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Abstract

Corporate Social Irresponsibility (CSI) has emerged as a critical research domain because of its adverse social, environmental, and economic impacts on affected stakeholders. The increasing prevalence of corporate scandals and irresponsible practices in recent decades has raised concerns among academics, policymakers, and the public, creating the need for a systematic understanding of CSI as a field of study. Despite this growing interest, the intellectual landscape of CSI research remains fragmented and lacks a consolidated thematic framework. This study conducts a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 945 Scopus-indexed publications published between 2015 and 2024 to map publication trends, identify influential authors and articles, and uncover thematic clusters and emerging directions in CSI scholarship. Using visualization tools such as VOSviewer and the Bibliometrix R package, the study traces the semantic and structural evolution of CSI research. The findings provide a systematic overview of how CSI scholarship has evolved, highlight its current thematic structure, and suggest promising avenues for future investigation. By consolidating dispersed knowledge, this review advances theoretical development in the field and provides a roadmap for future research, particularly in relation to stakeholder engagement, consumer perception, and regulatory responses to corporate irresponsibility.

Keywords

bibliometric analysis corporate governance corporate social irresponsibility corporate misconduct stakeholder impact

Background of the Study

In recent decades, globalization, intensified competition, and the rapid spread of information technologies have profoundly altered the expectations placed on corporations. Stakeholders now demand that firms not only deliver financial performance (Rakhmawati, 2025) but also act responsibly toward society (Gemeda et al., 2025). At the same time, high-profile corporate scandals across diverse industries, such as finance (Boukattaya & Omri, 2021; Van Der Laan et al., 2008), energy (Zarakovitis et al., 2016), and fashion (Bossavie et al., 2023; Cheng et al., 2023), have revealed the damaging consequences of irresponsible practices. These incidents have demonstrated that corporate misconduct is not confined to isolated cases but represents a systemic challenge that can undermine market stability, erode trust, and generate long-lasting social harm (Nardella, Brammer, et al., 2023).

These irresponsible behaviors may manifest in various forms, including unethical labor practices, human rights violations, environmental destruction, misleading communication, corruption, and failures in corporate governance (Iborra & Riera, 2023; Lange & Washburn, 2012). The World Benchmarking Alliance’s 2024 Social Benchmark Report assessed 2,000 of the world’s most influential companies (the SDG2000) and found that nearly 90% failed to meet basic societal expectations in areas such as human rights, decent work, and ethical conduct, with more than 30% scoring as low as 0 to 2 on a 20-point scale (Alliance, 2024). In the U.S. alone, securities fraud is estimated to cost between $10 and $40 billion annually, with around 10% of large publicly traded firms implicated each year, leading to an average 1.6% loss in equity value per impacted firm (Dyck et al., 2024). These figures demonstrate the pervasive nature of CSI across industries and regions, highlighting that irresponsible practices are embedded within corporate strategies rather than being exceptional deviations.

Nowadays, advances in digital communication and the rise of social media ensure that unethical behavior is rapidly exposed to the public, resulting in widespread scrutiny and pressure on firms to respond (Iborra & Riera, 2023; Soltani et al., 2024; Valor et al., 2022). Beyond reputational and financial repercussions, irresponsible corporate actions often trigger stakeholder activism (Scheidler & Edinger-Schons, 2020; Swaen et al., 2021), regulatory intervention (Iborra & Riera, 2023; Mazzei et al., 2015), and social backlash (Jackson et al., 2014; Lin, 2024; Nardella, Surdu, et al., 2023), making the study of CSI central to understanding contemporary business ethics. Consequently, CSI has emerged as a pressing global issue that commands the attention of academics, policymakers, and practitioners. Systematically investigating CSI enriches the literature by providing a balanced view of corporate-society relations and offers practical insights aiming to mitigate irresponsible practices and promote ethical governance.

Literature Review

CSI is generally defined as business practices that are either illegal or, while technically legal, are profoundly unethical, unsustainable, and broadly deemed unacceptable by societal standards (Swaen et al., 2021). Driven by heightened societal concern, CSI has attracted increasing interest across disciplines including management, marketing, finance, and business ethics (Boukattaya & Omri, 2021; Kang & Matsuoka, 2023). However, despite the growing academic interest in CSI, Tan et al. (2024) highlight that the field remains relatively fragmented and lacks a clear conceptual and thematic structure. Specifically, the absence of a coherent framework hampers the accumulation of cumulative knowledge, as studies often operate in isolation without connecting to broader theoretical debates. Such dispersion also constrains the development of mid-range theories that could integrate diverse findings and offer explanatory power across contexts.

Compared to the well-established body of research on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the field of CSI has received considerably less scholarly attention, especially with regard to systematically mapping its intellectual structure, consolidating thematic areas, and tracing its evolutionary development over time (Iborra & Riera, 2023). The concept of CSI was first introduced when corporate actions detrimentally affected the economy, environment, and stakeholders, framed as a counterpoint to CSR (Armstrong, 1977). Nevertheless, it is widely recognized that CSR and CSI are not merely opposites in meaning but represent separate constructs (Valor et al., 2022). Jackson et al. (2014) suggest that CSR and CSI can occur simultaneously, as companies may partake in controversial practices while also implementing socially responsible initiatives. While CSR has been the subject of numerous bibliometric analyses that have systematically identified its intellectual roots, development trajectory, and emerging trends (Ye et al., 2020; Zhao et al., 2023), such efforts are largely missing in the CSI literature.

A growing body of research has sought to classify manifestations of CSI across industries, reflecting the distinct risk profiles embedded in different business sectors. In manufacturing and fast fashion, scholars highlight issues such as labor exploitation (Xia et al., 2023; Zheng et al., 2019), unsafe working conditions (Shekarian et al., 2022), and environmental pollution (Evanilay et al., 2024; Xue et al., 2022) along global supply chains, with tragedies like the Rana Plaza factory collapse underscoring the human cost of neglecting social responsibility (Bossavie et al., 2023). In resource-intensive industries such as energy and mining (Kemp & Owen, 2022; Majumdarr et al., 2025), CSI research has largely focused on large-scale environmental degradation, community displacement, and the long-term consequences of ecological disasters, exemplified by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill (Clark et al., 2022). Other streams of research investigate CSI in food (Liu et al., 2018; Loh & Hassan, 2022; Yu et al., 2022), where product safety scandals and misleading marketing practices have raised serious ethical concerns, as well as in digital and technology sectors (Krkač, 2019; Zhong & Ren, 2024) are increasingly scrutinized (Tan et al., 2024). Collectively, these studies suggest that while CSI can arise across virtually all sectors, it is most prevalent and consequential in where structural vulnerabilities and stakeholder exposure amplify the likelihood and impact of irresponsible practices.

In particular, there is a lack of systematic organization and synthesis of key aspects including publication volume, leading journals, core authors, research hotspots, and collaboration networks. This makes it difficult for researchers and practitioners to grasp the current landscape and future directions of the field. Given these gaps, a comprehensive bibliometric analysis is both timely and necessary. Such an approach not only provides a structured and data-driven overview of CSI scholarship but also strengthens its theoretical underpinnings by revealing how different research streams, conceptual frameworks, and methodological approaches are interconnected.

In light of the identified research gaps, the primary objective of this study is to conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of CSI research. By systematically mapping the intellectual structure and thematic development of the field, this study aims to offer a clearer understanding of how CSI scholarship has evolved and to uncover emerging trends and research opportunities. The findings will contribute to structuring the fragmented literature, advancing theoretical integration, and guiding future research agendas. Moreover, by linking bibliometric insights with broader theoretical perspectives in business ethics and consumer behavior, the study provides a foundation for scholars to explore CSI not only as a set of isolated cases but as an evolving field with significant implications for theory development and practical applications.

To achieve this objective, the study is guided by the following research questions:

What are the publication trends, influential authors, and key journals that have shaped the development of CSI research over time?

What are the major thematic clusters in CSI research, and how have these themes shifted over time?

What emerging topics and future research opportunities can be identified from the bibliometric patterns?

To the best of our knowledge, no systematic review has comprehensively captured the structural and evolutionary development of CSI research. While Mendiratta et al. (2023) provided valuable insights into the thematic landscape of CSI, their study primarily focused on topic modeling analysis and was limited in terms of structural mapping. Specifically, they did not examine subject distribution, citation performance metrics, and the temporal evolution of high-frequency keywords. Furthermore, their study lacked thematic and factorial mapping to explore conceptual structure and research positioning. In contrast, this study offers a broader keyword trend analysis and a more holistic bibliometric perspective by incorporating data up to 2024. Additionally, this study highlights the importance of stakeholder reactions, particularly from consumers, offering a clearer thematic structure and revealing new trends and research opportunities. By doing so, this research contributes to the field by updating, expanding, and visualizing the intellectual structure and dynamic evolution of CSI scholarship. From a theoretical perspective, the study advances the field by synthesizing piecemeal insights across diverse frameworks. This refined synthesis strengthens theory building by providing a structured and holistic foundation for future research, offering pathways to extend existing theories to new contexts such as developing countries, and positioning CSI as a pressing domain of inquiry with implications for ethics, management, and consumer research alike.

Methods

This study applies bibliometric analysis to map the conceptual and thematic development of CSI research. As a science-mapping tool, bibliometric analysis enables researchers to identify influential works, detect intellectual foundations, trace thematic evolution, and uncover emerging trends (Pessin et al., 2022). Given the fragmented and emerging nature of the CSI literature, bibliometric tools such as VOSviewer provide a rigorous and objective means to analyze large volumes of academic data, generate visual maps, and support theory-building efforts (Zupic & Čater, 2015). Besides, the Bibliometrix R package offers a flexible and open-source framework that enables in-depth quantitative analysis and thematic evolution tracking. Therefore, bibliometric analysis is well-suited for this study’s goal of synthesizing and structuring existing knowledge in the CSI domain.

To explore the thematic evolution of CSI research, this study retrieved from the Scopus database, which is widely recognized for its comprehensive coverage of peer-reviewed scientific literature in the social sciences, business, and management fields (Zupic & Čater, 2015). The search strategy was designed to capture a broad range of literature related to CSI by using a combination of relevant keywords in the title, abstract, and keyword fields. The Boolean search string used was as follows: ( TITLE-ABS-KEY ( corporate AND social AND irresponsibility ) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY ( corporate AND irresponsibility ) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY ( corporate AND misconduct ) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY ( corporate AND wrongdoing ) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY ( corporate AND transgression ) AND LANGUAGE ( english ) ) AND PUBYEAR > 2014 AND PUBYEAR < 2025 AND ( LIMIT-TO ( DOCTYPE, “ar” ) ) AND ( LIMIT-TO ( SRCTYPE, “j” ) ).

CSI encompasses a wide array of issues related to corporate misconduct, stakeholder harm, and unethical organizational practices, which are typically examined across multiple academic domains. Furthermore, only journal articles (document type: “ar”) published in English were considered. The time frame was restricted to publications from 2015 to 2024, covering the most recent decade of academic output. Following the application of these filters, a total of 945 articles were retrieved for further processing and analysis using by Publish or Perish, VOSviewer, and Bibilomatrix R package. Following the bibliometrics analysis by Donthu et al. (2021), Figure 1 provides each step for this study and shows logical sequence applied to obtain the data to be studied.

Figure 1.

Bibliometric analysis process diagram.

Results and Findings

Publication Trends

It is important to analyze the progression of scholarly output over time in order to gain a clear understanding of the maturity and development trajectory of the CSI research field. Based on the Figure 2, the number of publications related to CSI shows a clear upward trend over the 10-year period from 2015 to 2024. In the early years, publication volume remained relatively low and stable, with only 43 papers published in both 2015 and 2016. Starting from 2017, there was a steady annual increase, with the number growing from 51 in 2017 to 111 by 2021 and 2022.

Figure 2.

Publications per year.

A significant surge can be observed in 2023 and 2024, with publications rising sharply from 140 to 203. This suggests heightened scholarly interest in CSI, possibly fueled by global events such as high-profile corporate scandals, increasing attention to ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) issues (Martiny et al., 2024), and growing stakeholder awareness of unethical business conduct (Valor et al., 2022). The notable growth in 2024 may reflect the culmination of accumulated research momentum and public discourse around corporate responsibility failures. The sustained growth in publication output suggests that CSI is maturing as an academic field, attracting interdisciplinary contributions from business ethics, corporate governance, social responsibility, and sustainability research.

As shown in Table 1, the subject distribution of CSI-related literature demonstrates a strong interdisciplinary nature. Business, Management and Accounting dominates the field (33.18%), followed by Social Sciences (23.47%) and Economics, Econometrics and Finance (19.09%), reflecting a core emphasis on corporate governance, ethics, and market behavior. Additionally, contributions from fields such as Environmental Science, Psychology, and Decision Sciences indicate increasing attention to the environmental, behavioral, and operational dimensions of corporate misconduct. The presence of publications in emerging or peripheral disciplines further highlights the growing relevance of CSI across various academic domains.

Table 1.

Subject Distribution.

Subject category	N	%
Business, management and accounting	591	33.18
Social sciences	418	23.47
Economics, econometrics and finance	340	19.09
Arts and humanities	128	7.19
Environmental science	85	4.77
Psychology	48	2.70
Decision sciences	47	2.64
Engineering	27	1.52
Energy	25	1.40
Medicine	23	1.29
Computer science	22	1.24
Agricultural and biological sciences	6	0.34
Multidisciplinary	5	0.28
Mathematics	5	0.28
Biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology	5	0.28
Neuroscience	3	0.17
Veterinary	1	0.06
Nursing	1	0.06
Earth and planetary sciences	1	0.06

Note. The total number of subject areas exceeds the total number of articles (n = 954) because a single article in Scopus may be classified under multiple subject areas. For example, a study on corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) may simultaneously fall under “Business, Management and Accounting,”“Social Sciences,” and “Economics.” Therefore, subject area counts represent instances of classification rather than unique article counts.

According to Table 2, which summarizes the citation performance metrics using Publish or Perish (PoP), several observations can be made comparing the total dataset (945 articles) and the subset of cited articles (815 articles) over the period from 2015 to 2024.

Table 2.

Citation Performance Summary Using PoP Metrics.

Total article metrics	Value	Cited article metrics	Value
Papers	945	Papers	815
Citations	19,507	Citations	19,507
Years	10 (2015–2024)	Years	10 (2015–2024)
Cites_Year	1,950.70	Cites_Year	1,950.70
Cites_Paper	20.64	Cites_Paper	23.93
Authors_Paper	2.52	Authors_Paper	2.56
h_index	65	h_index	65
g_index	108	g_index	108

The average number of citations per paper increased significantly from 20.64 to 23.93 in the cited-only set, highlighting the disproportionate contribution of a smaller number of influential articles. Second, the average number of authors per paper also showed a slight increase from 2.52 to 2.56, suggesting that multi-authored articles tend to receive more attention or impact. Notably, both the total and cited article datasets yield the same h-index (65) and g-index (108). This consistency indicates that the field’s intellectual impact is not driven by uncited publications but by a stable core of highly cited works.

In summary, removing uncited publications results in higher per-article citation metrics without altering the underlying citation structure, affirming the robustness and maturity of CSI literature. The observed increase in metrics such as citations per paper (Cites_Paper) and authors per paper (Authors_Paper) within the cited articles subset is both expected and meaningful. These shifts reflect the fact that high-impact articles tend to be more collaborative and receive disproportionately higher attention in academic discourse. From a practical standpoint, this trend also aligns with real-world academic dynamics in recent years. With the growing complexity of global challenges such as ESG controversies (Chopra et al., 2024), greenwashing (Testa et al., 2018), and corporate misconduct (Nieri et al., 2023), research on CSI has become increasingly interdisciplinary, often involving scholars from law, business ethics, environmental science, and sociology (Tabares, 2020). These collaborative efforts are more likely to be published in reputable journals and cited across domains, underscoring that the theoretical development of CSI increasingly depends on cross-disciplinary integration and collective knowledge production.

Influential Authors

Identifying key contributors within a research field is essential to understanding its intellectual structure and scholarly impact. Table 3 presents the leading authors in the field of CSI, ranked by both total citations (TC) and articles (A) productivity, along with their average citations per article (TC/A). This dual-perspective evaluation highlights both academic impact and publishing frequency.

Table 3.

Leading Authors in the CSI Field Ranked by Citation Impact and Productivity.

Author by citations	TC	A	(TC/A)	Author by documents	A	TC	(TC/A)
Bundy, J	856	3	285.3	Antonetti, P	11	535	48.6
Coombs, W. T	805	1	805.0	Zhong, X	11	265	24.1
Pfarrer, M. D	805	1	805.0	Kim, S	7	143	20.4
Short, C. E	805	1	805.0	Krishna, A	7	121	17.3
Bagozzi, R. P	573	4	143.3	Lee, C	7	104	14.9
Antonetti, P	535	11	48.6	Wang, R	7	100	14.3
Grappi, S	398	2	199.0	Ren, G	6	146	24.3
Romani, S	398	2	199.0	Brammer, S	5	173	34.6
Zarantonello, L	398	2	199.0	Crofts, P	5	15	3.0
Germann, F	382	1	382.0	Hsu, S	5	96	19.2
Grewal, R	382	1	382.0	Nardella, G	5	173	34.6
Kang, C	382	1	382.0	Nieri, F	5	257	51.4
				Ren, L	5	135	27.0
				Tsang, A	5	130	26.0
				Unsal, O	5	18	3.6
				Zaman, O	5	328	65.6
				Zasuwa, G	5	69	13.8

Note. A = number of articles; TC = number of citations; C = country; TC/A = an average number of citations per article.

On the citation side, authors such as Bundy, J (856 citations across 3 papers, TC/A = 285.3) and Coombs, W.T, Pfarrer, M.D, and Short, C.E (each with 805 citations from a single article, TC/A = 805.0) demonstrate high impact through influential individual publications. In a collaborative study with colleagues, Bundy et al. (2017) examined how firms manage multiple reputations under different types of crises, showing that responses vary by the nature of the violation. These citation trends show that a small number of influential authors drive much of the field’s scholarly impact.

On the productivity side Antonetti, P stands out with 11 papers and 535 citations, achieving an average of 48.6 citations per article. Zhong, X also published 11 papers but received a relatively lower citation count (TC/A = 24.1). Antonetti (2020) focuses on consumers’ emotional responses to irresponsible corporate behaviors, especially the formation mechanism of moral outrage. Antonetti and Maklan (2016) also analyzed the factors shaping consumers’ punitive versus forgiving reactions to corporate irresponsibility. These studies deepen understanding of how consumers psychologically and behaviorally respond to corporate irresponsibility, forming a foundation for stakeholder-centered CSI research.

This dual ranking structure highlights two complementary dimensions of academic contribution. Authors with high citation counts often represent conceptual pioneers or methodological leaders, while those with higher publication volumes contribute to the development and consolidation of thematic knowledge over time. Notably, Antonetti, P exemplifies a balanced contributor with both visibility and sustained scholarly output.

A co-authorship network illustrates the collaborative links among researchers based on shared publications. Figure 3, generated in VOSviewer with a minimum threshold of three publications per author, highlights the key collaboration patterns among prolific contributors in the CSI field. A total of 62 authors meet the inclusion criteria, with prominent figures based on citation counts and co-authorship Total Link Strength (TLS).

Figure 3.

Co-authorship network of authors.

The size of each node corresponds to the number of publications, while the thickness of the connecting lines represents the strength of co-authorship ties. Authors like Lee Chia-Jung (TLS = 14), Wang Ran (TLS = 13), and Hsu Shu-Chien (TLS = 12) show high total link strength, indicating robust collaboration within the network. Meanwhile, Antonetti Paolo stands out with the highest citation count (535), suggesting a leading scholarly role despite moderate connectivity.

Overall, the network reflects a moderately fragmented yet evolving landscape of co-authorship in CSI research, with opportunities for deeper cross-regional collaboration. This dispersion in collaboration patterns suggests that while CSI is gaining momentum as a research field, it still lacks a tightly integrated scholarly community. Expanding international and interdisciplinary collaboration can both raise the field’s visibility and unify diverse perspectives on CSI.

Countries Distribution

The geographical spread of research on CSI reveals a clear concentration of scholarly activity within a few key regions. As shown in Table 4, the U.S. emerges as the central hub for CSI-related studies, not only producing the highest volume of publications but also receiving a disproportionate share of citations. Meanwhile, China also demonstrates substantial academic engagement, indicating that CSI is gaining traction beyond Western contexts. Interestingly, although nations such as Italy, the Netherlands, and India contribute fewer publications, their presence suggests a growing awareness and diffusion of CSI scholarship into diverse socio-economic environments. This evolving distribution pattern points to a gradual globalization of the CSI research agenda, driven by shared concerns about corporate ethics, environmental damage, and governance failures across borders.

Table 4.

Countries (and Regions) Distribution of CSI Publications and Citations.

Countries	Documents	Citations	NC	Main collaborators
United States	309	9,788	28	China, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Singapore
China	164	3,273	20	United States, Hong Kong SAR, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom
United Kingdom	118	2,848	24	United States, China, Australia, France, Italy
Australia	100	1,485	20	United States, China, New Zealand, Hong Kong SAR, Canada
Canada	51	1,288	11	United States, China, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany
Germany	44	1,395	9	United States, Canada, Denmark, Switzerland, France
France	42	869	13	United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Poland
Italy	32	1,070	7	United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Spain, Denmark
Netherlands	31	610	6	United States, Australia, France, New Zealand, Hong Kong SAR
India	27	147	5	Bahrain, Denmark, Netherlands, Portugal, Saudi Arabia

Note. NC = number of collaborative countries.

Country co-authorship networks illustrate international research collaborations based on co-authored works. These networks help illustrate patterns of international scientific collaboration, showing which countries tend to work together, how frequently, and in which fields (Molontay & Nagy, 2021). In bibliometric analysis, nodes represent countries, and links between nodes indicate co-authored papers; the strength and thickness of these links reflect the intensity of collaboration (Leydesdorff & Wagner, 2008). Such networks are valuable for understanding the global structure of knowledge production and the diffusion of research across borders.

Using VOSviewer, this study mapped international co-authorship networks to reveal global collaboration patterns in CSI research. Among 80 countries, 37 met the minimum threshold of five documents, as shown in Figure 4. Each node represents a country, with the size of the node corresponding to the volume of publications. The connecting lines indicate co-authorship links, with thicker lines denoting more frequent collaborations. The U.S. emerges as the most central and collaborative country in this network, maintaining strong ties with other leading contributors such as the U.K., China, and Australia. The network is divided into color-coded clusters, reflecting regional collaboration patterns and thematic groupings within the research domain.

Figure 4.

Country co-authorship network visualization based on VOSviewer.

Influential Sources

Journal Productivity and Influence Over Time

Identifying influential journals is a fundamental step in bibliometric analysis, as it helps determine the core journals that shape the development and dissemination of knowledge within a specific research domain (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017; Zupic & Čater, 2015). These journals act as intellectual anchors, guiding theoretical and methodological advancements and reflecting the central interests of the scholarly community. Using the Bibliometrix R package, Figure 5 shows the cumulative growth of CSI-related journal publications between 2015 and 2024. As shown in the figure, the Journal of Business Ethics has maintained a dominant presence with consistent and accelerating growth in cumulative publications, reinforcing its centrality to CSI discourse. Other journals such as Journal of Business Research, Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, and Sustainability (Switzerland) have also demonstrated steady increases, indicating a broadening academic interest in interdisciplinary and sustainability-related aspects of CSI. The observed upward trends suggest a maturing research field with expanding thematic and methodological scope.

Figure 5.

Journals’ production over time.

Co-Citation Structure and Intellectual Mapping

Co-citation analysis maps a field’s intellectual structure by tracking how frequently two articles are cited together (Chang et al., 2015). This method helps uncover the foundational literature and core journals shaping the domain of study. This study chooses minimum 20 of citations of an article. Of the 17,140 total articles, 318 articles meet or exceed this threshold and will be included in the co-citation network. The co-citation network shown in Figure 6 was generated using VOSviewer, where each node represents a cited journal, and the size of the node reflects the frequency of its co-citation. The links between nodes indicate the strength of the co-citation relationship, while distinct colors highlight thematic clusters of journals.

Figure 6.

Co-citation analysis for cited sources.

As illustrated in the Figure 6, the Journal of Business Ethics emerges as the most frequently co-cited journal, reflecting its central role in CSI and related ethical research. It is closely linked to other influential journals such as the Strategic Management Journal and the Journal of Financial Economics, indicating strong interdisciplinary connections between ethics, strategy, and finance. Multiple clusters are visible, suggesting that CSI research is built on diverse intellectual foundations spanning business ethics, marketing, corporate governance, and sustainability (Nardella, Brammer, et al., 2023; Tan et al., 2024). The presence of journals like the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Consumer Research also underscores the consumer-oriented dimension of CSI studies. Overall, the co-citation visualization highlights how CSI research is structurally embedded within broader discourses of management, business ethics, and social responsibility.

Leading Journals in CSI Research

Additionally, Table 5 provides a comparative overview of the leading journals contributing to CSI research. Among the journals listed, the Journal of Business Ethics stands out as the most influential, with the highest total citations (TC = 2941), h-index (30), and g-index (54), reflecting both the quantity and impact of its published works. Both the total and cited article datasets yield the same h-index (65) and g-index (108). This consistency indicates that the field’s intellectual impact is not driven by uncited publications but by a stable core of highly cited works. Presenting both sets of results helps demonstrate the robustness of CSI research, as the key citation indices remain unchanged regardless of dataset scope. This scholarly prominence is exemplified by influential articles from Du (2015) and Jackson et al. (2020). Both studies reflect the journal’s thematic commitment to uncovering the nuanced mechanisms of corporate ethical (and unethical) behavior, reinforcing its role as a central outlet for high-impact CSI research. In sum, the citation and journal performance indicators reveal a cohesive yet evolving research domain anchored by a consistent set of influential outlets.

Table 5.

Leading Journals in CSI Research Ranked by Bibliometric Indicator.

Journal title	CiteScore	h_index	g_index	TC	NP	PY_start
Journal of Business Ethics	10.8	30	54	2,941	65	2015
Journal of Business Research	11.2	17	25	1,104	25	2016
Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management	11.5	12	21	500	21	2016
Strategic Management Journal	13.2	9	11	795	11	2016
International Review of Financial Analysis	7.2	7	9	368	9	2021
Social Responsibility Journal	4.5	7	10	113	10	2015
British Journal of Management	8.9	6	7	489	7	2016
Business Strategy and the Environment	11.9	6	7	241	7	2020
Journal of Corporate Finance	5.4	6	8	249	8	2015
Journal of Management	21.0	6	7	1,032	7	2017
Sustainability (Switzerland)	5.0	6	12	194	12	2019
Corporate Communications	3.0	5	7	180	7	2015
Journal of Cleaner Production	15.8	5	7	107	7	2019
Journal of Management Inquiry	5.5	5	5	135	5	2017
Journal of Management Studies	9.8	5	6	188	6	2015
Journal of Product and Brand Management	6.2	5	5	375	5	2016
Management Science	7.7	5	5	237	5	2015

Note. TC = number of citations; NP = number of publications; PY_start = the publication year of first appearance in the dataset.

Thematic Structure and Semantic Mapping of Keywords

The thematic structure and intellectual development of CSI research were examined through four keyword-based bibliometric analyses: keyword co-occurrence mapping, factorial analysis, temporal keyword analysis, and thematic mapping. These analyses were conducted using VOSviewer and Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) in the Bibliometrix R package. Together, they provide a comprehensive view of the intellectual and conceptual landscape of the field. To ensure clarity, it should be noted that the terms “corporate social responsibility,”“csir,” and “CSI” that appear in the software-generated figures are all used to represent Corporate Social Irresponsibility (CSI) in this study.

Keyword Co-Occurrence Mapping

Co-occurrence networks are visual representations that illustrate how often specific variables or terms occur together within a dataset. This study chooses 10 occurrences of a keyword. Of the 3226 keywords, 42 meet the threshold. Figure 7 presents the keyword co-occurrence map in the field of CSI, where each node represents a keyword, and the size of the node reflects the frequency of its occurrence. The green cluster centers on “corporate social responsibility,”“corporate social irresponsibility,”“sustainability,” and “reputation,” reflecting a dominant discourse that links CSR and sustainability to regulatory compliance and corporate legitimacy within reputational frameworks. The red cluster gathers terms such as “ethics,”“morality,”“human,” and “punishment,” indicating a behavioral and ethical dimension of CSI research that emphasizes accountability, moral reasoning, and the cultural or psychological responses to unethical corporate conduct. The blue cluster focuses on “corporate governance,”“misconduct,”“fraud,” and “financial misconduct,” highlighting managerial control, and risk management as mechanisms for ensuring corporate integrity. The smaller purple cluster links “corporate crime,”“regulation,” and “corporate irresponsibility,” pointing to legal and institutional responses to corporate wrongdoing. Overall, the interconnectedness among clusters demonstrates that CSR and CSI research are closely intertwined. The field has evolved from viewing CSR as voluntary philanthropy to a multidimensional framework encompassing ethics, governance, and compliance, aligning with growing scholarly attention to issues such as corporate misconduct, financial fraud, and moral accountability.

Figure 7.

Keywords co-occurrence network.

Factorial Analysis

Factorial analysis identifies hidden factors that explain the patterns of correlation among observed variables. The factorial analysis plot offers a conceptual landscape of the CSI research field through MCA, shown in Figure 8. In this plot, each node represents a keyword, and its spatial position reflects semantic proximity to others across the corpus. The two dimensions (Dim 1 and Dim 2), explaining 60.73% and 11.55% of the variance respectively, represent the latent thematic axes along which keywords are distributed.

Figure 8.

Factorial analysis plot of keywords.

Interestingly, keywords “human” and “adult” appear in the lower-left quadrant, far from most of the core keywords such as “corporate governance” and “corporate social responsibility.” These terms often emerge from studies focusing on the human and social consequences of irresponsible corporate behavior, particularly in relation to labor exploitation, workplace rights, and vulnerable groups affected by corporate misconduct (Bossavie et al., 2023; Kim & Rim, 2023; Xia et al., 2023). This underlines the theoretical significance of these terms as they anchor the field to the lived experiences and ethical implications of CSI, reminding scholars that corporate irresponsibility ultimately manifests in human impact. For detailed keyword coordinates and cluster assignments, see Appendix A.

In sum, this conceptual map reveals that the CSI literature is anchored primarily in organizational-level concerns, while emerging streams increasingly address sustainability and consumer responsibility. Notably, the ethical underpinnings and psychological dimensions of CSI remain peripheral, indicating a potential avenue for future research.

Temporal Keyword Analysis

Temporal keyword analysis tracks how research themes evolve over time by examining the appearance and frequency of keywords in publications (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017). Table 6 illustrates the temporal dynamics of prominent keywords in the field of CSI, measured by their frequency and the interquartile range of their appearance years (Q1, Median, Q3). The keywords are ranked by occurrence, and their distribution over time provides insight into the emergence and evolution of thematic focus areas.

Table 6.

Temporal Evolution of High-Frequency Keywords.

Keyword	Frequency	Year (Q1)	Year (Median)	Year (Q3)
Female	11	2015	2015	2018
Social behavior	7	2015	2015	2016
Young adult	6	2015	2015	2017
Economics	5	2016	2016	2017
Male	9	2015	2018	2020
Corporate social responsibilities (csr)	8	2017	2018	2020
Professional misconduct	7	2015	2018	2018
Humans	19	2016	2019	2023
Adult	13	2015	2019	2021
Crime	13	2017	2019	2022
Human	32	2016	2020	2023
Corporate governance	11	2018	2020	2024
Misconduct	10	2018	2020	2022
Morality	11	2020	2021	2023
Consumption behavior	9	2020	2021	2023
Corporate social responsibilities	35	2020	2022	2023
Decision making	10	2020	2022	2024
Corporate social irresponsibility	6	2023	2024	2024
Government	5	2023	2024	2024

Notably, keywords such as “morality,”“consumption behavior,”“corporate social responsibilities,” and “decision making” show median appearances in 2021 to 2022, suggesting a thematic shift toward behavioral accountability and stakeholder ethics. Emerging themes such as corporate social irresponsibility and government indicate a recent surge in interest around regulatory roles and irresponsible practices (Clark et al., 2022; Iborra & Riera, 2023), aligning with global ESG and governance concerns (Zhu et al., 2024).

Building on the temporal analysis of high-frequency keywords, which reveals how the focus of CSI research has evolved over time, it is also essential to explore how these keywords group thematically. This longitudinal keyword analysis complements the co-occurrence and factorial plots by identifying not just what themes are central, but also when they gain prominence.

Thematic Map

To this end, this section presents a thematic map based on keyword clustering, offering a structural overview of core, emerging, and peripheral topics in the CSI literature. Figure 9 provides a strategic visualization of the key themes within the CSI area. Themes are plotted across two dimensions: centrality (x-axis), which reflects a theme’s relevance and degree of interaction with other themes, and density (y-axis), indicating the internal strength, development, and cohesion of the theme (Cobo et al., 2011). The upper-right quadrant (motor themes) represents well-developed and central topics that are actively driving the research field forward.

Figure 9.

Thematic map of CSI research based on keyword clustering.

The upper-right quadrant (motor themes) represents well-developed and central topics that are actively driving the research field forward. Keyword “human,” appear here, signifying strong integration and scholarly maturity around behavioral and ethical discussions in CSI. The lower-right quadrant (basic themes) includes foundational but underdeveloped topics such as “corporate social responsibility,”“corporate strategy,” and “China.” These are essential pillars of CSI research with broad connectivity but in need of further thematic refinement. In contrast, the upper-left quadrant (niche themes) displays highly specialized and internally strong topics such as “corporate misconduct,”“corporate governance,” and “crime.” These themes often reflect deep but narrow investigations that are less connected to other areas. Finally, the lower-left quadrant (emerging or declining themes) includes keywords like “corporate social irresponsibility,”“finance,” and “economic and social effects,” which suggest either emerging topics yet to be fully developed or areas that may be losing research momentum.

Theoretical Implications

The findings of this bibliometric review yield several theoretical implications that deepen the understanding of CSI as a complex, multidimensional construct. By integrating behavioral ethics, governance theory, and sustainability research, the field moves toward a more comprehensive explanation of how irresponsibility operates across individual, organizational, and systemic levels.

First, the prominence of ethics-, punishment-, and whistleblowing-related terms refines a behavioral ethics view of CSI. This perspective views irresponsible conduct not only as a governance or policy failure but as a process of moral evaluation in which stakeholders interpret and respond to unethical behavior, grounding CSI in the micro-foundations of moral cognition and ethical decision-making (Clark et al., 2022; Lin-Hi & Müller, 2013), emphasizing that reactions to irresponsibility are shaped by stakeholders’ moral emotions and social norms. This approach also bridges behavioral ethics and stakeholder theory, suggesting that moral judgment serves as a mediating mechanism linking corporate actions to stakeholder sanctions and reputational consequences (Antonetti & Maklan, 2016; Kang & Matsuoka, 2023; Nardella, Surdu, et al., 2023).

Secondly, the analysis of leading journals provides additional theoretical insights. The dominance of journals such as the Journal of Business Ethics and Journal of Business Research underscores that CSI remains primarily anchored in the ethical and behavioral foundations of organizational theory. These outlets have shaped the field’s theoretical direction by emphasizing moral evaluation, stakeholder legitimacy, and organizational reputation as central constructs in understanding irresponsible behavior. In sum, these publication patterns reveal that CSI research is theoretically consolidating across ethics, sustainability, and strategy domains, bridging micro-level moral reasoning with macro-level governance and institutional frameworks. Meanwhile, journals such as Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management and Business Strategy and the Environment extend CSI discourse toward sustainability and environmental accountability. This evolution marks a theoretical shift from reactive views of misconduct toward proactive, system-based models explaining how irresponsibility is embedded in organizational design and stakeholder relations.

Third, the close connection between CSR, ESG, sustainability, and reputation shows that CSI is linked to how companies report and present their performance. This suggests a CSR–CSI continuum where responsible and irresponsible behaviors are often two sides of the same reporting process. When firms use sustainability disclosure and assurance to build legitimacy, any mismatch between claims and actual actions can quickly lead to reputational damage or accusations of greenwashing (Dagestani et al., 2024). This pattern suggests that transparency and accountability systems can strengthen stakeholder trust when they reflect genuine ethical practices, but they may also expose firms to reputational and ethical risks when disclosure is driven more by image management than by real responsibility.

Thus, these theoretical insights demonstrate that CSI research is transitioning from isolated event analysis to an integrative framework connecting moral cognition, governance design, and performance disclosure. This theoretical consolidation connects individual moral judgment with institutional accountability, providing a clearer foundation for explaining why corporate irresponsibility arises and how it can be anticipated and prevented through responsible governance.

Practical Implications

The findings of this bibliometric review offer important guidance for managers, policymakers, investors, and other stakeholders seeking to prevent and address CSI. Table 7 outlines how each stakeholder group can translate these insights into concrete actions.

Table 7.

Practical Implications for Key Stakeholder Groups.

Stakeholder group	Key implications	Recommendation actions
Business managers	Need to strengthen ethical culture and internal control to prevent irresponsibility and reputational damage.	- Establish transparent reporting and compliance systems. - Embed ethics training and accountability mechanisms in daily operations. - Link managerial incentives to integrity and long-term sustainability goals.
Policy makers & regulators	Require stronger governance standards and more effective enforcement to deter corporate misconduct.	- Develop unified CSI reporting and monitoring frameworks. - Enforce mandatory disclosure of ethical breaches and governance failures. - Create independent investigation and sanctioning bodies.
Investors & shareholders	Must integrate CSI risk into investment decisions and promote responsible business governance.	- Include irresponsibility indicators in ESG and due diligence assessments. - Demand verifiable evidence of corrective and preventive actions. - Reward firms demonstrating substantive reform rather than symbolic compliance.
Employees	Serve as internal monitors who can identify and prevent unethical or irresponsible behavior.	- Strengthen whistleblowing and grievance protection systems. - Promote open communication and psychological safety for reporting misconduct. - Integrate ethics into performance appraisal and employee development.
Consumers	Play a growing role in holding firms accountable through ethical purchasing and advocacy.	- Enhance consumer education on CSR and CSI awareness. - Support transparent labeling and traceability of corporate behavior. - Use digital platforms to promote accountability and responsible consumption.
Academics	Should bridge theoretical and practical perspectives to develop tools for identifying and mitigating CSI.	- Create interdisciplinary frameworks linking governance, ethics, and stakeholder theory. - Conduct longitudinal and sector-specific CSI case studies. - Collaborate with organizations to test and refine accountability mechanisms.

For business managers, the results emphasize the importance of embedding ethics and integrity into everyday decision-making. Strengthening internal control systems, linking managerial incentives to ethical performance, and maintaining transparent reporting structures are essential for preventing irresponsibility and reputational damage. Policymakers and regulators play a critical role in creating unified CSI reporting frameworks, enforcing disclosure requirements, and establishing independent mechanisms for investigating misconduct.

Investors and shareholders are encouraged to incorporate CSI indicators into ESG evaluations and engage proactively with firms that demonstrate genuine reform rather than symbolic compliance. Employees, as internal monitors, should be empowered through effective whistleblowing systems, open communication, and ethical training programs that support early detection of misconduct. Meanwhile, consumers can promote corporate accountability by demanding transparent information, supporting responsible brands, and using digital platforms to expose unethical behavior.

Finally, academics and practitioners are urged to bridge theory and practice through interdisciplinary collaboration, developing frameworks that integrate governance, ethics, and stakeholder engagement. Collectively, these actions contribute to building a more transparent, responsible, and sustainable business environment.

In sum, this study provides a comprehensive mapping of the intellectual and thematic evolution CSI research. Practical implications for managers, policymakers, investors, employees, and consumers underscore the shared responsibility in fostering ethical conduct and transparency. Looking ahead, future research should deepen understanding of the mechanisms through which CSI emerges, spreads, and is addressed across contexts. Strengthening this line of inquiry will contribute to building more accountable and responsible business practices worldwide.

Conclusion

This study provides a comprehensive bibliometric review of CSI research, mapping its intellectual structure, thematic evolution, and emerging directions based on 945 Scopus-indexed articles published between 2015 and 2024. The analysis consolidates a fragmented body of knowledge into a clearer thematic framework, positioning CSI as a distinct domain beyond CSR and identifying underexplored conceptual pathways.

In addressing the question of publication trends, influential authors, and key journals, the findings reveal a clear upward trajectory in publication volume over the past decade, with the United States, China, and the United Kingdom emerging as the most prolific contributors. Influential authors such as Jonathan Bundy and Antonetti P have shaped the discourse through their high-impact work, and journals like the Journal of Business Ethics have served as key publication venues anchoring the field. While co-authorship and country collaboration networks reflect a moderately decentralized yet expanding global academic community.

The thematic clustering and semantic mapping of keywords indicate that CSI research is primarily organized around clusters related to corporate misconduct, governance, ethics, and the human impact of irresponsible practices. Over time, these clusters have expanded to incorporate more nuanced discussions of ESG, stakeholder reactions, and institutional responses. The co-occurrence and factorial analyses show that although CSR continues to serve as an anchoring theme, CSI has begun to gain distinct theoretical ground. Nevertheless, CSI is still often conceptualized as merely the absence of CSR, rather than as a domain with its own theoretical foundations and empirical mechanisms.

Additionally, the study identifies a range of emerging research opportunities. Thematic maps and keyword trend analyses suggest that topics such as consumer responses to CSI, regulatory enforcement, and the interplay between CSR and CSI. As the field continues to expand, there is a pressing need to develop an independent CSI framework that captures its unique stakeholder dynamics, ethical implications, and institutional consequences.

Limitation and Future Research

Several methodological limitations should be acknowledged. First, this study relies exclusively on the Scopus database, which, although extensive and interdisciplinary, may differ from Web of Science (WoS) and other repositories in indexing scope. This may result in coverage bias and limit the generalizability of findings. Second, the analysis focuses on the 2015 to 2024 period to capture the most recent decade of scholarly development, particularly the post-CSR expansion of CSI research. However, this timeframe may exclude seminal pre-2015 contributions that shaped the field’s conceptual foundations. Third, only English-language publications were included, which may overlook relevant studies published in other languages and restrict the cultural diversity of perspectives represented. Future research could address these limitations by combining multiple databases, extending the temporal window, and incorporating multilingual sources to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of CSI scholarship.

Furthermore, this review exhibits a geographical concentration of evidence in Western contexts, which may constrain the external validity of its conclusions. Institutional arrangements, enforcement capacity, media freedom, and stakeholder salience differ markedly across regions. As a result, constructs like corporate irresponsibility, legitimacy loss, and sanctioning may function differently in emerging and Global South contexts. Consequently, the patterns identified here should be interpreted as most applicable to Anglo-American and closely related institutional settings. Future work should adopt stratified cross-country designs, incorporate multilingual sources and regional databases, and analyze sectoral and ownership heterogeneity to test the portability of CSI mechanisms. Collaborations with local scholars and sensitivity analyses by region would further mitigate geographic bias and improve generalizability.

The bibliometric evidence reveals that while CSI research has expanded in scope, it remains theoretically fragmented and largely reactive to CSR frameworks. A primary future research priority should therefore be the establishment of an integrated theoretical framework that defines CSI as a distinct construct with its own mechanisms and logics, rather than merely the absence of responsibility. Scholars should examine why and how firms engage in irresponsible actions under specific institutional, structural, or psychological conditions. Key research questions may include: What factors drive firms to shift from responsible to irresponsible conduct? How do governance and incentives shape managerial decisions leading to CSI?

A second priority involves advancing understanding of the consumer’s role in CSI. The analysis highlights increasing attention to stakeholder reactions, yet consumer behavior remains underexplored. Future research should focus on how consumer awareness, moral emotions, and ethical dissonance influence responses to corporate misconduct. Such as how do consumers choose to punish, forgive, or ignore irresponsible firms? How do social media dynamics and digital narratives amplify or constrain moral outrage? Methodologically, mixed approaches combining behavioral experiments, social network analysis, and sentiment mining could provide richer insights into the moral and communicative dimensions of consumer responses.

Lastly, the rise of digital accountability and AI-assisted ESG reporting opens methodological and theoretical frontiers. Emerging tools such as machine learning can uncover hidden thematic structures, track conceptual evolution, and improve the precision of mapping intellectual networks. Integrating these approaches with traditional qualitative and quantitative analyses would enhance methodological diversity and allow for more dynamic, data-driven exploration of CSI research patterns. This can assist advance the field and contribute to practical applications that benefit the industry, market, and other stakeholders.

Footnotes

The authors would like to express their sincere gratitude to the National University of Malaysia (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) for the financial support of this research.

ORCID iD

Kexin Su

Ethical Considerations

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal participants.

Author Contributions

Kexin Su: Responsible for writing,structuring,and formatting the manuscript. Siti Ngayesah Ab. Hamid: Responsible for editing and proofreading the manuscript. Che Aniza Binti Che Wel: Oversaw the review and checking of the manuscript content for accuracy and coherence. Qiangqiang Du: Contributed to the software application and technical aspects required for the study.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the National University of Malaysia (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) under Grant code EP-2023-069. The funder had no role in the study design,data collection,analysis,interpretation,or manuscript writing.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article.

Data Availability Statement

Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

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Mapping the Intellectual Landscape of Corporate Social Irresponsibility: A Bibliometric Review and Future Research Agenda

Abstract

Keywords

Background of the Study

Literature Review

Methods

Results and Findings

Publication Trends

Influential Authors

Countries Distribution

Influential Sources

Journal Productivity and Influence Over Time

Co-Citation Structure and Intellectual Mapping

Leading Journals in CSI Research

Thematic Structure and Semantic Mapping of Keywords

Keyword Co-Occurrence Mapping

Factorial Analysis

Temporal Keyword Analysis

Thematic Map

Theoretical Implications

Practical Implications

Conclusion

Limitation and Future Research

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Ethical Considerations

Author Contributions

Funding

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Data Availability Statement

References