Sustainability reporting: Current state and challenges

AbstractThere exists a huge difference in sustainability reporting adoption & implementation within and between countries which affect achievement of desired results at global level for environmental protection and social development. This study summarises and analyses 133 studies of sustainability reporting published between year 2004 and 2022 in web of sciences (WoS) database through Bibliometric Analysis and also used Theory, Context, Characteristic Methodology framework to represent the state of research in this field for the first time. The study is divided in two sections (1) develop an understanding on sustainability reporting trends and thematic evolution, and (2) discussion on challenges of sustainability reporting adoption and implementation. The present study consolidates the state of research on sustainability reporting. The study finds a thematic shift since 2017 onwards and a significant increase in publications since 2018. It identifies four major thematic clusters namely, sustainability reporting, board gender diversity, content analysis, and ESG disclosure which reveals that ESG reporting, ESG disclosures, and sustainability stakeholder impact assessment has high potential for future research. It also contributes by identifying most prominent theories in the field viz stakeholder, legitimacy and institutional theory and preferred methodology as qualitative research. It finds emerging themes as Sustainability Reporting Quality, ESG disclosure, cross‐country evaluation and also highlights most relevant keywords and trends in the research field. Study recognises lack of common definition and conceptual understanding, standards measurement metrics and cross‐country evaluations as major challenges which stands as big problem at policy formation and implementation stage.