsider: exploring the social media campaigns of
Trump and Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election”, European Journal of Communication,
Vol. 32 No. 1, pp. 50-61.
Holliday, J., Hennebry, J. and Gammage, S. (2018), “Achieving the sustainable development goals:
surfacing the role for a gender analytic of migration”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies,
Vol. 45 No. 14, pp. 2551-2565, doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2018.1456720.
Leiserowitz, A.A., Kates, R.W. and Parris, T.M. (2006), “Sustainability values, attitudes, and behaviors:
a review of multinational and global trends”, Annual Review of Environment and Resources,
Vol. 31, pp. 413-444.
Luthra, S., Govindan, K. and Mangla, S.K. (2017), “Structural model for sustainable consumption and
production adoption—a grey-DEMATEL based approach”, Resources, Conservation and
Recycling, Vol. 125, pp. 198-207.

Corresponding author
Shivam Gupta can be contacted at: shivam.gupta@neoma-bs.fr

For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website:
www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm
Or contact us for further details: permissions@emeraldinsight.com