Sustainability as a topic in business and management research: A bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Sustainability has been the subject of an intense debate in the academic literature. The concern on sustainability is associated with the way managers run companies, as well as the behavior of worldwide societies towards sustainable practices or actions. It involves an actual relationship among government, markets, corporations and sustainability, in which government exerts a major role, by the regulations and provisions of environmental standards. This study aims to identify the current academic literature on sustainability, as a topic in management and business research, using bibliometric analysis, in order to gather insight into such a body of knowledge, as well as to investigate which topics are associated with this subject and considered as the most relevant ones. Data analysis involved both qualitative and quantitative approaches. In terms of qualitative research, subjects were dealt with aspects regarding their content, keywords and subject relevance. Concerning quantitative data, the following variables were adopted: total number of publications, authors, subject areas, document sources, titles, publishing years, institutions, languages and countries. The methodology in this paper involves extracting data from the ISI web of science, description of predominant journals and their impact factor are also mentioned, by checking those at Journal Citation Report (JCR). It is possible to verify the most prolific authors and their impact, as well as the frequency the researched articles have been cited. Finally, deriving from such analyses, conclusions and research opportunities for further studies are displayed.

The academic landscape of sustainability in management literature: Towards a more interdisciplinary research agenda

“…In essence, they focus on the 'trees' rather than the Several attempts have been made to analyse sustainability-related business and management papers in a wider context by considering the 'forest' of sustainability research. For example, Lúcia et al (2012) analysed 3009 journal papers in the areas of business, finance, economics and management published up to 2012 in the Web of Science database. Kordestani et al (2015) reviewed 1502 articles published in journals ranked by the Chartered Association of Business Schools (ABS) during 1991-2010.…”

A Scientometxic Map Illustrating Sustainable Performance Through Bibliometric Analysis

“…The academic literature has been rife with debates on sustainability. The concern for sustainability represents how managers conduct their businesses, as well as the behavior of global communities towards sustainable practices or acts (Novais, João, & Serralvo, 2012). The goal of this study is to provide a comprehensive overview of the literature in the field of SP research by conducting a thorough bibliometric analysis on a sample of 201 documents from journals only for the years 2015-2022 using Vos Viewer and Scopus, two bibliometric software tools.…”