Think Global, Act Local? Fortune 500 Business Strategies for Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG 11)

ABSTRACT The role of business towards achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been well established. However, SDG contextualization continues to pose a conundrum, particularly for firms operating in multiple contexts. This becomes even more problematic in the case of SDG 11, the only goal in the sustainable development agenda directly focusing on cities and local communities. Building upon a thematic analysis of Fortune 500 sustainability reports and related data, the study reveals four business strategies towards contextualizing and contributing to the underexplored SDG 11: reducing their own negative impact, outsourcing community support, mobilizing context‐relevant competences, and reshaping the community fabric. Importantly, I then synthesize the findings into a matrix and unpack how each of the four strategies represents a distinctive way of business thinking and acting sustainably (local/global), providing theoretical and practical implications for SDG contextualization and the achievement of SDG 11.