Sustainability: Is It a Strategic Management Research Fashion?

1. Introduction

In a rapidly changing environment and society, two main themes have become essential to discussing organisational longevity and societal progress. First, strategic management (SM), a hybrid academic field combining economics and sociology, is essential for the long-term existence and expansion of organisations and focuses on creating and implementing comprehensive strategies to achieve organisational goals [1,2,3]. As an academic field of research, SM emphasises creating and maintaining competitive advantage, promoting the common good and sharing wisdom to help organisational members understand the future [4,5]. Second, the importance of sustainability and environmental initiatives is receiving increasing attention in corporate, consumer, and individual behaviour [6]. This shift is further supported by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations, which aim to promote global sustainability by 2030, targeting a wide range of goals from poverty reduction to environmental sustainability by mobilising new agents of change such as businesses, cities and civil society [7,8,9,10]. Sustainability, therefore, plays an important role in organisational strategy [11].

Academic research fashion is characterised by a rapid acceptance of scientific information as a result of rapid growth in a scientific field, influenced by theoretical development and the number of scientists attracted to it [12]. Scientists following fashions often adopt the lead and styles of their respective disciplines [13]. On the other hand, management fashions at the organisational level influence the techniques used and adopted by managers to tackle complex managerial issues and organisational gaps and often result in rapid, bell-shaped shifts in the popularity of these techniques [14]. Accordingly, these fashions, characterised by a fluctuating number of publications, should be rational and progressive, utilising social, psychological, technical, and economic forces to influence their demand [14,15,16,17]. Accordingly, management fashions can be conceptualised as the production and consumption patterns of temporarily intensive management discourse, along with the organisational changes this discourse induces [18]. Notably, academic research and management fashions are similar in that both are cyclical and influenced by larger socio-economic factors in their development and adoption. Both management fashions indicate shifts in focus and concentration caused by new theoretical insights and their impact on management practice.

Numerous studies suggest a relationship between SM and sustainability, indicating that their integration can generate value for businesses, society, and the environment, resulting in a competitive advantage for sustainable firms, which reflects a firm's ability to outperform its competitors by offering superior value to customers [19,20,21]. Although sustainability is increasingly being incorporated into business strategies to create value for companies, society and the environment, the question of whether sustainability is a SM research fashion in the academic literature remains unanswered [19]. This study, therefore, seeks to fill this gap by applying a bibliometric analysis to recent academic research to investigate whether sustainability is increasingly being considered in SM research.

This paper systematically reviews the relationship between SM and sustainability in academic research. It enables the mapping of the current state of research and the identification of future avenues for growth in sustainability and SM research [22]. Following an introduction that outlines the scope and objectives of this research, the following section examines the theoretical frameworks that underpin both fields, setting the stage for the research questions. The methodology section discusses bibliometric analysis techniques to examine the academic literature from the most recent period, 2021–2023, reflecting the latest academic insights into this approach. The results section presents a comprehensive analysis of the findings, focusing on the key trends and patterns identified from the bibliometric data. This discussion presents the current environment the gaps and opportunities identified for future research. The concluding section synthesises these findings, identifies implications for the study and suggests future research directions.

2. Literature Review

With its origins in military science, SM emphasises aligning organisational structure with strategy, focusing on achieving superior performance, reducing costs and improving customer satisfaction [2,23,24]. It is a creative activity that uses scientific principles to improve management effectiveness and has evolved significantly over the past decades [25,26]. To achieve effective management, SM requires the input of distributed wisdom, planning and execution, promoting the common good, and shared understanding among organisational members [5,27]. Meanwhile, sustainability, which originated in forestry, initially emphasised avoiding overharvesting [28]. Later, the Club of Rome report predicted resource depletion within one or two generations, influencing global public policy [29]. The World Commission on Environment and Development's Brundtland report, which promoted current and future-oriented development that guarantees the satisfaction of current needs without jeopardising the capacity of future generations to meet their own, made sustainable development more widely recognised [30,31].

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), which originated as a neoliberal idea to decrease government regulation, has developed into a progressive coregulatory approach that seeks to voluntarily include social and environmental issues in business operations [32]. Thus, studies examining the impact of CSR and sustainability on various areas, including responsible consumption, production, human resources, supply chain management, industry, innovation, infrastructure, national culture, decision-making, the circular economy, affordable and clean energy, and more, demonstrate that sustainable development and CSR are emerging as global trends [33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41]. Identifying these research trends allows researchers to recognise and analyse research topics promptly, thus facilitating the advancement of knowledge in these fields [42].

The relationship between sustainability and SM has evolved from initial concepts to a sophisticated framework for managing business organisations, guiding them to integrate sustainability into their corporate, competitive, and functional strategies [43]. It also highlights that integrating sustainability and change management as part of decision-making, value creation, and across all business units, functions, and reporting structures is a critical success factor in driving strategic sustainability initiatives [44]. Therefore, such a framework should consider various organisational influences, both internal and external, and identify factors that support or hinder this integration within SM [45].

The long-term stability of superior resources, the ex-post and ex-ante limits to competition, and imperfect resource mobility create a sustainable competitive advantage [46,47]. A company's competitive advantage also depends on the transfer of internal best practices, but implementing these practices may present challenges [48]. As a result, integrating sustainability into strategic decision-making may enhance an organisation's competitiveness and ensure its long-term sustainability, suggesting that SM and sustainability can result in a long-term competitive advantage [49]. Moreover, many studies demonstrate that, although previously seen as cost drivers, sustainability innovations improve company competitiveness by increasing value creation, lowering costs, and acquiring nonfinancial assets [50,51].

However, despite its widespread popularity, sustainable development remains to be seen because of continued questions about its meaning, history and implications [52]. This background establishes the context for the research question: whether sustainability can effectively be viewed as a SM research fashion [46]. Therefore, this study assesses sustainability as a SM research fashion, marked by a swift and extensive surge in interest within academic research. The following section of this study will focus on the methods used to investigate this research question, presenting the tools, techniques and datasets used to conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the topic.

3. Materials and Methods

This study utilised bibliometric analysis, a widely used method for analysing large volumes of scientific data that allows studying evolutionary nuances and emerging areas to examine the evolving sustainability and SM research environment and determine whether sustainability is an academic research fashion [53]. The bibliometric dataset was created from academic research in the SCOPUS database. Only recent English journal publications on accounting, management and business research were included in this analysis. The SCOPUS database was selected due to its careful content selection and review process, as well as for its comprehensive coverage of academic research [54].

A bibliometric search in Scopus was carried out in two steps, as shown in Figure 1 and Table 1. These queries were formulated in Scopus using Boolean operators. First, the keyword strategic management was used in Query 1 (n=19,525) with a missing data check (n=52, based on Bibliometrix) to identify SM studies' most common related keywords. The resulting studies (n=5,209) were included in the subsequent bibliometric analysis. Second, the search was extended by combining the terms strategic management, sustainable development and sustainability in Query 2 to find academic literature on the sustainability environment and SM research field (n=4,901). After applying the Query 2 parameters from Table 2 (n=4,069) and checking for missing data (n=8, based on Bibliometrix), the study obtained the second dataset for further bibliometric analysis (n=832). The Query results may change over time due to the continuous quality assurance activities conducted by Scopus and the regular updates [54,55].

Analysis and visualisation tasks were performed using VOSviewer software (version 1.6.20), Tableau (version 2024.1) and Bibliometrix software (version 4.1.4). Microsoft Excel (version 2402) was used for data processing. The VOSviewer software is a freeware tool that facilitates the analysis and creation of bibliometric maps by building and displaying bibliometric relationships between several variables [56,57]. The Bibliometrix tool was used in this study to perform performance analysis and science mapping to assess the environment of the sustainability and SM research fields [53,58]. In addition, Tableau was used for generating visual and geographical representations to analyse data [59].

This section explains the methods and techniques used to analyse the relationship between sustainability and SM in academic research. The next sections will present the results and discuss the implications of these findings to enhance the understanding of the relationship between sustainability and SM research.

4. Results and Discussion

Table 2 displays the key statistics from Query 1 and Query 2 used in this section. Query 1, which focused on SM, resulted in 5,209 articles from 1,009 journals. With sustainability and sustainable development added to SM, the improved Query 2 produced 832 articles from 361 journals. In Query 2, the yearly growth rate of articles was significantly higher, at 24.70%, compared to 14.30% in Query 1. This shows an interest in expanding research activity on SM and sustainability topics. It is also supported by a higher average number of citations per paper (9.9 vs. 8.2), co-authors per paper (3.2 vs. 3.1) and international co-authorship (33.7% vs. 32.8%). This shows that sustainability is attracting academic attention, with a thriving and collaborative global research community focused on sustainability and SM.

Analysing the annual scientific output within Queries 1 and 2 provides insights into the evolving environment of SM and sustainability. Within Query 1 it increased gradually, as seen in Figure 2, from 1,524 studies in 2021 to 1,991 in 2023. However, the number of studies in sustainability and SM (Query 2) increased faster, from 225 in 2021 to 350 in 2023. The ratio of Query 2 / Query 1 annual scientific production increased from 14.8% in 2021 to 17.6% in 2023. This growth suggests an increasing meaning and the recognition of sustainability as an important part of SM. Thus, it represents a broader societal and organisational shift towards sustainability and its integration into strategies and decision-making.

Figure 3 shows a network map of keyword co-occurrences derived from the results of Query 1, with a threshold of 100 co-occurrences to indicate the most common keywords (n=23) that meet the specified requirement. The network map highlights the relationship between SM, sustainability, sustainable development and other relevant keywords, including strategic approach, supply chain management, decision-making, strategic planning and innovation. Furthermore, the relationship between CSR, sustainability, SM and strategic approach shows that CSR significantly impacts these studies, especially in the context of sustainability. This further confirms that the SDGs have recently influenced CSR research, leading to an increased focus on strategic aspects of the community, companies, consumers, investors, and employees [60].

Table 3 provides information about the bibliometric map shown in Figure 3, including a description of the keywords contained in each cluster. Brackets indicate the strength of the links and the co-occurrence of the keywords, while colour code identifies each cluster. The yellow cluster, which places sustainability and sustainable development in a separate cluster alongside CSR, is notable for its relatively high co-occurrence (n=578) and link strength (n=748), showing the academic research concentration on sustainability and SM.

The network map in Figure 4 shows the co-occurrences of the keywords (n=37) obtained from the results of Query 2. The threshold for the bibliometric map is set at 15 co-occurrences to represent the most common keywords. The network map places the keyword sustainability and sustainable development at the centre of SM and sustainability research, indicating their importance as a concept around which other issues related to SM and sustainability evolve.

Table 4 provides information on the bibliometric map shown in Figure 4 and each cluster in the network map:

• Red cluster. This cluster highlights the importance of sustainability in SM, with key themes such as sustainability (n=220), strategic management (n=65) and innovation (n=45) (e.g., [61,62,63]). This emphasises how sustainability shapes strategy research. It influences leadership, climate change, project management, knowledge management, human resource management, and integrating environmental and SDGs into strategies.
• Green cluster. It emphasises sustainability in regulatory, operational and competitive terms, focusing on sustainable development (n=229), CSR (n=51) and environmental management (n=37) (e.g., [64,65,66]). This cluster thus emphasises how academic research motivated by CSR initiatives and environmental compliance applies to sustainability concepts. The attention paid to corporate sustainability, economic and social effects, competition, and sustainable development suggests a wide involvement with the SDGs from different organisational perspectives.
• Blue cluster. It focuses on strategic development in response to global disruptions and market dynamics, including strategic approach (n=63), pandemic (n=33) and stakeholder engagement (n=19) (e.g., [67,68,69,70]). Thus, the keyword pandemic, along with the strategic approach, emphasises the need to take disruptions and resilience into account in academic research together with stakeholders and business strategy.
• Yellow cluster. This cluster focuses on sustainable supply chain management and resource efficiency and emphasises the need to enhance supply chain sustainability and resource optimisation in SM. Among the topics covered are supply chain management (n=58), SDGs (n=21), circular economy (n=37), and waste management (n=21) (e.g., [71,72,73,74]), highlighting academic research focused on waste reduction, circular economy, resource reuse and achieving the SDGs.

Figure 5 shows that research on sustainability in SM has recently attracted widespread interest on a global scale, representing 88 countries, or 45.6% of all 193 United Nations member states that adopted the SDGs in 2015 [75,76]. India is a major contributor (n=74), representing 8.9% of global research. The US (n=53) and China (n=52) are close behind, with 6.4% and 6.3% of articles, respectively. The United Kingdom (n=43) and Italy (n=42) also contribute significantly. With 33.7% of international co-authorship, academic research in sustainability and SM has a broad and global reach beyond regional and economic boundaries. This makes SM and sustainability an enduring academic research area.

Overall, the results of this study show that the environment of sustainability and SM research is rapidly growing, diverse and widespread. This environment includes topics such as climate change, innovation, competition, corporate social responsibility, strategic planning, environmental economics, strategic approach, circular economy, decision-making, supply chain management, etc. Therefore, the findings presented in this section confirm the research question, suggesting that sustainability is a SM research fashion.

5. Conclusions

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between sustainability and strategic management (SM) by examining the increasing attention given to these areas in academic research, particularly in economics, management and accounting [41]. The study used bibliometric analysis in VOSviewer and Bibliometrics, as well as Tableau for geographical visualisation to address the gap in the existing literature by investigating whether sustainability can be considered a SM research fashion.

The results indicate a notable rise in academic attention to sustainability and SM concerns. This is supported by the annual growth rate of sustainability and SM articles, which demonstrates a notably higher growth rate than the overall SM articles (24.70% vs. 14.30%). The growing and collaborative research community focused on sustainability and SM is evidenced by the higher average number of citations per document (9.9 vs. 8.2) and international co-authorship (33.7% vs. 32.8%). This is also reflected in the global coverage of academic research, including 88 countries, with India, the USA and China leading the way. This indicates a broad acknowledgement of sustainability and SM in academic research.

Notably, the network mapping from a SM perspective indicates a distinct cluster that emerged in recent academic research that focuses solely on sustainability-related issues. This cluster includes terms such as sustainability, sustainable development and corporate social responsibility. To gain further insight into academic research on sustainability and SM, a second set of network mapping exercises was carried out. The results identified four primary thematic clusters covering crisis management, strategic and creative sustainable development, operational and regulatory sustainability, sustainable supply chains and resource management.

The study has some significant limitations that need to be addressed. It is based on a selection of journal-type articles in English from the Scopus database between 2021 and 2023, focusing on business, management, and accounting. Still, additional databases and articles can be explored through search queries. As a result, broadening the field's scope and considering the influence of emerging research areas and topics is a potential avenue for future bibliometric analysis. In addition, it would be recommended that the results of this study be replicated in the future to determine whether sustainability is a short-term or long-term SM fashion.

Notwithstanding these research limitations, the results of this study provide further evidence that sustainability is a prominent SM research area. This suggests that sustainability, characterised by observed growth, interdisciplinary collaboration and global participation [12], is SM research fashion.

This study and the methods used have implications for both researchers and practitioners. For instance, managers adopt management fashions to learn techniques to address issues caused by technical and economic environmental changes [14]. Accordingly, researchers and practitioners can gain an understanding of the importance and current state of the fields of SM and sustainability. However, to develop further sustainable SM research, it is essential to continue investigating this relationship.

Future research could build on this study by incorporating more bibliometric analysis approaches, extending the scope to other academic databases, analysing theoretical and conceptual frameworks, evaluating digitisation, identifying the relationship between sustainability, SM and global disruptions, comparing sustainability efforts across different geopolitical contexts, and investigating stakeholder engagement and collaboration in promoting sustainability. Such techniques contribute to a deeper understanding of how the sustainable development agenda influences SM and how organisations can use these insights to become sustainable and gain a sustained competitive advantage.