Social Responsibility: A bibliometric analysis of research state and its trend

Abstract

Introduction: Social responsibility is related to organizations' commitment to society and the environment. Recent research has shown the relationship between organizations' performance and some indicators such as economic performance or corporate image.Objective: This study analyzes the research on social responsibility to know the trend of studies. Method: Based on qualitative and quantitative research and with bibliometric techniques, a statistical analysis is made with the Vosviewer program of 1639 publications from the Scopus database to map the research based on publications, authors, and citations.Results: The geographical distribution shows that the United States and the United Kingdom have the most published documents. They have the greatest scientific impact and a strong collaboration network. From the above, it is evident that social responsibility research has been approached from different angles to verify its relationship with economic, societal, or environmental variables. There is a wide field of knowledge that scholars can address.Conclusions: The results indicate that central research topics include the connection of social responsibility with advancing technologies, globalization, and climate change. Mapping the co-occurrence of keywords by authors reveals four clusters related to ethics and social responsibility, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, and sustainable development.