ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL, AND GOVERNANCE (ESG) PRACTICES AND BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY IN MALAYSIA: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF EVIDENCE AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Keywords:
business sustainability, corporate governance, sustainability reporting, systematic review, sustainable developmentAbstract
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices have moved from the periphery of corporate strategy to a central determinant of access to capital, legitimacy, and long-term competitiveness. In Malaysia, a maturing regulatory architecture—anchored by Bursa Malaysia’s Sustainability Reporting Framework (launched 2015 and progressively enhanced from 2022) and the Malaysian Code on Corporate Governance (MCCG) 2021—has accelerated corporate uptake, yet the resulting scholarship remains dispersed across disciplines and methodologies. This study systematically synthesizes empirical and conceptual evidence on ESG practices and business sustainability in Malaysia, mapping research trends, dominant themes, adoption drivers, performance outcomes, and implementation challenges. Following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, a structured search of Scopus, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Emerald, SpringerLink, ProQuest, and Google Scholar was conducted for peer-reviewed, English-language studies situated in the Malaysian business context and published between 2015 and 2026. After de-duplication and multi-stage screening against pre-specified inclusion and exclusion criteria, a final corpus of studies was retained and analyzed through a reflexive thematic synthesis. The synthesis surfaced seven themes: (1) ESG adoption and disclosure trends; (2) environmental practices and sustainability outcomes; (3) social responsibility and stakeholder value; (4) governance practices and organizational performance; (5) ESG and financial performance; (6) implementation challenges, particularly among SMEs; and (7) emerging frontiers including green finance, ESG digitalization, and artificial intelligence for sustainability reporting. Evidence indicates a broadly positive but context-contingent association between ESG maturity and firm outcomes, moderated by governance quality, firm size, and sector. Malaysia exhibits an accelerating but uneven ESG trajectory in which regulatory mandates outpace SME capacity and assurance practices. The study consolidates fragmented evidence into an integrated ESG–business sustainability framework and articulates a forward research agenda emphasizing longitudinal, SME-focused, and technology-enabled inquiry.
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