A Bibliometric Retrospection of CSR from the Lens of Finance and Economics: Towards Sustainable Development

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) research is diversified and yet fragmented sustainable development literature. CSR literature is growing at a fast pace in the era of globalization. This article presents a bibliometric analysis of CSR in growing finance and economics literature between 2000 and 2021 using Scopus database extraction of 1134 articles out of 50,435 total articles through lemmatizing, stemming, and clustering. This study used bibliometric coupling to part the research front of CSR and then studied each theme’s conceptual structure and influential aspects separately. The analysis divided the literature into four main themes: (1) CSR performance theme (CSPR), (2) CSR and responsible investment theme (CSRI), (3) CSR market settings theme (CSMS), and (4) CSR and corporate strategy theme (CSCS). This research proposed a future research agenda for the advancement of each theme of CSR in finance and economics. Using meta-literature, 41 future research questions are proposed along with subjective propositions by the authors.