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This paper aims to identify the key issues that healthcare knowledge-intensive organizations (KIPOs) should focus on to define themselves as socioenvironmentally and governance responsible for integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) logic into their business strategy. At the same time, this provides an understanding of how healthcare KIPOs contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda.

Taking a cue from the model developed by the World Economic Forum, an “ESG Processing Map” was constructed to identify qualitative disclosures that a healthcare company should consider when implementing sustainability logic. The aspects investigated were processed, considering national and international standards, frameworks and disclosures. The social network analysis technique was used to systemize and combine the outcomes of these processes and analyze their consistency with sustainable development.

Through the “ESG Processing Map,” 13 areas of action and 27 topics specific to the health sector were defined on which to intervene in sustainability in order to concretely help HCOs to place specific corrective and improvement actions over time concerning socioenvironmental and governance aspects.

The paper provides contribute, on the one hand, to enriching and updating the academic literature on ESG logic in a still underexplored field and, on the other hand, to provide these types of organizations with a “compass” to guide and orient their business strategies towards sustainability.

Healthcare organizations are rethinking their practices in response to the framework provided by the sustainable development goals (SDGs). The purpose of this paper is to explore whether, how and why sustainable development practices have been implemented in the healthcare sector.

The study is based on a systematic literature review, carried out using Scopus and Web of Science databases. The papers were analyzed according to the five activity-based theoretical framework categories: purpose, subject, community, object and practices.

Results reveal a lack of research regarding the integration of sustainable development and SDGs into managerial systems or functions. Moreover, they identify key areas of interest within sustainable development and healthcare practices, offering guidance for future research and strategies to better align healthcare with the SDGs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that aims to summarize the scientific literature on this topic through the lens of the activity-based theoretical framework, allowing for an analysis of the literature that investigates how sustainable development practices shape organizational life.