The rapid convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and green energy (GE) is transforming sustainable business practices, energy management, and economic development. Although research in this interdisciplinary field has expanded considerably, its intellectual structure, thematic evolution, and business implications remain insufficiently understood. This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of AI and GE research from a business and economics perspective. Publications were retrieved from the Scopus and Web of Science databases using an expanded, transparent, and reproducible search strategy. Following PRISMA guidelines and predefined inclusion criteria, a final dataset of 7,301 publications was analyzed using Bibliometrix and VOSviewer to examine publication trends, influential authors, institutions, countries, journals, collaboration networks, and thematic structures. The results reveal a marked increase in scientific production after 2022, reflecting the growing integration of AI into renewable energy systems and sustainable development research. Scientific output is concentrated in countries with strong research capacity, sustained investment in digital innovation, and ambitious sustainability agendas. Keyword co-occurrence analysis identifies four dominant research themes: sustainability and energy policy, AI-driven forecasting and optimization, smart energy systems, and digital transformation for energy efficiency. The findings demonstrate that the field has evolved from predominantly technical applications toward a multidisciplinary research domain integrating business strategy, innovation management, sustainability, and energy economics. Unlike previous bibliometric studies based on narrower search strategies or smaller datasets, this study provides a transparent, large-scale mapping of the field and offers a more comprehensive understanding of its intellectual structure and emerging research directions. The findings provide valuable insights for researchers, policymakers, managers, and investors seeking to accelerate sustainable energy transitions and support long-term economic resilience.
Innovation drives economic progress, with enterprises serving as the primary agents of innovation and talent as the foundation of enterprise innovation. Core personnel are directly engaged in enterprise research and development (R&D) activities and the implementation of R&D programs. Restricted stock incentives, as an internal incentive mechanism, can significantly enhance innovation among core employees. Using firm-year panel data, this study employs a fixed-effects model, supplemented by robustness checks and bootstrap mediation tests. It examines A-share listed companies in China from 2014 to 2024 to investigate the influence of restricted stock incentives for core employees on enterprise innovation performance and the potential mechanisms involved. The results indicate that restricted stock incentives (RSIs) for core employees are positively associated with substantive, strategic, and overall innovation performance. RSIs also promote R&D investment, which partially mediates their association with innovation performance. The positive effects are more pronounced among firms in eastern regions and state-owned enterprises. This study contributes to the literature on equity incentives and innovation by identifying R&D investment as an important transmission mechanism and demonstrating that the effectiveness of RSIs varies across organizational and regional contexts. The findings provide practical implications for managers and policymakers seeking to design equity-based incentive systems that support long-term innovation and sustainable corporate development.
Green innovation is widely recognized as an effective pathway for reconciling economic development with carbon emission reduction. However, there is still no consensus on the spatial relationship between green innovation (GI) and carbon emissions (CEs). To address this gap, this study uses panel data from China’s Yangtze River Delta region to examine the spatial spillover effects of GI and its subcomponents on CEs, as well as the role of public R&D investment in this relationship. The findings reveal a non-intuitive and spatially asymmetric effect of GI. Specifically, GI tends to increase CEs in the region where innovation occurs while reducing CEs in neighboring cities. Moreover, the impacts of green technologies (GTs) on CEs vary across regions and channels. Innovation in GTs, indirect CE reduction mechanisms, and direct CE reduction effects all exhibit significant regional spillover impacts on CEs. The results further show that public R&D investment, both locally and through spatial spillovers, weakens the relationship between GI and CEs. This study contributes to the literature by advancing the understanding of how different forms of green technological progress generate heterogeneous spatial spillover effects on CEs. It is among the first to systematically examine how public R&D investment moderates the relationship between GT and CEs. From a policy perspective, the findings provide practical insights into strengthening regional green innovation capacity while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions within an integrated development framework.
Today, turbulence in the economic environment creates numerous challenges across various aspects of firms, requiring organizations to respond quickly to survive and grow. As a result, supply chain flexibility (SCF) has become a strategic priority for companies and a prevalent topic in academia. Grounded in Resource-Based View (RBV) and Dynamic Capabilities Theory (DCT), this study examines how the business environment (ENVI) drives digitalization in operations management activities (DOM) and how DOM enhances SCF both directly and indirectly through supply chain visibility (SCV), supply chain collaboration (SCC), and supply chain risk management (SCRM). In this research, we collected data from 289 Vietnamese firms and analyzed them using PLS-SEM. We checked the reliability and discriminant validity of the measurement scales, then predicted the effect sizes and mediation effects of the relationships. The results show that ENVI significantly drives DOM adoption, which in turn improves SCV, SCC, and SCRM, thereby strengthening SCF. The findings reveal that supply chain visibility and risk management, but not collaboration, mediate the DOM–SCF relationship and function as sequential pathways through which environmental turbulence translates into greater supply chain flexibility. Furthermore, the research offers managerial insights into leveraging digital tools to construct more adaptable and resilient supply chains in volatile economic environments.
Transition economies are attractive destinations for foreign direct investment (FDI), offering lower production costs, emerging consumer markets, and opportunities for strategic positioning, while also facing structural and institutional constraints. This study examines the motives of foreign investors in Serbia, with a particular focus on how investment motivations vary according to firms’ level of internationalization. The analysis is based on a survey of 300 foreign investors that entered the Serbian market between 2001 and 2019 (response rate: 29.3%). The findings indicate that the most important motives include entering a new market, observing consumers, customers, and suppliers, first-mover advantage, the availability of financial resources in the Serbian market, economies of scale, characteristics of the Serbian tax system, and natural resources and their prices in Serbia. However, a more detailed analysis reveals significant differences across investor types. Regional firms are primarily driven by market expansion, economies of scale, and resource-related factors, while global firms place greater emphasis on infrastructure, technological and informational inputs, and integration into broader production networks. Multinational firms display a more balanced pattern of motives, without a clearly dominant driver. These results highlight the importance of investor heterogeneity in shaping FDI patterns in transition economies. They also suggest that policy approaches tailored to specific investor profiles may be more effective than uniform strategies in attracting and sustaining foreign investment.
