Sustainability management research in the Arab world: a citation-based systematic literature review

Abstract

Purpose: This paper presents a citation-based systematic literature review in the field of sustainability management for Arab countries. The aim is to assist potential researchers in this field to identify existing themes, gaps and other relevant information necessary for the further development of the research area. Design/methodology/approach: A comprehensive list of keywords has been searched in the SCOPUS database to identify all the relevant articles in the field of sustainability management in Arab countries. After applying the relevant restriction criteria, manual screening of titles, abstracts and keywords was performed to identify the final sample. The final sample consists of 410 articles published in 218 different journals by 907 authors. Bibliometrix R-tool was used to conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the selected articles. Findings: Findings indicate a growing trend of publications on sustainability management in the generally understudied Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Besides publication trends, citation analysis presents citation trends, most influential journals and authors, and most cited articles on sustainability management in Arab countries. Theme identification is shown through analyses of conceptual and intellectual structures. Finally, social networks in the field are discussed. Practical implications: Information presented in this paper informs interested researchers about the current state in the field, relevant sources of knowledge, important literature on the topic, relevant authors and other valuable particulars. This systematic literature review helps researchers make further valuable contributions to the field of sustainability management in Arab countries. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper offers a first comprehensive citation-based systematic literature review on sustainability management in Arab countries.