The objective of this paper is to determine the current state of scientific production regarding “competitiveness” in the international context through a bibliometric analysis. This study presents a review of 2293 documents published about competitiveness in the international context from the Scopus database (1983–2017). Two different processing software applications were used, Vosviewer and Scimat. Although very recent bibliometric analyses of the topic exist, the methodology applied in the search term is restricted due to the separate use of a single search combination “national competitiveness” or “international competitiveness”. For this work, three combinations of words with logical operators were used, TITLE-ABS-KEY (“international competitiveness”) OR (“national competitiveness”) OR (“export competitiveness”), thus managing to span the concept of competitiveness in the international context in a broader sense. Our results show that competitive research is in a period of high production. The most productive authors and journals are not the most cited on competitiveness. Only three countries stand out with the largest scientific production about this topic. The trend of the most recent research points to knowledge areas in environmental sciences. The most researched geographical areas in international competitiveness encompass the whole world and especially Southeast Asia.

There is evidence about the international competitiveness of Small and Medium Enterprises having a close relationship with their absorptive capacity and internationalization networking, and for that reason, it is relevant to find out the main trends in this field of knowledge. The objective of this study is to provide a bibliometric analysis of the status of the existing research in the field to recognize main topics and help identify research gaps. This study was done through a review of 1,710 documents published about this relationship from the Scopus and Web of Science databases (1994–2018), using as processing software application that employs two combinations of terms associated with Boolean operators. This was taken into account in order to optimize the accuracy of the search and to facilitate large data capture. The results show that these studies are in a period of high production and concentrated in a few countries and researchers’ networks in the United States, the People’s Republic of China, and some European countries. Moreover, the trend words used by researchers are those which link absorptive capacity with networking, open innovation, and firm performance.

The internationalization of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) is a topic of constant research interest due to the impact these have on economic growth and employment in developed, emerging and developing countries. A desire to understand and a growing interest in the study of the internationalization process of SMEs has provoked a significant increase in the production of manuscripts in this field in the last decade. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out periodic reviews on the state-of-the-art of this phenomenon in order to highlight advances and limitations, to motivate reflections and stimulate progress in future research. Thus, the main objective of this study is to describe the state-of-the-art of the research into SME Internationalization based on a bibliometric analysis of 1152 manuscripts published from 1990 to 2018. The results enable the identification of the main agents that are constantly developing this field through an analysis of scientific production and collaboration indicators. Furthermore, through a co-word analysis, this research establishes hot-spot research trends that need to be developed in future research. The main contribution of this research is the configuration of a knowledge map on SME Internationalization research.

Research background: After major scandals in apparently reputable and solvent companies, added to the great economic crises of recent decades, accounting and finance have become a fundamental discipline for the correct study of these events from an ethical point of view. Philosophers, economists and even religious people have wanted to contribute their grain of sand to the study of the ethical behaviour of companies and make it go beyond mere administration. In recent years, non-financial reporting has been gaining ground, to the point that the legal system now makes it compulsory in most Western countries. Purpose of the article: This study aims to review and summarize the role of ethics in the sustainability reporting so as to develop a holistic framework of ethics in the sustainability reporting; review the evolution of the research field; and identify the most significant research tendencies enabling the proposal of several future research directions. Methods: Using the Scopus and Web of Science databases, a bibliometric analysis has been carried out in the field of accounting on this topic from its formal origins in the 1980s to the present day, in addition to highlighting the importance of sustainability. 271 articles have been used as a basis for developing the main trends at bibliographic, geographical and institutional levels. Findings & value added: This study highlights the importance of incorporating ethics in non-financial information as a field of research, through two very different lines of research that have gained importance in recent years: ethics in business and the growing relevance of non-financial information. It also incorporates a bibliometric analysis with information obtained from two major databases: Scopus and Web of Science. The use of both databases makes it possible to broaden the body of articles covered, compared to other bibliometric analyses previously carried out on similar topics, and allows for the inclusion of more relevant articles on this subject.