Sustainable business performance is a rapidly growing field of research that encompasses both academia and business. The purpose of this study is to identify current and emerging research trends and provide a comprehensive map of the knowledge structure in the field of sustainable business performance, consistent with recent developments in bibliometric research. Therefore, this article offers a comprehensive bibliometric analysis based on the performance analysis and science mapping of the academic literature related to sustainable business performance published between 1996 and 2021 in 807 publications on the Web of Science. By using two powerful bibliometric visual software tools, VosViewer and CiteSpace, and by applying various bibliometric analyses such as co-citation analysis, co-authorship analysis, bibliographic coupling, co-occurrence of keywords analysis, burst detection analysis, and timeline view analysis, this paper presents the fundamental characteristics of the body of knowledge in this research field, while identifying the most influential publications, institutions, source titles, countries, and authors, and the evolution of keywords these years. The paper concludes with a discussion of the most popular research topics and identification of emerging research pattern areas that should be on the future research agenda for researchers interested in sustainable business performance.

In the context of contemporary society, characterized by the information users’ growing and differentiated needs, the way country-level governance and social responsibility contribute to the ensuring of sustainable economic development is a concern for all the actors of the economic sphere. The aim of this paper is to test the causal linkages between the quality of country-level governance, economic growth and a well-known indicator of economic sustainable development, for a large panel of world-wide countries for a period of 10 years (2006–2015). While there are some prior studies that have argued the bidirectional causality between good public governance and economic development, this study intends to provide a new focus on the relationship between country-level governance and economic growth, on one hand, and between country-level governance and adjusted net savings, as a selected indicator of economic sustainable development, on the other hand. Four hypotheses on the causal relationship between good governance, economic growth and sustainable development were tested by using Granger non-causality tests. Our findings resulting from Granger non-causality tests provide reasonable evidence of Granger causality from country-level governance to economic growth, but from economic growth to country-level governance, the causality is not confirmed. In what regards the relationship between country-level governance and adjusted net savings, the bidirectional Granger causality is not confirmed. The main implication of our study is that improving economic growth and sustainable development is a very challenging issue, and the impact of macro-level factors such as country-level governance should not be neglected.

Recent research has increasingly focused on the representation of women on boards and their impact on sustainability reporting. Although various factors influencing the relationship between female directors and the quality of sustainability reporting have been explored, no study has integrated a comprehensive framework that addresses the primary determinants and benefits of gender diversity in this context. This study aims to identify the critical internal and external determinants that influence the effect of gender diversity on sustainability reporting, as well as the supporting theories. We conducted a systematic review of the literature of 124 empirical articles published between 2000 and 2024, suggesting a unified framework that includes 20 benefit groups, 15 internal factors and 16 external factors that affect sustainability reporting. The findings may be useful for policymakers, researchers and decision makers in understanding how to leverage the positive effects of gender diversity in sustainability reporting and identifying the factors that influence this relationship.