Review of Taxation, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Corporate Governance Research Interplay

This paper reviews the liaison among the prior articles that examined the interrelationship among taxation, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and corporate governance (CG) research published during the last 20 years to investigate knowledge developments and provide a future agenda. A bibliometric analysis was performed to examine the trends and patterns of knowledge development in combined CSR-CG-Taxation research to identify the productive authors and journals, influential papers, dominant countries, and the intellectual structure of the prior research, and to identify the interrelationships among CSR-CG-Taxation research. Thirty-seven peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2004 and 2023 in the Scopus database were selected for the final analysis. VOSviewer software was utilised to analyse the bibliometric data. The results revealed that the research on the CSR-CG-Taxation interplay is an emerging area with a shorter history of less than a decade. Despite the research in this area just appearing, the prior studies have embraced different key themes to extend the knowledge, indicating the importance and diversity of this area. The key themes of prior research on CSR-CG-Taxation interplay have revealed two main streams. While many studies focus on the role of CG in CSR and taxation interplay, several other studies focus on the role of CSR in CG and taxation interplay. Notably, this review proposed several avenues for further research. Review findings are significant for scholars, policymakers, governments, and the business community, as findings provide significant insights regarding the involvement of combined CSR and CG attributes in tax-related decision-making. Overall, this review provides valuable insights into responsible corporate behaviour from the role of corporate governance in CSR and tax-related decision-making, as well as CSR in CG and tax-related decision-making, emphasising its significance for social and economic development. Moreover, this research area can further be extended by exploring the impact of legal and illegal taxation on CSR and CG attributes using empirical evidence from different geographical locations.