**Fotis Kitsios 1, Maria Kamariotou <sup>1</sup> and Michael A. Talias 2,\***


Received: 21 November 2019; Accepted: 5 January 2020; Published: 10 January 2020

**Abstract:** Sustainability is becoming an increasing issue for decision-makers and scholars worldwide and many managers understand the significance of the strategic approach of corporate sustainability. However, they face difficulties in aligning sustainable development and strategic management as well as to implement it in practice. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to conduct a bibliometric analysis exploring the integration of strategic management, decision-making and corporate sustainability, providing a framework of interrelated issues according to the current literature in this area. 72 peer-reviewed papers were analyzed based on Webster's and Watson's (2002) methodology. The results of this review revealed that the number of publications in this domain has increased in the last decade, and there is a need to foster research (especially empirical) in this field because managers should find out ways to implement, in action, corporate sustainability strategies and integrate their action plans with their business strategy. This review concludes with a framework that includes the most commonly addressed issues of this topic and provides opportunities and challenges for further research.

**Keywords:** corporate sustainability; sustainable development; business strategy; decision-making; decision support systems

#### **1. Introduction**

Existing researchers [1–3] have noticed that sustainability is becoming an increasing issue for decision-makers and scholars worldwide because it is concerned with the sustainable development of an organization in terms of environmental, economic and social views. In organizations, managers formulate and implement sustainability strategies in order to respond to environmental and social issues [1]. Corporate sustainability presents the strategic position of a business with regard to sustainable development and provides many benefits for businesses that are becoming more sustainability-oriented, use resource-efficient technologies and offer products and services that are eco-friendlier. Unfortunately, the results of the existing literature show that many managers ignore the significance of the strategic approach of corporate sustainability and they face difficulties in aligning sustainable development and strategic management [4,5].

The formulation and implementation of a suitable corporate sustainability strategy is a challenging issue for businesses because each firm has specific characteristics (e.g., the industry sector, organizational structure and internal processes, capabilities, business policies, stakeholder interests, market changes, effects of external environment, etc.) [6]. The formulation and implementation of corporate sustainability strategies, as well as the alignment between corporate sustainability and business strategy, help businesses to deal with environmental and social challenges [7]. Thus, decision-makers should select the appropriate sustainability strategy in order to be aligned with the business strategy [6].

An important challenge for decision-makers who decide to formulate a corporate sustainability strategy is how to plan and implement it. Managers have already recognized the significance of formulating a corporate sustainability strategy but they face difficulties regarding the action plan [4,8,9]. How will they translate the corporate sustainability strategy into action in order to implement it? This translation should include appropriate plans, programs, management systems, decision support systems, organizational factors, policies, ethics and performance indicators [4,8,9]. Although decision-makers have paid attention to the formulation of corporate sustainability strategies, they do not focus on the practical implementation. Issues regarding sustainable development are not considered as a strategic decision by managers. Thus, there is a gap between the formulation and implementation of corporate sustainability strategies and there is a demand for more theoretical research by academics in this field [6,10].

In this view, limited structured literature reviews have been conducted in the area of strategic management and sustainability [7,11]. As the knowledge body in this area is growing, scholars have noticed that a literature review which will provide a better understanding about the state-of-the-art in this field is required. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to map studies regarding corporate sustainability, strategic management and decision-making. More specifically, this paper answers the following questions: How many papers are published each year? Which journals have published peer-reviewed publications and which have published the highest number of publications? Which are the most active institutions in the integration of the following fields: corporate sustainability, strategic management and decision-making based on number of publications? Who are the most active researchers in this domain by considering only journal publications? What is the frequency of keywords? What methods are used in empirical papers? What are the main concepts in this domain and how many papers are published in each one?

The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, the structured methodological framework which was used demonstrates how the academic interest in corporate sustainability strategy and decision-making has evolved over the years and it highlights areas that need further research. Secondly, this literature review can be useful for managers in order to increase the understanding of the complexity of areas regarding strategic management, corporate sustainability and decision-making.

The added value of this paper is the useful overview of the state of strategic management in sustainable development, which highlights issues among sustainability strategies research domains, while providing a complete overview of the literature from a different perspective, not implemented in existing analyses and, thus, it is a good starting point for further research. In contrast with previous literature reviews that are systematic mapping studies and provide narrative amount of knowledge in the area of corporate sustainability strategy and strategic management, this paper is a bibliometric study that provides a macro picture of a research field, its evolution and connections among studies, in order to be a starting point for future research. This literature review may be of interest to academics who are already studying corporate sustainability strategies and decision-making, or researchers who have been introduced to the field but are interested in examining more specific insights into where current research topics in this literature can be located, and how they may contribute to them.

The structure of the rest of the paper is as follows: Section 2 analyzes the methodology used for conducting the literature review. Then, the results of the analysis of the papers are provided in Section 3. Finally, the conclusion and suggestions for future research conclude the paper.

#### **2. Materials and Methods**

As it has already been stated, the aim of this paper is to examine the current state of corporate sustainability strategies and the decision-making process. Studies were identified using a three-phased literature review methodology, which was suggested by Webster and Watson (2002) [12], and has been previously used in the field of strategic management and Information Systems [13–22]. First, a search of the extant literature reviews was done to select the databases and keywords of the basic search. Then, the backward search was implemented to examine the references of the selected papers and

finally, the forward search to examine the citations of the selected papers in order to increase their amount. After the selection of the papers, these were classified according to their content.

#### *2.1. Previous Literature Reviews*

The existing literature review papers from 2013 to 2016 are presented to place the current literature review alongside the existing knowledge about the field of strategic management and sustainable development and to examine the previous knowledge of this area, as well as to discuss the identified research questions based on the findings of previous studies. Additionally, previous literature reviews give an overview of the literature review methodologies used by researchers and highlight their importance and gaps in their implementation. Table 1 presents a summary of the existing literature reviews on this field.


Crutzen and Herzig (2013) [11] conducted a literature review in order to examine the relationship between strategy, sustainability and management control. They concluded that many models and frameworks have emerged but companies have limited knowledge of the design or implementation of management control which will support corporate sustainability strategy. They analyzed papers in twelve peer-reviewed journals in the field of sustainability, and they categorized them based on the countries and the type of companies, the research methodology and the operationalization of management control and strategy. Except from this analysis, authors provided some avenues for further research about the use of management control in the process of sustainability strategy formulation and implementation.

Later, Engert et al. (2016) [7] conducted a content analysis in 114 peer-reviewed scientific journal papers in order to analyze the integration of strategic management into sustainability. They focused on organizational influences, internal and external drivers and supporting and hindering factors. Their analysis has been conducted on how companies integrate strategic management into corporate sustainability, the benefits for companies when they address stakeholders' requirements and the use of management tools and systems in this integration. Their literature review provides to academics a state-of-the-art in the fields of corporate sustainability and strategic management, and to managers, some guidelines about the process of integration. Authors support that future researchers should focus on whether or not companies need to integrate corporate sustainability into strategic management and how this process could be implemented.

#### *2.2. Article Selection Process*

The search was done in Scopus, Science Direct and Web of Science databases using combinations of the following keywords 'sustainability OR sustainable development', 'strategy OR strategic management OR strategic planning', and 'decision-making OR decision support' for papers published in peer-reviewed journals. These were selected without limiting them to a specific period. Books, book chapters, conference proceedings, technical reports and working papers were not included in the review. The admitted journals belonged to fields of strategic management, sustainability and decision-making. Articles included were only those with a focus on business management and contributed to the subject of corporate sustainability strategy, strategic management and sustainable development, decision-making and corporate sustainability. Articles with a focus on environmental issues, ethical issues or economic issues of sustainable development were excluded from the analysis. Finally, published papers were only in English.

During the data collection, a set of variables was extracted for each paper. The first variable refers to the list of authors of each paper. The second variable refers to the list of institutions of each paper. The third variable refers to the title of each paper. The fourth variable refers to the year of publication of each paper. The fifth variable refers to journals' names where papers have been published. The sixth variable refers to the h-index of each journal. The seventh variable refers to the number of citations of each paper in the Scopus database. The eighth variable presents the age of the paper in years and is an indicator because it was calculated by extracting the fourth variable from the current date. The ninth variable is also an indicator that presents the impact of each paper and it was calculated by dividing the number of citations in Scopus with the age of the paper in years [23,24].

Overall, 3067 articles were gathered using keywords in all databases. According to the limitations of language and the source of publication, the articles were reduced to 428. Duplicate articles were deleted and in scanning their titles, 107 articles were found relevant with the aim of this paper. Next, examining their abstract, 72 were accepted. A number of studies were rejected because their full text was not accessible. A prompt investigation was conducted to verify them. This second overview highlighted that all of them should be included. So, 57 articles were examined according to their full text. In these 57 articles, 6 were added from the backward search. Additionally, 9 more articles were added from the 'forward search' and thus, a total of 72 articles were revealed (Figure 1).

**Figure 1.** Article selection process.

The search was completed when it came to common articles from all databases and different combinations of keywords. Therefore, it was concluded that the critical mass of relevant literature sources had been collected (Webster and Watson, 2002) [12].

#### *2.3. Classification Framework for Analysis*

72 papers were analyzed based on a classification framework. These articles were analyzed on 13 broad dimensions which will provide a better understanding of the integration between corporate sustainability, strategic management and decision-making research, and will also help future researchers to expand the knowledge in this field. Papers were classified based on publication year, journals and publishers, universities and countries involved, authors, number of citations, keywords used, research method adopted, decision-making techniques, aspects of sustainability, drivers for sustainable development, sustainability strategies, business strategy planning and performance. Table A1 in Appendix A presents the main concepts of the analyzed papers.

#### **3. Results**

#### *3.1. Number of Published Articles per Year*

Although researchers in corporate sustainability and the strategic management area conducted studies two decades ago, the majority of the papers have only been published in the last seven years. Figure 2 presents the number of papers published each year. Especially, in the early 2000s, the awareness of strategic management into corporate sustainability was found to be very low as the majority of researchers focused only on the aspects of sustainable development, and they ignore the significance of the strategic aspect of sustainability. The strong practice of corporate sustainability strategy came into existence around 2013, when researchers realized the significance of the integration between strategic management and corporate sustainability and started examining drivers that affect sustainable performance combined with decision-making techniques. Such a finding highlights both the importance of the field and its continuous development. Figure 3 presents a clear increasing direction in the last five years.

**Figure 2.** Number of papers per year.

**Figure 3.** Papers based on the year of publication.

#### *3.2. Number of Articles per Journal*

Papers have been published in 35 peer-reviewed journals. Journal of Cleaner Production has published 20 papers, Business Strategy and the Environment and Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management have published five papers each. Journal of Business Strategy and Technological Forecasting and Social Change have published three papers each. Table 2 presents the distribution of papers based on journals.

Regarding to publishers, the majority of papers were published in Elsevier journals (44.4%). Then, 12 papers were published in Emerald and Wiley peer-reviewed journals (16.7%). Springer contributed 6.95% followed by Taylor & Francis (5.56%) and Inderscience (4.17%). Other publishers have published less than three papers. Wiley and Taylor & Francis mainly have published papers based on sustainable development. On the other hand, Elsevier has published papers related to decision-making and corporate sustainability and Emerald peer-reviewed journals have focused on strategic management and sustainability. The classification of papers according to publishers is presented in Figure 4.

**Figure 4.** Papers per method.


**Table 2.** Distribution of papers based on journals.

#### *3.3. Number of Articles per Country and Universities*

To develop the corporate sustainability and strategic management domain, a total of 101 universities across the world contributed through 72 papers. Table 3 presents the leading universities involved in strengthening corporate sustainability and strategic management oriented research. The University of Graz is among the top universities involved in corporate sustainability and strategic management research followed by Åbo Akademi University, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Kedge Business School, Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, Rice University, Ryerson University, University of Kassel, University of Leoben and Utrecht University.


**Table 3.** Leading universities.

#### *3.4. Authors Actively Involved in Publishing*

A total of 167 authors contributed to the 72 papers. Table 4 presents the main authors (three or more that two papers each) who have published articles on sustainability and strategic management. Baumgartner [2,4,6,25] appears to be a more prolific author in the field of corporate sustainability and strategic management and has published six papers, followed by Hahn with four published papers. Figge contributes to the research topic with three papers followed by four authors. Hallstedt, Lozano and Searcy published two papers. The results show that a vast majority of authors have contributed to just one article in the set of journals comprising the dataset.

**Table 4.** Main authors.


Table 5 presents the most cited papers comprising this dataset in the field of corporate sustainability and strategic management. The number of citations were retrieved from Scopus for each one of these papers. Then, the age of each paper was calculated by extracting the year of publication from the current year (2019). Finally, the average annual number of citations was calculated by dividing the number of citations in Scopus with the age of the paper.


#### **Table 5.** Top cited papers.

#### *3.5. Frequency of Keywords*

Figure 5 shows the frequency of keywords that are used in each paper. The majority of keywords refer to sustainability, sustainable development, corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Other keywords regarding to strategy, strategic planning and strategy management were also used. Finally, keywords regarding to decision-making or decision-making methods, such as Analytic Network Process were used by researchers.

**Figure 5.** Frequency of keywords.

VOSviewer was used to indicate the most frequently used keywords of the 72 papers and the relationships among them. The network visualization, which is presented in Figure 6, shows the relationship among keywords and Figure 7 presents the heat map. The most frequent keywords are in the yellow area, which are "sustainability", "sustainable development", "integration", "competitiveness" and "corporate sustainability". Other keywords such as "strategies", "corporate social responsibility" and "decision-making" are not commonly used. This finding supports researchers who claim that studies ignore the strategic view of corporate sustainability [6,10].

**Figure 6.** Network visualization of keywords.

**Figure 7.** Heat map of keywords.

## *3.6. Research Methods*

Figure 8 shows that 30.57% of the papers were categorized as conceptual, 26.39% of studies were case studies whereas limited studies were theoretical. 31.94% were classified to qualitative and quantitative surveys. The results confirm scholars' notifications that despite the importance of this field, limited empirical surveys have been implemented [1,26]. Empirical papers that have conducted quantitative surveys used Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) or large companies in their sample. Decision-making methods used were Fuzzy methods, Multi-Criteria Decision-making Methods (MCDM), Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP), Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), Decision-making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL), Graph Theory and Matrix Approach (GTMA) and Analytical Network Process (ANT).

**Figure 8.** Papers per method.
