Responsibility accounting and decentralized financial control: A bibliometric mapping of intellectual structure and research trajectories

Type of the article: Research ArticleThis paper examines the intellectual framework and research trends in responsibility accounting and decentralized financial control. A bibliometric method is employed to analyze a final sample of 260 documents, selected from a pool of 561 documents retrieved from the Scopus database through defined inclusion and exclusion criteria, covering the study period from 1964 to 2025. The review employs various bibliometric tools and techniques, including citation analysis, most relevant authors, most relevant sources (journals), etc. The thematic pattern analysis is also undertaken to find out the intellectual structure, theoretical development, and research trajectories. The results indicate a steady annual growth rate of 4.75%, with an average citations per document of 22.1, reflecting sustained growth in research output and academic discourse. A marked post-2010 surge is driven by international collaboration (19.23%), with China leading the implementation of these concepts. Overall, the study identifies emerging research directions and offers valuable insights for academia, industry, and policymakers.