Research Frontiers in the Era of Embedding Sustainability: Bringing Social and Environmental Systems to the Forefront

Background: Fifty years ago, Milton Friedman first published his famous article in the New York Times—“The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits”. We explore the evolution of an extensive field of business management research that for 50 years has been devoted to examining that proposition. Today we find researchers exploring how embedding sustainability in corporate operations and business models can yield multiple business and societal benefits such as improved employee engagement, supply chain management, and reduced pollution. Stronger corporate sustainability has the potential to drive better management and performance and, as such, is emerging as a significant body of research for academics and practitioners alike. Findings of this research are also important because they may influence many corporate leaders who currently believe that adopting sustainability measures is too costly (i.e., reduce profitability) and not mission critical. Research across the social, economic, political, and business disciplines has been quite siloed to date. Business and sustainability scholars are just beginning to help each other analyze whether and how businesses can deliver on their sustainability goals for people and Earth. Our analysis highlights key thematic areas of research in the business literature. We also explain the disciplinary differences in the meanings and measurement of fundamental ideas including the scope of “governance”, who counts as “stakeholders”, and what elements to consider in conceptualizing “systems” relevant to business and society. Our analysis identified major topical areas for future collaboration among the disciplines, and how recognizing the diverse understandings of key terms listed above may unlock new synergies among researchers. Methods: We apply a novel quantitative bibliometric network (an author citation network analysis), text analysis, and semantic network analysis of 65,000 academic articles on sustainability issues from 1960 to 2015. Results: Foundational concepts were formed around 1995, and by 2006 empirical studies helped shape the field. Early research explored corporate social responsibility approaches such as philanthropy, stakeholder capitalism, and corporate environmental impacts. Research today is focused on how sustainability is embedded into business operations and research on purely environmental issues or philanthropy has diminished. Sustainability is a cohesive area of research with four main dimensions and 12 sub-clusters of research: (1) Management dimension (leadership, global ethics, shared value sub-clusters); (2) Performance (environmental, social, and governance ESG impacts, organizational, financial); (3) Marketing (attitudes, employees, brand/reputation); and (4) Strategy (supply chains, competitive systems, creating value). Conclusions: Companies that embed a sustainability core to business strategy are likely to perform well due to consumer, supplier, and employee engagement, reduction of risk, and improved operational management, among other factors. However, holes remain in the research, and we suggest new frontiers for academics and practitioners. This requires prioritizing understanding human and environmental systems, rather than the firm as the focal point of research.