Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been an articulated practice for over 7 decades. Still, most corporations lack an integrated framework to develop a strategic, balanced, and effective approach to achieving excellence in CSR. Considering the world’s critical situation during the COVID-19 pandemic, such a framework is even more crucial now. We suggest subsuming CRS categories under Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) be used and that they subsume CSR categories since SDGs are a comprehensive agenda designed for the whole planet. This study presents a new CSR drivers model and a novel comprehensive CSR model. Then, it highlights the advantages of integrating CSR and SDGs in a new framework. The proposed framework benefits from both CSR and SDGs, addresses current and future needs, and offers a better roadmap with more measurable outcomes.

Despite growing recognition of inland ports as critical logistics infrastructure, their contributions to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) remain fragmented and inadequately mapped in academic literature. This study addresses this gap through a structured narrative review of 101 peer-reviewed articles from Web of Science and Scopus (2012–2025) examining inland port sustainability outcomes. We present a novel integrated framework categorizing inland ports’ multidimensional impacts into four realized contribution domains: (1) logistics and supply-chain management, (2) sustainable transport and environmental impact, (3) integrated seaport, regional, and urban development, and (4) socio-economic growth and competitive advantage. This framework emphasizes inland ports’ evolution from transport hubs to key enablers of sustainable logistics and regional development. Building on this evidence, we propose five underexplored contribution pathways: (1) economic and industrial growth, (2) social and community well-being, (3) infrastructure and urban efficiency, (4) environmental sustainability, and (5) governance and coordination. We then develop an integrative framework explicitly linking inland port functions to SDG targets, revealing both realized and potential pathways for sustainable development. Our analysis demonstrates that inland ports most consistently advance SDGs 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) and 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), with substantial evidence supporting SDGs 3, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 17. This target-level mapping provides practitioners and policymakers with a structured decision-support framework for evaluating inland port investments against sustainability criteria, advancing theoretical understanding of inland ports as multidimensional sustainability enablers while offering structured evidence for integrating these facilities into environmental management strategies aligned with the 2030 Agenda.