Visualizing Sustainability Research in Business and Management (1990–2019) and Emerging Topics: A Large-Scale Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

While researchers from many disciplines are increasingly interested in studying issues related to sustainability, few studies have presented a holistic view of sustainability from the perspectives of business and management. This bibliometric study quantitatively analyzed a big data set of 30 years of sustainability research (1990–2019), consisting of 37,322 publications and 1,199,398 cited references, visualizing major topics, dynamic evolution, and emerging development. The decade-by-decade in-depth analysis shows a clear shift from a nearly exclusive focus on economic growth and consumption to all three pillars of sustainability, i.e., economic growth, social development, and environmental protection. Highlighting the differences between United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and the popular research topics from academia, our analysis uncovers research gaps and suggests future research directions for sustainability researchers and practitioners