Application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Concept: A Review and Bibliometric Analysis

As part of the initiative for sustainable development of the economy, three basic groups of goals have been determined that are being attempted to be achieved. These are environmental, social, and governance goals abbreviated ESG. ESG practice includes and cares about the way companies deal with climate change, the way they take care of their employees and other interested parties, but also about the company's corporate culture and its management. The ever-increasing global attention and focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues led to the development of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) which will ensure reporting on all sustainability topics (environmental, social, and governance factors). However, the exploration of the ESG in the context of the performance and efficiency of a company is very modest, and its connection to data envelopment analysis (DEA) is poor. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is the leading non-parametric approach for measuring relative efficiency and benchmarking of peer decision-making units (DMUs). This bibliometric study aims to identify and present the most applied areas of research in ESG with the application of DEA, and thus shed light on the trends over the years, the most contributing authors, affiliations, countries, etc. This article is the first to present a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 76 articles dealing with the application of DEA in the ESG-related issues with the application of the keywords “Data Envelopment Analysis” and “ESG” in the Scopus database.