Sustainability in international business: an introduction

In the year 2015 the United Nations (UN) presented 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to be achieved by 2030. The SDGs are a blueprint for achieving a better and sustainable future for all with a special emphasis on international business actors as agents of transformation. Despite initial breakthroughs, the international business actors and scholars alike have not kept pace with the growing important of the SDGs in our lives. While global firms tend to approach SDGs to reduce their costs or fit into the legal framework, the international business literature has overwhelmingly focused on SDGs in a developed economy context. Moreover, various academic outlets have laid a greater emphasis on ethics and responsible governance than on corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainable development and environmental issues, an observation that resonates the approach of the business landscape. Thus, it is safe to conclude that seven years since the introduction of the SDGs, global actors are yet to realise their full potential. Sustainable International Business is a new book that adopts a global approach to studying international business and its implications for SDGs. It stimulates research and rethinking among scholars and practitioners to understand how businesses operate internationally into lucrative markets, its role in sustainable business growth, glocal value creation, and economic development. It provides insights into how international firms, entrepreneurs, family businesses and other stakeholders balance the act of value creation and sustainable business. The book covers three key pillars of sustainability: economic, social and environmental, and addresses capacity building and the grand challenges that international business needs to develop solutions for.