Environmental, social, and governance and earnings management research: current trends and future research

Alahdal, WM, Pandey, DK, Sahu, M, Nguyen, T ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7170-5882 and Hashim, HA, 2025. Environmental, social, and governance and earnings management research: current trends and future research. Accounting Research Journal. ISSN 1030-9616

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Abstract

Purpose: The study aims to identify and discuss how the literature on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and Earnings management (EM) has evolved, indicating key streams, keywords, authors, journals, countries, publication and citation trends, and thematic evolution. The study also constructs agendas for future research on ESG and EM.

Design/methodology/approach: This study uses the bibliometric review and content analysis approach on a corpus of 50 documents from Scopus until early 2024.

Findings: The study identifies distinct clusters based on bibliographic coupling: (1) ESG and EM in developed countries; (2) Institutional drivers in ESG-EM relationship; (3) ESG and EM in emerging countries; and (4) ESG integration in corporate practices. The research presents several key findings, including the most influential articles, top productive and impactful journals, and publication and citation trends. Additionally, we conduct network analysis encompassing author keyword co-occurrences and co-citation networks of journals. Furthermore, the present work explores bibliographic coupling among countries and documents. Finally, it proposes a framework for future research based on the research gaps identified in this review.

Research limitations/implications: This study assists practitioners, policymakers, and academics, including researchers and journal editors, in comprehensively understanding the relationship between ESG and EM and appropriately evaluating ESG performance and earnings quality.

Originality/value: The study contributes to the extant accounting literature by systematically exploring prior studies on the relationship between ESG and EM. It also constructs a future agenda for ESG and EM literature.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Accounting Research Journal
Creators:	Alahdal, W.M., Pandey, D.K., Sahu, M., Nguyen, T. and Hashim, H.A.
Publisher:	Emerald
Date:	5 August 2025
ISSN:	1030-9616
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1108/ARJ-05-2024-0174 DOI 2480703 Other
Rights:	© 2025 Emerald Publishing Limited. This AAM is provided for your own personal use only. It may not be used for resale, reprinting, systematic distribution, emailing, or for any other commercial purpose without the permission of the publisher.
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Record created by:	Laura Borcherds
Date Added:	08 Aug 2025 09:13
Last Modified:	08 Aug 2025 09:13
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/54149

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