Corporate sustainability performance and firm performance: the state-of-the-art and future research agenda

Abstract

Purpose

The past years have seen more studies exploring corporate sustainability performance (CSP) and firm performance nexus, but there has been a lack of analysis using bibliometric studies. This study aims to provide a structure for the CSP-firm performance relationship to gain valuable insights for further research.

Design/methodology/approach

Bibliometric analysis was carried on 462 articles from the Scopus database spanning 1987–2022 using VOSviewer and R software Bibliometrix.

Findings

The study overviews the most notable articles, authors, journals, countries and institutions. Four main clusters are identified to determine research themes using bibliographic coupling (documents). Additionally, co-occurrence analysis (keywords) reveals three themes indicating current and future research trends.

Originality/value

The study presents an overview of the evolution of research on CSP-firm performance nexus. This work consolidates bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review on CSP and firm performance, covering all significant work on the topic and presenting the field's knowledge map and future research directions.

Citation

Kumari, G. and Joshi, Y. (2023), "Corporate sustainability performance and firm performance: the state-of-the-art and future research agenda", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/BIJ-03-2023-0195