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

Abstract

AbstractSustainability research is vast and complex, making it difficult to grasp the big picture. To help researchers understand the field better, we created a comprehensive knowledge map of sustainability in management literature by utilising citation‐based clustering and text mining techniques to analyse 25,737 sustainability‐related papers across 22 academic disciplines, as categorised by the Chartered Association of Business Schools (ABS)'s Academic Journal Guide. We identify 23 research streams, with the top three being corporate social responsibility, operations & supply chain and tourism. Each research stream has varying degrees of definition coverage, levels of analysis, levels of interdisciplinarity and connections to the 17 United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Goals #9, #10, #12 and #13 receive more attention than Goals #3, #14 and #15. Our findings suggest a need for more interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers, and we propose four research directions to achieve this.