Responsible Artificial Intelligence in Strategic Decision-Making: A Systematic Review and Governance Framework for Socially Sustainable Organisations

Artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly shapes strategic decisions that determine how organisations allocate resources, restructure work and treat the people affected by those choices. Yet research has examined the performance benefits and the governance risks of AI largely in isolation, leaving the sustainability implications of delegated algorithmic authority under-theorised. Following PRISMA 2020, this study synthesises 50 studies, identified through four database searches covering 2019–2025 and backward citation tracking, using inductive thematic analysis. Six themes emerge: AI-driven automation and decision support, data-driven strategic decision-making, ethical and governance challenges, data security and privacy, organisational and structural impact, and innovation and competitive advantage. Together, these themes show that performance and governance concerns receive comparable attention (28 and 27 studies) but are rarely addressed together: only five studies span both. Building on these connections, the study develops a governance framework for socially sustainable, AI-enabled strategy. The framework conceptualises responsible AI as a socio-technical capability built on transparency, human–AI complementarity and organisational readiness, and calibrates the degree of algorithmic authority to decision criticality and EU AI Act obligations. The main contribution is therefore an integrative framework that keeps AI-supported strategic decisions both effective and accountable to those they affect, with implications for SDGs 8 and 16.