How does research on sustainable human resource management contribute to corporate sustainability: A document co-citation analysis, 1982–2021

Abstract

While the field of human resource management (HRM) has a long research tradition, the focus on sustainability has only gained momentum since the turn of the millennium. This bibliometric review examined key documents that inform scholarship in sustainable human resource management (S-HRM). The review identified 807 Scopus-indexed documents on sustainability in human resource management published between 1982 and 2021. Bibliometric analyses applied to this database included document citation and co-citation analysis to map peer-recognized documents. The review documented an emerging knowledge base that is global in scope with contributions from a variety of regions in the world. Three ‘invisible colleges’ emerged in the visual map of co-cited documents. These include green human resource management (Green HRM) with a focus on environmental aspects of sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and S-HRM with a focus on analyzing all three aspects of the triple bottom line of corporate output. These document analyses found that this emerging literature on S-HRM is heavily weighted towards environmental concerns. The authors recommend that greater attention be placed on the contributions that HRM makes to the human and social aspects of sustainability.