1 - Rafaela Cabral Almeida Trizotto UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL (UFRGS) - Escola de Administração
2 - Josiane Piva Testolin da Silva Caraffini UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL (UFRGS) - Escola de Administração
3 - Leandro da Silva Nascimento UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL (UFRGS) - Escola de Administração
4 - Roberto R. F. Belmonte UNIVERSIDADE DO VALE DO RIO DOS SINOS (UNISINOS) - porto alegre
5 - Paulo Antônio Zawislak UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL (UFRGS) - Escola de Administração
Reumo
Sustainability-related challenges have rapidly emerged as an important issue to be considered in business strategy and innovation. There are recent literature reviews that address sustainability and innovation (e.g., Adams et al., 2016), and sustainability and strategy (e.g., Engert et al., 2016). However, the integration of sustainability with business strategy and innovation is still an open theme for discussion in the literature.
Given the importance of change in the traditional strategic model of companies for a new one that (in addition to being focused on economic performance) can translate concerns about sustainable development into a competitive advantage, innovation is essential. Thus, considering the need for articulation among sustainability, innovation and business strategy, our research question is: What topics bring together sustainability, innovation, and business strategy in scientific research? This paper aims to carry out a systematic review of the literature on the theme and propose a research agenda.
We present a brief overview of the interaction between sustainability and business strategy and sustainability and innovation. We then move on to intertwining the three concepts and emphasize the need to understand better how the three have been treated in the literature. A systematic literature review was conducted that identified 85 documents from the Scopus, Web of Science, and Science Direct databases, which were analyzed using topic modeling (Latent Dirichlet Allocation - LDA).
Five topics were extracted that demonstrated the main terms related to sustainability, innovation, and business strategy. In each topic it can be visualized the most probable and significant terms of the respective topic, such as: capabilities, business models, performance, effects, management, industry, and development, which enabled the structuration of a future research agenda.
The results showed the increase in publications from 2013 and the journals Business Strategy and the Environment, Journal of Cleaner Production, and Sustainability as dominant in the theme. Five topics were extracted that demonstrated the main terms related to sustainability, innovation, and business strategy.
Adams, R., Jeanrenaud, S., Bessant, J., Denyer, D., & Overy, P. (2016). Sustainability‐oriented innovation: A systematic review. International Journal of Management Reviews, 18(2), 180-205. Engert, S., Rauter, R., & Baumgartner, R. J. (2016). Exploring the integration of corporate sustainability into strategic management: a literature review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 112, 2833-2850.