Citation: Hamid, S.; Saeed, A.; Farooq, U.; Alnori, F. A Bibliometric Retrospection of CSR from the Lens of Finance and Economics: Towards Sustainable Development. Sustainability 2022, 14, 16852. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su142416852 Academic Editors: Jie Li, Jie Xue, Dengsheng Wu and Xiaolong Zheng Received: 8 October 2022 Accepted: 7 December 2022 Published: 15 December 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Article A Bibliometric Retrospection of CSR from the Lens of Finance and Economics: Towards Sustainable Development Samreen Hamid 1 , Asif Saeed 2, * , Umar Farooq 3 and Faisal Alnori 4 1 FAST School of Management, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Lahore 54000, Pakistan 2 Mahidol University International College, Mahidol University, Salaya 73170, Thailand 3 FAST School of Management, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Faisalabad 35400, Pakistan 4 Department of Finance, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia * Correspondence: asif.saeed@outlook.com Abstract: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) research is diversified and yet fragmented sustainable development literature. CSR literature is growing at a fast pace in the era of globalization. This article presents a bibliometric analysis of CSR in growing finance and economics literature between 2000 and 2021 using Scopus database extraction of 1134 articles out of 50,435 total articles through lemmatizing, stemming, and clustering. This study used bibliometric coupling to part the research front of CSR and then studied each theme’s conceptual structure and influential aspects separately. The analysis divided the literature into four main themes: (1) CSR performance theme (CSPR), (2) CSR and responsible investment theme (CSRI), (3) CSR market settings theme (CSMS), and (4) CSR and corporate strategy theme (CSCS). This research proposed a future research agenda for the advancement of each theme of CSR in finance and economics. Using meta-literature, 41 future research questions are proposed along with subjective propositions by the authors. Keywords: CSR; finance; economics; bibliometric analysis; systematic review 1. Introduction Research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) has decades of history, but in the field of finance, it gained much importance after 1990. The first article on the subject was published by Filene [1] who wrote about the importance of CSR in all areas of businesses to stay financially and morally sound. Carroll defined CSR as a four-dimensional concept, with economic, social, ethical, and discretionary dimensions till 1999 [2]. The economic dimension involves firms’ financial stability to address their sustainable existence [2–4]. It is emphasized that the importance of the economic dimension of CSR cannot be ignored while making firms accountable to society and other stakeholders for sustainability [3]. Though, the CSR phenomenon is well established in business studies and is embedded broadly in the management literature [5]. However, in a recent study, the researchers found a dearth of research in the context of individual subjects such as CSR in management, finance, marketing, etc. [6]. Particularly, in the last few years, CSR has been researched widely from various economic and financial perspectives [7,8]. Sustainability has become an utmost concern, and businesses seek ways and means to justify their CSR initiatives regarding sustainable finance and economic performance [9]. From regulator to customer, the expectation of firms performing well in their CSR activities improves investor confidence and ensures better financial opportunities for firms and, ultimately, economic and environmental sustainability [9]. Researchers found that firms’ financial performance, risk management, stakeholder value, ethical standing, and financial value are connected with the firm’s CSR strategy [10]. There is a need to comprehend such diverse literature to understand the width and depth of the impact of CSR on different Sustainability 2022, 14, 16852. https://doi.org/10.3390/su142416852 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability