Sustainability reporting nexus to corporate governance in scholarly literature

Abstract

Sustainability reporting has become a practice of the majority and is decided by boards of directors as the supreme governing body in the decision-making process of companies. The article provides a high-view picture and visualizes research to portray the historical shifts in sustainability reporting nexus to corporate governance through an analysis utilizing CiteSpace software on 935 articles published in Web of Science Core Collection from 2009 to 2021. The number of papers in the area has expanded, especially since 2013 (a branching point), while the study determines a type of bifurcation spot (the year 2017) that evinces the SR-CG field maturity. The study determined the dominant countries through affiliated to them researchers (the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, China and Australia), the most esteemed journals (Journal of Business Ethics, Business Strategy and the Environment and Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal), and the major co-occurrence of hot keywords (carbon disclosure project, environmental disclosure quality, integrated reporting, financial performance, foreign director, environmental reporting, public sector, sustainability assurance statement). The paper identifies principal issues where SR-CG research lags (dearth of those research in developing economies and geographical limitation of research) and unravels uncharted so far domains (jurisdictions-related studies) in the realm. Future research in the realm is likely to focus on ESG, disclosures and governance performance, as well as on specific areas (geography, industry, etc.), and will explore in depth the role of multiple factors together. This papers indicate the growing convergence between SR and CG in literature, and given predominance of ‘SR as a function of CG’ approach a more stalwart and sound CG framework could bring about more tenable SR practices. The paper puts forward an agenda for advancing forthcoming research in the realm of SR-CG interdependence.