Unlock the change. A literature review on barriers limiting SME sustainable transition

Since the publication of the report Our Common Future of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland, 1987) governments around the world have started a reflection upon the social and environmental damages caused by a growth-oriented economic system which neglects our natural ecosystem's boundaries (Shaper, 2002; Chofreh et al., 2020; Goni et al., 2021). This has led also to the definition of sustainable development goals (SDGs) in the 2030 Agenda of United Nation, in which businesses are called to give their contribution towards sustainability (Cantele & Zardini, 2018) considering their environmental, social and economic impact (Elkington, 1998). In this scenario, Smes represent 99.8% of companies (European Commission,2019; Neri et al.,2021) and because of their overall socio-economic and environmental impacts, play a fundamental role in order to achieve SDGs. Through a systematic literature review (SLR) on current studies, this study seeks to establish a comprehensive body of knowledge on the particular barriers to sustainability for SMEs. Thematic analysis method (TA) was used to identify key themes and classify them into four major types of barriers for SMEs (organizational constraints, individual features and beliefs, market conditions, and institutional environment). The last paragraph discusses these findings to identify under-investigated areas and proposes future paths of research, and draws the limitations of this study.