Corporate Sustainability Practices: A Systematic Literature Review and Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Corporates are the major users of environmental and human resources for production and related processes. While wealth maximization was prioritised in the past, international organizations and governments now advocate for sustainable practices to protect the ecosystem and vulnerable communities. This article analyses corporate sustainability research to find the literature gap for future researchers. A bibliometric analysis cum systematic literature review was conducted on 116 articles selected from the Scopus database. Corporate sustainability research has gained popularity since 2015, and most studies were undertaken in developed countries. The stakeholder theory is widely used in these studies. The content analysis helped identify themes like determinants of sustainability, relationship between sustainability and firm performance, and sustainability compliance levels. Future studies may assess the impacts of sustainability on factors other than financial performance, such as earnings management, cost of capital, and market risk, and non-financial aspects, such as employee performance and customer relations. Areas like corporate sustainability auditing and assurance offer promising avenues for future exploration. Policy-makers are urged to raise awareness about sustainability among companies and stakeholders to achieve sustainable development.