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Purpose: Sustainable and responsible business is strongly associated with activities that minimise negative environmental or social impacts. As a result, the utility of big data is becoming a reality, opening up exciting possibilities for ESG monitoring and assessment. This study systematises existing knowledge and provides recommendations for big data in ESG monitoring and assessment.

Methodology/approach: Theoretical and exploratory focusing on a literature review.

Conclusions: Results indicate different levels of progress and challenges related to ESG and big data. Awareness and adoption of ESG and big data practices is growing, accompanied by regulatory pressure.

Significance: Understanding the relationship between big data and ESG is critical to properly conducting sustainable and responsible business practices. The urgency and necessity of developing standards for constructing big data cannot be overstated for ensuring consistency between existing policies and the SDGs and for the effective use of big data in ESG monitoring and assessment.

Limitations: A lack of data quality and standardisation in reporting for ESG assessments. Standardisation efforts are growing as data challenges, especially data availability, are major constraints. Large data sets offer exciting opportunities, analysed mainly from the perspective of existing applications for measuring sustainability goals.

Future research: An in-depth analysis of case studies that combine ESG issues with big data infrastructure. Fundamental is knowledge and understanding of companies’ ESG practices and understanding big data issues. We can standardise approaches to using new data sources and move towards deepening our measurable dimension of sustainability assessment.