From financial reporting to ESG reporting: a bibliometric analysis of the evolution in corporate sustainability disclosures

Sustainability reporting is the new language of business communication with its stakeholders under the frameworks like GRI, TCFD, and CDP. Non-financial performances of the firms are increasingly becoming the critical assessment criteria of overall corporate performance. The present bibliometric study explores the dynamics of the scientific contribution in the area of corporate reporting using the PRISMA method. Nine hundred thirty-one documents were extracted from Scopus database for the bibliometric study after carefully choosing the most relevant documents following different levels of filtering in the broad PRISMA format. An analysis of publication patterns, temporal trends, geographical spread, research focus, authorship trends was conducted. Disclosures considering institutional theory, stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory further linking to financial and non-financial performance have been attempted. The study highlighted the trending areas of research as corporate governance, ESG reporting, role of stakeholders, etc. The study brings out the need for framework-centric research on CDP, GRI, TCFD, and more empirical studies on ESG parameters relating to operational performance. Lastly the dominance of sustainability is emerging as a key differentiator and disruption tool in the business world.