The Past and Future of Corporate Sustainability Research

Despite the skyrocketing of corporate sustainability research in management, environmental grand challenges like climate change, persist. Given firms' pivotal role in either improving or worsening these challenges, it is important to consider how corporate sustainability research can affect the resolution of these challenges. Understanding the historical evolution of the cognitive structure of the field facilitates the forecasting of the likely future path of sustainability research. Through the analysis of the co-occurrence of 25,701 keywords in 11,954 sustainability-related articles from 1994 to 2021, we identify and graphically illustrate how ideas in the field have been interconnected, evolved, and are trending. Unexpectedly, we observe that the environmental focus in the literature wanes despite heightened environmental salience. We suggest ways that the trajectory of sustainability research should change to improve our ability to help businesses address environmental challenges. These include reassessing the problem focus, recalibrating theoretical foundations, and reimagining methodologies.