Corporate sustainability: A Literature Review

Abstract

This review article intends to bring a better understanding to the field of corporate sustainability as studied by previous scholars. Since the end of the 1990s, corporate sustainability has become a growing interest theme in business and academia. However, literature is still limited in quantity. This review paper provides a review of 50 articles dating from 2002 to 2016 from journals related to accounting, business, and management. The paper summarizes the corporate sustainability evolution, different definitions, measures and applied theories throughout the literature. The findings highlight that corporate sustainability field is still evolving and then different approaches have been used to define, measure and theorize corporate sustainability. Overall, review evidences that a commonly agreed definition of sustainability is lacking. Thus, concepts of corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility have been used simultaneously in many contemporary studies since they are precisely indistinguishable.