How CSR falls short in meeting Sustainable Development Goals: greenwashing in MNEs

Halit Keskin and Emel Esen

Chapter 11 in The Elgar Companion to International Business and the Sustainable Development Goals, 2026, pp 241-251 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Increasingly, companies are adopting the United Nation's (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a benchmark for measuring and reporting on their company sustainability efforts. They are choosing to focus on those SDGs that align fully with their business objectives while still neglecting others that may be equally important. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is also sometimes used as a strategy to compensate for corporate social irresponsibility, with these companies engaging in superficial or misleading practices, so they can appear ethically sound – a phenomenon known as greenwashing. Multinational corporations (MNCs) can easily engage in greenwashing by strategically misrepresenting their environmental impacts and sustainability efforts. Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing strategy that is used by some companies to misleadingly present their products and services as being environmentally sustainable or beneficial. These companies attempt to capitalize on growing consumer demand for environmentally friendly goods by incorrectly promoting their offerings as being in line with the SDGs, or as being green. This practice involves overstating their environmental benefits or significantly downplaying the environmental impacts of their products. In essence, greenwashing exploits eco-conscious sentiment for commercial gain, often without making any substantial efforts to improve environmental sustainability at all. Thus, the main purpose of this study is to understand the greenwashing practices of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) as a limitation of CSR when addressing SGDs. This comprehensive study provides valuable insights into the intersections of business practices, sustainability and ethical narratives, and then suggests ways to move toward more accountable and more robust sustainable business practices.

Keywords: Sustainable development goals; CSR; Greenwashing; MNEs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035348473
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