The Audit Committee and Sustainable Business: Mapping the Research Landscape through a Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the literature on audit committees (AC) and sustainable business, based on 1,443 publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection for the period 2002–2025. Following the application of filters relating to the Business category and open access publications, a dataset of 410 publications was obtained. The research objectives are as follows: (1) to map the intellectual landscape of this interdisciplinary field; (2) to identify the most productive authors, journals, and countries; and (3) to highlight emerging research clusters through co-occurrence analysis conducted using VOSviewer. The results indicate a significant upward trend in scientific output beginning in 2017, with a peak in 2022 (55 publications). The dominant field is Business Finance (50.49%), and Malaysia, Indonesia, the United States, and England are the countries with the highest productivity. The journal with the most publications, Cogent Business Management, accounts for 9.27% of the total articles. Citation analysis reveals an H-index of 49 and an average of 22.12 citations per article, confirming the growing scientific impact of the field. Keyword co-occurrence analysis identifies eight thematic clusters: audit quality and audit committee effectiveness, audit committee expertise and reporting timeliness, corporate governance, gender diversity and financial performance, internal audit and internal control, the banking sector, KAMs and the post-COVID context, earnings management and financial reporting quality, ESG reporting and sustainability, and board of directors characteristics and ownership structure in emerging markets. The results provide a structured overview of the literature and highlight future research directions regarding corporate governance and the quality of financial and non-financial reporting.