Value Creation for Sustainable Development at Enterprises

Abstract

The growing urgency of sustainable development has increased the need for new ways to create value that balance economic, social, and environmental priorities. Traditional business models often focus on short‐term profits while sustainable development requires long‐term strategies that generate value for stakeholders, communities, and ecosystems. Although companies are now committing to sustainability, and existing literature has established clear links between sustainability and performance, critical gaps remain in how enterprises implement these approaches. Specifically, there is a lack of scalable frameworks, standardized metrics, and sector‐specific guidance for operationalizing sustainable value creation at the enterprise level. This paper addresses these implementation challenges by examining how businesses can create and apply value‐creation methods that support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The study explores the drivers, frameworks, and best practices for incorporating sustainability into value creation, examining how organisations can link profitability with positive social and environmental impacts through strategies such as circular economy, shared value, and stakeholder capitalism. Using a convergent mixed‐methods systematic literature review approach, we combine academic literature with case studies of profit‐seeking organisations that have implemented sustainable value creation, revealing both practical challenges and opportunities. The analysis of 116 scholarly publications and 32 case studies (covering 199 enterprises across 27 countries and 23 industries) identifies three critical gaps in the literature: theoretical fragmentation across disciplines, insufficient frameworks tailored to enterprise contexts, and persistent disconnects between theory and practice. This research offers an integrated, enterprise‐level framework for sustainable value creation, along with practical insights for leaders seeking meaningful change.