SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS: IMPLICATIONS FOR GLOBAL BUSINESS STRATEGY

The global economy evolution under the influence of increasing importance of sustainable development builds a relatively new strategic framework embracing government, business and society (UN, 2015; Pedersen, 2018; Rosati and Fari, 2019). Thus, the study is an attempt to apply flipped approach to sustainable development strategies applications for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Sustainable development represent a modern agenda 2030 for all stakeholders formulated by the United Nations and consists of 17 goals and 169 specific targets, indicators, and metrics of sustainability, which ensure balanced economic growth taking into account socioeconomic coordinates (UN, 2015). Businesses as a stakeholder have vital potential to contribute to achieving the SDGs through their core activities (Sullivan et al., 2018) and by implementing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives (Kumi et al, 2020). There are few literature streams to explore the role of enterprises in enhancing global sustainability within the context of their commercial activities (Sullivan et al., 2018), which mostly explore global businesses. The large businesses are entitled to integrated sustainability institutionally (Campbell, 2006) while tools to link the SDGs with the business processes of SMEs has not yet been clearly defined and regulated (Verboven and Vanherck, 2016). Researchers revealed that practices carried out by big companies could not be directly adopted and implemented by SMEs (Belyaeva, et al., 2020).