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.   Key words: Sustainability, management, business, bibliometric analysis.