Abstract

Companies are facing challenges in sustainable development, which requires a strategic adjustment to meet stakeholder expectations. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) present a profound mission statement for sustainable development. In the corporate context, a well-known strategic management tool is the balanced scorecard (BSC). A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted on the integration of UN SDGs in the balanced scorecard, that analyzes approaches for combining the SDGs and the sustainability balanced scorecard (SBSC) since the goals were launched in 2015. Only a limited amount of research results exists so far. Four relevant papers were reviewed in this study. The analysis reveals that no comprehensive, non-industry-specific framework exists for integrating the UN SDGs into the SBSC. Consequently, after detailing the SBSC as a framework as well as the UN SDGs, this article presents a framework to integrate the UN SDGs into the SBSC in seven steps. These steps will enable companies to implement the triple bottom line (TBL) into their individual corporate strategy to achieve the objectives of the UN SDGs. This article also suggests future research directions.