Sustainable Strategic Management: Connecting Business Performance and Eco-Innovation

The aim of this article is to identify and systematize the principal research directions in sustainable strategic management (SSM) at the intersection of eco-innovation and business performance. Despite the growing prominence of sustainability in management scholarship, systematic understanding of how SSM, eco-innovation, and business performance are connected in the academic literature remains limited. In particular, it is unclear whether this intersection constitutes a coherent research domain or instead reflects a set of loosely related and fragmented lines of inquiry. To address this gap, the study combines bibliometric analysis and science mapping of 181 Scopus-indexed publications (2006–2024) with a PRISMA-guided scoping review of five core papers that explicitly link SSM, eco-innovation, and business performance. VOSviewer was used to identify thematic clusters and structural gaps, including missing or weak linkages between eco-innovation and different dimensions of business performance. Building on these findings, the article proposes a dual-path conceptual model: (1) a mediated path in which eco-innovation functions as a transmission mechanism between SSM and multidimensional business performance, and (2) a direct path linking SSM to business performance without mediation. The model further distinguishes between internal organizational conditions, which predominantly support the direct path, and external business environment factors, which are critical in enabling the mediated path through eco-innovation. The main contributions are as follows: (a) a structured mapping of the SSM–eco-innovation research field and its emerging thematic architecture; and (b) a conceptual model specifying the dual role of eco-innovation in shaping business performance outcomes. The study also outlines implications for theory, managerial practice, and public policy, particularly in terms of how organizations and their environments influence the effectiveness of different strategic sustainability pathways. The proposed framework should be interpreted as an evidence-informed conceptual model derived from bibliometric patterns and focused qualitative synthesis, rather than as a statistically validated causal model.