Towards the Sustainable Organization: Challenges and Barriers to Sustainability Integration

This integrative review explores primary barriers to embedding sustainability in organizational operations globally and proposes practical solutions to advance sustainable practices. It identifies key challenges and effective strategies across diverse organizational contexts. The review synthesizes insights from scholarly sources, including peer-reviewed journal articles, books, and reports, primarily sourced from databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, and JSTOR, spanning the years 2000 to 2023. Using thematic analysis, it highlights ten critical barriers: resistance to change, resource limitations, measurement challenges, insufficient leadership commitment, short-term financial priorities, unclear metrics, regulatory complexities, supply chain intricacies, limited consumer demand, and lack of expertise. Findings indicate that fragmented regulations require proactive transparency, internal resistance demands robust communication and training, supply chain issues need advanced technologies and collaborative supplier relationships, and consumer demand benefits from education and certifications. Strategic partnerships, phased implementation, and targeted training address resource and expertise gaps, while standardized frameworks and enhanced data systems overcome measurement difficulties. The review offers a conceptual model linking barriers, impacts, and solutions, recommending stakeholder engagement, analytics investment, and adoption of frameworks like the Triple Bottom Line and SDGs. This study enriches understanding of sustainability integration by clarifying obstacles and providing actionable guidance for organizations pursuing sustainable outcomes.