Engineering Framework for ESG Environmental and Governance Strategies Through Industry 5.0: A Systematic Review

The convergence of Industry 5.0 and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks presents unprecedented opportunities for sustainable value creation through human-centric technological integration. This study addresses critical research gaps in understanding how to design comprehensive engineering frameworks for ESG environmental and governance strategies within Industry 5.0 ecosystems. A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted following PRISMA guidelines, analyzing 158 peer-reviewed articles from Scopus database covering the period 2015-2025. The methodology employed rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria focusing on engineering approaches for ESG implementation, technology integration frameworks, and human-centric manufacturing approaches. Results reveal that successful ESG-Industry 5.0 integration requires multi-layered architectural frameworks comprising five essential components: data acquisition layers utilizing IoT sensors and monitoring systems, intelligent processing layers employing AI and machine learning algorithms, human interface layers enabling workforce collaboration, governance layers ensuring compliance monitoring, and integration layers facilitating system interoperability. The analysis demonstrates that IoT, AI, and digital platforms create synergistic effects that substantially improve ESG transparency beyond individual capabilities, while human-machine collaboration proves essential for contextual decision-making and ethical judgment in sustainability contexts. However, significant implementation barriers persist, including system interoperability challenges, data standardization issues, cybersecurity concerns, technical skills gaps, and substantial infrastructure costs. Unlike existing SLRs that primarily catalog technology adoption patterns, this study's principal contribution is the synthesis and formalization of a validated five-layer engineering framework for ESG-Industry 5.0 integration - a structured architectural artifact derived through systematic cross-study pattern analysis across 158 studies. This framework synthesis approach generates prescriptive design guidance for practitioners, specifying component layers, integration interfaces, and phased implementation pathways that can be directly adopted or adapted, thereby advancing beyond descriptive review toward actionable engineering knowledge.