Development of a sustainability index for countries and sectoralrelationship analysis: nuh naci yazgan university, institute of social sciences,department of business administration,

Sustainable development is crucial to securing the future of humanity. Therefore, evaluating and managing sustainability has become a significant obligation that societies must confront. In this context, accurately measuring and analyzing sustainable development indicators is important for understanding the differences between countries and directing development policies more effectively. The main purpose of this study is to develop a new index that can measure and compare the sustainable development levels of countries, and to analyze the relationship between this index and sectoral production indicators of countries.In this thesis, institutional reports, international indices, and literature research have been utilized. In this context, 95 indicators were determined in economic, environmental, social, and governance dimensions with the 2022 data of 167 countries obtained from the World Bank, Human Development Reports, and Sustainable Development Reports. The Entropy Method was used to calculate the index's weights, and the relationship between the developed index and the sectoral production data of countries was analyzed using Correlation Analysis. To group the countries, K-means, and Two-Step clustering analyses were performed. As a result, based on the sustainability index calculations and sectoral production data analysis conducted in this study, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark were ranked as the countries with the highest sustainable development performance. In contrast, countries like the Syrian Arab Republic, Afghanistan, and South Sudan had the lowest sustainability scores. The correlation analysis revealing the relationship between sectoral production data and sustainability performance shows that the machine/equipment repair and water supply sectors contribute the most to sustainable development goals. K-means and Two-Step clustering analyses revealed that countries are divided into different groups based on their sustainability performance and that developed economies and low-income countries can be classified into distinct clusters. Key Words: Sustainability Index, Sectoral Relationship Analysis, Country Scores.