Introduction:

The management of sustainable development has been placed in the direction of the company and is a strategic axis in organizations around the world. Among them, SMEs stand out, which are the fundamental component of companies in Latin America, representing about 99% of the total companies in this geographical region and employing almost 70% of workers.

Objective:

Analyze the specific conjuncture that Latin America presents in terms of sustainability, as well as the opportunities it can grant to the small and medium business sector to achieve improvements in numerous areas.

Materials and methods:

The state of the art is a qualitative-documentary research methodology with a critical interpretive character, based on an exhaustive review of specialized international literature. In order to reliably link theory with reality, twelve studies on sustainability in SMEs from various sectors, belonging to seven Latin American countries, are presented.

Results:

Interest in sustainability is growing in Latin American SMEs. The main contributions are found in the environmental context and in the promotion of social development. However, there are also cases in which SMEs do not pay enough attention to sustainability, ignore it or perform isolated actions that do not generate prolonged positive impacts on the environment.

Conclusions:

Latin American SMEs need to design sustainable strategies that allow for long-term competitiveness and the improvement of the environment. The absence, in general terms, of a defined foundation requires further work to increase their contribution in this context.

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