Abstract
Sustainable leadership is increasingly important for translating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into effective decision-making, yet research on sustainable leadership, SDG trade-offs and synergies, and multi-actor governance remains fragmented. This study integrates these perspectives to develop a unified framework for SDG-oriented decision-making. A structured integrative literature review was conducted using Scopus as the primary database, complemented by Google Scholar and backward citation searching, with emphasis on studies published between 2015 and 2026. The synthesis shows that sustainable leadership extends beyond environmental responsibility by combining long-term orientation, stakeholder accountability, multidimensional sustainability objectives, and adaptive learning. Effective SDG-oriented decision-making also requires explicit assessment of trade-offs and synergies and governance mechanisms capable of aligning actors with different interests, resources, knowledge, and authority. Based on these findings, the study proposes the Sustainable Leadership–SDG Decision Framework (SL-SDG Framework), consisting of Leadership Orientation, Stakeholder Alignment, Policy Prioritization, Trade-Off and Synergy Assessment, Collaborative Implementation, SDG Outcomes, and Adaptive Feedback. Illustrative applications across coastal management, fisheries, mangrove restoration, sustainable tourism, urban sustainability, and organizational settings indicate that the framework is context-flexible but process-consistent. The framework contributes by positioning sustainable leadership as an iterative decision process for managing both inter-objective and inter-actor complexity. Future research should empirically validate its components, indicators, and causal relationships across governance and sustainability contexts.
