Sustainable development goals and corporate strategy: a map of the field

Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure peace and prosperity, call on companies everywhere to advance sustainable development through the investments they make, the solutions they develop, and the business practices they adopt. This research work carries out a systematic review of the previous literature related to the adoption of SDGs as a corporate strategy in companies, that shows an exponential increase in the papers related to this topic during the first years after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda. Our findings show that the economic dimension of sustainability has lost lightly interest in the academic world since then, with the sphere of governance and society being predominant, without forgetting the field of protecting the planet, especially about the fight against Climate Change (SDG13/ESG). And despite the importance of the 2023 Agenda for the future of the world, even today there are few reference authors in this field of study.