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Over the past years, business strategies have been designed to improve ‘firms' financial and non-financial performances and achieve sustainable development, leading to corporate sustainability. This article is a bibliometric analysis of two decades of the relationship between corporate sustainability and firm performance, identifying the research focus and the gaps for future research.

The bibliometric review of corporate sustainability and performance research is between January 2004 and June 2023. As per the Web of Science database, the theme's research commenced around 2004, growing gradually till 2023. Five hundred thirty-nine published articles by peer-reviewed ABDC-indexed A and A* journals in English have been reviewed. The bibliometrix package in R software is used with VOSviewer for the bibliometric analysis.

The study's findings indicate a lack of research on the theme from developed and underdeveloped nations. Further, the analysis reveals five clusters of research: (1) business sustainability, (2) corporate sustainability reporting, (3) corporate sustainability, strategy, and innovation, (4) stakeholder and corporate sustainability, and e) corporate sustainability assessment.

The future research areas proposed are on two major themes, namely, corporate sustainability and organizational competitive advantage, including sub-themes such as “Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and financial performance” and “greenhouse-gas emissions” and “market orientations,” respectively. There is a need for more research in developing markets, a comprehensive definition of corporate sustainability, and further exploration of the theme linking strategy and innovation.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework which sheds new light on how sustainability control systems (SCS) can be used in proactive strategic responses to corporate sustainability pressures.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Corporate sustainability pressures are identified using insights from institutional theory and the resource-based view of the firm.

Findings – The paper presents an integrated framework showing the corporate sustainability pressures, proactive strategic responses to these pressures, and how organizations might use SCS in their responses to the corporate sustainability pressures they face.

Practical Implications – The proposed framework shows how organizations can use SCS in proactive strategic responses to corporate sustainability pressures.

Originality/Value – The paper suggests that instead of using traditional financial-oriented management control systems, organizations need more focus on emerging SCS as a means of achieving sustainability objectives. In particular, the paper proposes different SCS tools that can be used in proactive strategic responses to sustainability pressures in terms of (i) specifying and communicating sustainability objectives, (ii) monitoring sustainability performance, and (iii) providing motivation by linking sustainability rewards to performance.

This chapter discusses and investigates the sustainability reporting across different sectors. The first section discusses and investigates the relationship between sustainability reporting and primary sector's performance (Agriculture and Food Industries Sector and Energy Sector). The second section discusses and investigates the relationship between sustainability reporting and secondary sector's performance (Manufacturing Sector). The final section discusses and investigates the relationship between sustainability reporting and tertiary sector's performance (Banks and Financial Services Sector, Retail Sector, Telecommunication and Information Technology Sector, and Tourism Sector).

This study aims to investigate the impact of managerial power distance on the corporate sustainability performance of Chinese firms and to explore the regulatory role of corporate digitalization in the Chinese capital market.

The study collects data from 2,632 A-share Chinese non-financial firms listed on Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges during the period from 2010 to 2020. The authors apply different panel data regression techniques (fixed effects, GMM-System) to investigate the impact of managerial power distance on corporate sustainability performance and to explore the regulatory role of corporate digitalization in the Chinese capital market.

The results of the study show a positive relationship between high managerial power distance and the sustainability performance of Chinese non-financial firms. This positive relationship is particularly pronounced in Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The results also show that corporate digitalization increases the sustainability performance of Chinese firms. Further, corporate digitalization weakens the positive relationship between high-power distance and the sustainability performance of Chinese firms. These results are robust to alternate sustainability performance measures and various regression techniques.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the regulating impact of corporate digitalization on the relationship between managerial power distance and corporate sustainability performance in China.

The use of natural resources by organizations has a significant impact on society, resulting in business firms playing a vital role in developing sustainable development. As a result, corporate sustainability has become an integral aspect of a company’s vision and policy in the modern days. Companies issue sustainability reports based on various criteria and metrics, thereby attempting to gain a competitive edge. This study aims to assess and prioritize the numerous factors that influence corporate sustainability performance.

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used to prioritize the identified determinants of corporate sustainability performance based on the literature. Several experts from business and academia were engaged to build a comparison matrix for assessing the various aspects of corporate sustainability performance. As a result, various corporate sustainability determinants were determined and prioritized following an extensive literature review using the AHP.

The most critical component for companies is an economic indicator. Developing environmentally and socially responsible suggestions must be a priority for the organization’s economic performance. Economic performance is believed to be most heavily influenced by innovation and in the other category like environmental and social performance are highly influenced by environment management policies and shareholder responsibility, respectively. Researchers’ findings suggest that to promote sustainability, top executives should devote all of their attention to innovation, environment management policies and shareholder responsibility.

These studies are primarily concerned with developed countries. And, the other fundamental constraint of the AHP study is that the rating scale adopted in the analysis is conceptual. Therefore, pairwise comparisons with a variety of indicators have the potential to introduce bias into the results.

This paper proposes a methodical and operational technique for selecting the ultimate priority of sustainability indicators when it comes to exploiting competitive information on business performance. The paper also recommended sustainability rating technique might be carried out once every six months to improve the overall quality and performance of the organization.

The advantages of adopting and executing corporate sustainability are enormous, and managers must determine whether sustainability is profitable or not. This question prompts further inquiries. For example, what are the numerous critical determinants of corporate sustainability performance? Several scholars throughout the world are looking at it for this reason. As a result, it is essential to comprehend and prioritize the various determinants of corporate sustainability performance.

This study aims to examine corporate sustainability in the hospitality industry as it caters to multiple stakeholders such as society and environment. Further, the researchers have attempted to portray a comprehensive outlook of corporate sustainability by examining the organizational-level and environmental-level drivers and assessing the impact of corporate sustainability on an overarching measure of hotel performance: sustainability balanced scorecard (SBSC).

A three-staged mixed-methods research design was implemented comprising interviews, surveys and a post-hoc analysis to test the comprehensive framework of corporate sustainability.

The authors observed that corporate sustainability positively impacted hotel performance. The results further indicated that in competing environments and presence of slack resources, sampled firms could develop their sustainability strategy to improve performance. Surprisingly, environmental munificence did not significantly influence corporate sustainability but directly increased hotel performance. Interestingly, hotel performance also improved upon having managerial commitment toward sustainability.

The study highlights the crucial role of top management in hotels, where their commitment to sustainability can positively impact not just hotel's engagement in corporate sustainability but can also directly enhance hotel's overall performance. Hotel managers can utilize the SBSC developed in this study to comprehensively measure hotel performance which is found to be positively impacted by hotel's engagement toward corporate sustainability.

The study contributes to the sustainability literature by examining drivers of corporate sustainability in the Indian hospitality industry from two perspectives: environmental and organizational. With the escalating ambiguity of sustainability–performance relationship, the authors employed a novel technique for operationalizing hotel performance: SBSC.

This paper aims to verify whether the integration of sustainability in executive compensation positively affects firms’ non-financial performance and whether corporate governance characteristics enhance the relationship between sustainability compensation and firms’ non-financial performance and to expand the domain of the impact of sustainability on non-financial performance.

This analysis is based on a sample of companies listed on the Milan Italian Stock Exchange from the Financial Times Milan Stock Exchange Index over the 2016–2020 period. Regression analysis was used by using data retrieved from the Refinitiv Eikon database and the sample firms’ remuneration reports.

The findings of this paper show that embedding sustainability in executive compensation positively affects firms’ non-financial performance. The results of this paper also reveal that specific corporate governance features can improve the impact of sustainability on non-financial performance.

This analysis is limited to Italian firms included in the Financial Times Milan Stock Exchange Index; however, the findings are highly significant.

The findings provide regulators with useful insights for considering the integration of sustainability goals into executive remuneration. Another implication is that policymakers should require – at least – listed firms to fulfil specific corporate governance structural requirements. Finally, the findings can provide investors and financial analysts with a greater awareness of the role played by executive remuneration in the long-term value-creation process.

This paper contributes to addressing the relationship among sustainability, remuneration and non-financial disclosure, drawing on the stakeholder–agency theoretical framework and focusing on Italian firms. This issue has received limited attention with controversial results in the literature.

This study aims to investigate whether board gender diversity is associated with corporate sustainability performance and whether industry-level product market competition moderates the effect of board gender diversity on corporate sustainability performance.

This study uses international data extracted from global ESG data set from Thomson Reuters (Refinitiv) database. Using data of 23,137 firm-year observations from 37 countries, the authors perform regression analyses to examine the hypotheses.

The findings show that firms with high board gender diversity exhibit high corporate sustainability performance. The authors also find firms in highly competitive industries to have low corporate sustainability performance. In highly competitive industries, the positive relationship between board gender diversity and corporate sustainability performance is weakened. The results are robust to various specification tests such as alternative measures for corporate sustainability performance, board gender diversity, product market competition and also the use of propensity score matching to address endogeneity issue. Overall, the results support the prediction that board diversity and product market competition play a substitutive role in influencing corporate sustainability performance.

This study offers empirical evidence that the appointment of female directors is a useful way to improve a firm’s corporate sustainability performance, hence, providing significant benefits in terms of stakeholders’ values and corporate reputation.

This study provides useful insights to investors and policymakers that intense industry competition might mitigate the role of board governance, particularly board gender diversity, in enhancing corporate sustainability performance.

Using an international data set, where the observations operate in various market and institutional differences, this study is able to extricate the positive impact of board gender diversity and product market competition on corporate sustainability performance. This study corroborates evidence that sustainability strategy and initiatives are reflections of integrated factors, including corporate governance as internal driver and market forces faced by firms as external driver.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between corporate sustainability performance and earnings management in emerging East Asian economies.

The authors base on the triple bottom line approach to measure corporate sustainability performance. In terms of earnings management, two models are applied to detect real activities manipulation and discretionary accruals. The authors use panel data analysis of 410 listed non-financial firms in emerging East Asian economies from 2016 to 2020 that are collected from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database.

The authors find a negative influence of corporate sustainability performance on real activities manipulation and discretionary accruals. The findings highlight the long-term perspective of sustainable development strategies in relation to earnings management. The authors conclude that sustainable firms in emerging East Asia are less likely to engage in earnings management.

The study would be of interest to investors who need more detailed assessments of financial reporting quality to facilitate their investment decision-making and to policymakers who need more understanding of business practices and reporting behaviors of East Asian firms.

The study has shed light on the role of corporate sustainability performance in constraining earnings management and the role of corporate ethics in providing transparent and reliable financial reporting in emerging East Asian economies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the causal interrelations among the four pillars of corporate sustainability, which indicate a firm’s contribution to environmental, social, governance and economic activities. Moreover, this study identifies the critical drivers of corporate sustainability by focusing on the levels of market developments and geographical regions.

Based on corporate sustainability data of 2,725 global companies in 2016, this study uses a combination of analytical techniques including cluster analysis, data mining, partial least square path modeling and importance performance map analysis.

This study finds that companies in European developed markets exhibit the highest-ranking of corporate sustainability. In line with the social impact hypothesis, environmental, social and governance performance positively affects economic performance. Moreover, there is strong evidence of causal relationships and synergistic effects among the four pillars of corporate sustainability. In accordance with the institutional theory, the patterns of causal directions and the critical pillars depend on levels of market developments and geographical regions. Overall, social and environmental pillars are among the most critical drivers of corporate sustainability.

The methodology does not aim to provide a new weighting scheme for calculating the corporate sustainability index.

Corporate managers should consider sustainability practices in all dimensions to benefit from synergistic effects among environmental, social, governance and economic activities. Furthermore, corporate sustainability strategies should not be generalized across countries with different levels of market developments and geographical regions.

This study prioritizes environmental, social, governance and economic pillars of corporate sustainability in emerging and developed markets across geographical regions.