Unveiling the Landscape of Sustainability and Earnings Management: A Bibliometric Analysis of Scholarly Research

Sustainability practices and reporting provide the necessary information regarding firms' initiatives to balance their ethical and moral behavior in conducting business to align with stakeholders' requirements, and the existence of earnings management could threaten the objectives. These two intertwined concepts need to be understood thoroughly. Notwithstanding the plethora of studies examining the intersection of sustainability and EM, a notable gap exists in exploring research frontiers and the resourcefulness derived from past publications in this domain. Thus, the study aims to perform a bibliometric analysis of documents within this domain and fill the gap that specifically reflects in exploring the research frontiers and resourcefulness from past studies of sustainability and EM. The study conducted a bibliometric analysis of the 282 documents on the Scopus database for the period of 2005 to 2022 for sustainability and EM topics. Advanced tools such as Microsoft Excel to analyze the data, VosViewer, Wordshift, Harzing Publish and Perish for visualization and metric analysis have been used. The results reveal an increasing trend in scholarly interest in this topic. It also elucidates the evolution of language, influential authors, institutions, countries (with the top 3 countries being South Korea, China, and Indonesia), and keyword clusters. The analysis conveys insightful information for future researchers exploring the dynamic landscape of this topic. In conclusion, the study of sustainability and EM is experiencing a growing trajectory from researchers. It is recommended that future studies consider other keywords and use another database