Derailment or Turning Point? The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Sustainability-Related Thinking

Abstract

A pandemic has always been a milestone, forcing intellectuals to reassess the directions of development at their time. This fact has generated vivid debates about the possible reactions to the new situation, highlighting the vulnerability of current socio-economic structures as well as the need to reconsider the current way of development. The new challenge has created an unprecedented increase in academic publications. The aim of the current paper is to analyze the socio-economic aspects of the growing interest in the sustainability-related facets of the pandemic. Based on English language journal articles (n = 1326), collected on the Web of Science website, the authors analyze the different aspects of COVID-related discussions connected to sustainability. Applying the triangulation approach, the publications have been classified on the basis of their intellectual roots, co-occurrence of different words and strategic diagramming. Results highlight that, notwithstanding the remarkable number of papers, there is a strong need for the in-depth analysis of the long-term consequences in the fields of (1) health logistics and policy; (2) the future of education and work, based on experience and evidence; (3) the re-thinking of the resilience of large-scale supply systems; (4) global governance of world affairs, (5) the role of distant teaching, telecommunication, telework, telehealth, teleservices.