Corporate reporting on the Sustainable Development Goals: A structured literature review and research agenda

Purpose – The SDGs framework emerged as a guidepost for the transition to sustainable development. To achieve this transition, companies are encouraged to integrate these goals into their business strategies, processes, and corporate reporting cycle. The purpose of this paper is to review and critique the corporate SDGs reporting literature, develop insights into the state of this research field and identify a future research agenda.

Design/methodology/approach – Using a structured literature review methodology, the paper reviews 65 empirical papers published in this field to identify how the current research is developing, offers a critique, and identifies future research avenues to advance this field.

Findings – Corporate SDGs reporting is developing as a research area of great importance. The findings reveal that current SDGs reporting literature lacks theorisation, overly focuses on publicly listed companies and succinctly describes organisations’ engagement with the SDGs as superficial. Surprisingly, regions such as North America, the United Kingdom, and other emerging economies have received less attention from scholars. Further, only a few authors have specialised in this field and there currently exists low levels of international collaborations among authors as well as practitioners.

Originality – The paper offers a comprehensive structured review of the empirical papers published on corporate SDGs reporting. It contributes to deepening this nascent research field by identifying five distinct areas where accounting and business scholars may focus to advance the field further and contribute to achieving the SDGs agenda.