Unboxing the sustainability trends of small and medium enterprises’ environment, social and governance reporting: bibliometric and visualisation insights

There has been heightened attention on global warming amidst expanding commercial activities at the forefront of human civilization. While small and medium enterprises (SMEs) drive economic growth in most nations, they inevitably leave a huge carbon footprint behind in the process. Nonetheless, awareness of the importance of sustainability is still slow and lacking in SMEs, partly due to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting being voluntary in most countries. This study aims to unravel the trends of sustainability and ESG surrounding SMEs via bibliometric and visualization analysis, supported by a literature review, based on a dataset extracted from the Scopus database. The findings revealed 11 diverse yet disparate network clusters with environmental management, financial sustainability, and economics as some of the trending keywords. With SMEs’ role in sustainability continuing to create headlines, it is expected that research in these areas will gain momentum in the near future. It is imperative for SMEs to be proactive in implementing and strengthening their ESG reporting capacity as a way forward because of its profound effects on SMEs’ future of SMEs in terms of long-term financial performance and enterprise resilience.