Exploring Research Trends in Sustainable Business Models: A Bibliometric Analysis

The topic of sustainable business-models (SBMs) has attracted significant interest among both academics and practitioners in recent years. A systemic approach to business-models (BMs) is now deemed necessary to address the challenges related to sustainability and acknowledge the interconnectedness of organizations with the environment and society as a whole. The paper identifies, presents and analyses (1) the scientific production across time; (2) the most influential and productive contributors (authors, organizations and countries) and their collaborative research activities; (3) the most frequently used keywords, their links and total link strength with other concepts in the network map; and (4) the key trends in the researched field. The paper employs a bibliometric analysis on SBMs based on a research sample of 987 publications in English, collected from the Web of Science database. The data spanning from 2001 to 2023 was exported, processed, analysed and visualized using VOSviewer, Excel and RStudio Bibliometrix/Biblioshiny software tools. A co-occurrence analysis was conducted to explore thematic evolution and identify current trends that are at the forefront of the field. In terms of the study’s findings, 19 authors were identified as having published more than 5 documents on the topic of interest, and their relative influence was established. Furthermore, the paper presents the most influential countries based on document count, citations and link strength. The 122 keywords that met the threshold of 10 occurrences were analysed across five emerging clusters. Given the current challenges and opportunities presented by Industry 4.0 technologies in the context of digital transformation, the push towards sustainability, coupled with the disruptive effects brought forth by the Covid-19 pandemic, there is a need for novel approaches in designing and implementing SBMs. These should be based on innovation and prioritize the interests of a multiple stakeholders, encompassing the environment and society.