Current sustainability challenges force companies to radically rethink their operations to account for their business models’ long-term ecological and social impact. Scholarly works on the topic reveal no solid consensus in defining sustainability for businesses, echoing the sustainability discourse in general. Such lack of clarity might in turn detrimentally impact the business logic that can arrive from such sustainability concepts. The few existing typological reviews of sustainable business literature are lacking in their investigation of underlying theoretical frameworks of sustainability and, more importantly, the implications of their application are largely missing. This study describes and analyses the main sustainability concepts identified in a body of 69 scientific articles from the field of sustainable business literature. Secondly, it proposes a basic sustainability taxonomy to support a critical discussion, and implications of the sustainability concepts, in both discourse and practical application. The findings suggest a predominance of concepts that only partly encompass the key aspects of sustainability, such as social and ecological issues, and long-term perspectives, and they lack the systemic understanding present in fields such as the Earth Sciences.

Sustainability Transitions challenge current practices deeply entrenched through vested interests in dominant regimes. In this sense, actors are locked into paradigms that are systemic and resilient to change. In response, opportunities within designerly approaches encompassing systemic innovation’s dynamic, multi-stakeholder and interconnected nature are investigated. The adoption of such approaches is evident among progressive actors facilitating systemic collaborations. Consequently, this paper proposes Systemic Innovation Programmes as a concept to define such initiatives, particularly for addressing sustainability transitions. Two contemporary programmes in Norway are presented, and a comparative analysis is made by linking key frameworks from the systemic design and transition to the management literature to clarify their tangency to intentional, sustainable systems change. The study identifies a spectrum of programmatic and faciliatory considerations in practice that broadly aligns with important frameworks from the systems research; however, they are rarely formalised in the programmes’ methodology or framing conditions. Thus, the theoretical contribution aims to inform systemic practitioners and policymakers in further integrating sustainable transition perspectives into future systemic change initiatives.