Mapping intellectual structure of ownership structure and corporate social responsibility: a bibliometric analysis

Munisi, Gibson Article Mapping intellectual structure of ownership structure and corporate social responsibility: a bibliometric analysis Cogent Business & Management Provided in Cooperation with: Taylor & Francis Group Suggested Citation: Munisi, Gibson (2024) : Mapping intellectual structure of ownership structure and corporate social responsibility: a bibliometric analysis, Cogent Business & Management, ISSN 2331-1975, Taylor & Francis, Abingdon, Vol. 11, Iss. 1, pp. 1-49, https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2024.2371065 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/326376 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Cogent Business & Management ISSN: 2331-1975 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/oabm20 Mapping intellectual structure of ownership structure and corporate social responsibility: a bibliometric analysis Gibson Munisi To cite this article: Gibson Munisi (2024) Mapping intellectual structure of ownership structure and corporate social responsibility: a bibliometric analysis, Cogent Business & Management, 11:1, 2371065, DOI: 10.1080/23311975.2024.2371065 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2024.2371065 © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 04 Jul 2024. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 1018 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=oabm20 Accounting, corporAte governAnce & Business ethics | review Article Cogent Business & ManageMent 2024, VoL. 11, no. 1, 2371065 Mapping intellectual structure of ownership structure and corporate social responsibility: a bibliometric analysis gibson Munisi Department of Business studies, ardhi university, Dar es salaam, tanzania ABSTRACT corporate social responsibility(csr) continues to be important to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. this is evidenced by the increasing number of publications and attention given to this topic. Furthermore, it is widely recognised that a firm’s internal corporate governance, including ownership structure, can impact csr strategies implemented by the firm. consequently, research on ownership structure and csr is indispensable. however, no systematic and comprehensive review of studies in this area has been conducted to assess the current state and future research direction. therefore, this study employs the bibliometric method to provide an overview of the literature and identify potential research directions in ownership structure and csr. this study aims to provide an overview of the development of ownership structure and csr literature and identify the most productive authors, most influential articles, most influential journals, most productive countries, and the most predominant keywords to establish current status and show future research avenues. this study uses bibliometric analysis to review the literature on ownership structure and csr based on 1,046 articles published from 1980 to February 2023 in scopus–indexed journals. Findings indicate the most productive authors, most influential articles, most productive and influential countries, and most predominant keywords in ownership structure and csr research. Moreover, the study indicates predominant themes in ownership structure and csr research and suggests some avenues for future research. 1. Introduction ownership structure is one of the key internal corporate governance mechanisms of firms which has implications for various decisions and outcomes of firms (Batra etal., 2023; Munisi, 2020; r l etal., 2021). these decisions and outcomes include those related to the firm’s commitments to corporate social responsibility(csr). As a result, the nexus between these concepts attracts attention from both academic researchers and practitioners (lin & nguyen, 2022; pareek & sahu, 2022). in this regard, one of the intriguing research areas in management and corporate governance literature is concerned with ownership structure and csr (Dakhli, 2021). For example, some studies such as oh etal. (2011), chau and gray (2002), Mohd ghazali (2007) and sahasranamam et al. (2020) examine the direct relationship between ownership structure and csr, while studies such as Dakhli (2021), Ahmad et al. (2023), cordeiro et al. (2020) and Zaid et al. (2020) examine the interrelation between ownership structure, csr and other variables. csr is recognised as one of the earliest and key concepts in the academic study of business and society relations, and it has attracted attention in the corporate world and society in general (carroll, © 2024 the author(s). Published by informa uK Limited, trading as taylor & Francis group CONTACT gibson Munisi [email protected], [email protected] Department of Business studies, ardhi university, Dar es salaam, tanzania. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2024.2371065 this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. the terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. ARTICLE HISTORY received 19 February 2024 revised 14 June 2024 Accepted 17 June 2024 KEYWORDS ownership structure; corporate social responsibility; csr; bibliometric analysis; corporate governance; governance mechanisms REVIEWING EDITOR collins ntim, university of southampton, united Kingdom of great Britain and northern ireland SUBJECTS Business; management and accounting; finance; economics 2 g. Munisi 2021). the concept became widely recognized when howard Bowen (1953) raised the question regarded as the most significant question in the csr field when asked, ‘what responsibilities to society may businessmen reasonably be expected to assume?’ the question is concerned with managerial decisions, policies, and actions that firms should undertake to take care of shareholders’ values and societal objectives concurrently (carroll, 2021). Furthermore, literature describes csr as the commitment of a firm to conduct its business in an ethical and socially responsible manner (Dahlsrud, 2008). this involves considering the impact of the firm’s activities on various stakeholders, including employees, customers, communities, and the environment. this implies that csr comprises initiatives and practices of firms which go beyond legal requirements to contribute positively to society while maintaining financial performance objectives (Barauskaite & streimikiene, 2021). this is achieved when firms integrate social and environmental issues into their business operations and interactions with their stakeholders (Dahlsrud, 2008; le et al., 2023). however, this integration creates conflict between the firm’s objective of pursuing the interests of shareholders and taking care of the interests of other stakeholders. the existence of conflicting objectives has made csr one of the contentious issues in business management not only for academic researchers but also for practitioners (ofori & hinson, 2007). therefore, the key debate in csr research is concerned with the alignment of the primary objective of the firm to maximize profit for shareholders (ledi & Ameza– Xemalordzo, 2023) and the objectives to take care of the interests of other stakeholders (Dmytriyev etal., 2021). As a result of this debate, research on the antecedents and consequences of csr has continued to grow in business management literature. conceptually, csr is a multidimensional construct (sahasranamam et al., 2020). According to carroll (1979), the social responsibility of a business includes the economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary expectations that society has for the organization. in this regard, csr is conceptualized using different theories to capture its different dimensions, as a result, many theoretical lenses are employed in csr literature (Alghizzawi etal., 2022; Ashrafi etal., 2020; Frynas & Yamahaki, 2016; li etal., 2023; wang etal., 2020). the most used theories in csr are such as stakeholder theory (Ashrafi et al., 2020; Dmytriyev etal., 2021; gul etal., 2020; le etal., 2023), agency theory (gul etal., 2020; Zaid etal., 2020), institutional theory (Ashrafi etal., 2020; campbell, 2007), legitimacy theory (Alghizzawi etal., 2022), stewardship theory (Murtaza et al., 2021; wei et al., 2021), resource-based view (Ashrafi etal., 2020; Branco & rodrigues, 2006; le et al., 2023) resource dependence theory (cao et al., 2023) and society contract theory (ho et al., 2022). these theories are used to develop different theoretical frameworks to explain and study different antecedents, consequences and processes in ownership structure and csr research field. the discussion of the application of some of these theories in csr research is presented by Frynas and Yamahaki (2016). while this study does not aim to discuss the application of each of these theories on csr, it highlights some of these theories to build a theoretical foundation for this study. stakeholder theory, in particular, is used to analyse different stakeholder groups to whom the firm should be responsible (crane & ruebottom, 2011; Dmytriyev et al., 2021). According to Freeman (1984), a stakeholder is any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of a firm’s objectives. Based on stakeholder theory, a firm is regarded as a series of connections among stakeholders that managers attempt to manage (Freeman, 1984). the principal idea of stakeholder theory is that a firm should create value for all stakeholders (Dmytriyev etal., 2021). this implies that firms are expected to take more responsibilities not only for shareholders but also other stakeholders (lu et al., 2022). however, firms should strategically manage their stakeholders by identifying and prioritizing the interests of stakeholders based on the significance of their effects on the firm (Boaventura etal., 2020; ntim etal., 2013). one of the primary and arguably most influential stakeholders of firms are shareholders of firms (Boaventura etal., 2020). this is because shareholders are the primary owners of firms that invest in firms with the expectation of good financial performance that can enhance investment growth and generate high returns. therefore, strategic decisions, that affect a firm’s financial performance have direct effects on shareholders’ expectations on their investment return. shareholders have ability to influence a firm’s decisions, including decisions to hire and fire managers (Brown et al., 2022). Additionally, according to agency theory, shareholders are involved in monitoring and rewarding managers to ensure that they serve shareholders’ interests (Batra et al., 2023). this implies that the employments and rewards of managers depend on shareholders’ decisions. therefore, to maintain their cogent Business & MAnAgeMent 3 employments and rewards, managers are likely to implement strategies that foster shareholders’ interests. As a result, managers are more inclined to the shareholder’s primacy view, which may reduce managers’ attention to social issues in favour of maximizing shareholder’s value (Dmytriyev etal., 2021). Furthermore, the literature on ownership structure and csr suggests that csr activities may act as shareholder–manager conflict whereby managers may over-invest in csr activities for their benefit (Barnea & rubin, 2010; harjoto & Jo, 2011). therefore, in this situation, the shareholder monitors and controls behaviour of managers and decisions related to investment in csr activities, which in turn affect csr strategies. Accordingly, it is argued that the involvement of shareholders in firms’ affairs is expected to influence firms’ key strategic decisions, which in turn affects various outcomes of firms (Munisi, 2020) including those related to csr. other theories relevant to this study are institutional and legitimacy theories. the arguments based on institutional and legitimacy theories suggest that firms must conform to their institutional environment to increase their legitimacy (DiMaggio & powell, 1983; Frynas & Yamahaki, 2016). this implies that firms adopt some strategies to respond to institutional pressures to maintain legitimacy among key stakeholders in the institutional environment they operate. in this regard, csr is considered as an outcome of firms’ strategic decisions (pareek & sahu, 2022) that is concerned with stakeholders, particularly those related to society and the environment, rather than only conventional objective of firms which focus on profit maximization (sahasranamam etal., 2020). engagement of firms in csr activities is based on the assumption that firms should be accountable to stakeholders other than shareholders (latapí Agudelo et al., 2019) to create and maintain legitimacy in the societies they operate. this implies that firms should not only focus on profit maximization but also on the interests of society and environment (carroll, 2021). this requires firms to establish csr commitments for their business operations. however, csr commitments are costly and require firms to spend limited resources that could be invested in other more profitable projects to increase shareholders’ value (coelho et al., 2023). According to these assumptions, investment in csr is likely to diverge from the objective of shareholders who are mainly interested in profit maximization (latapí Agudelo et al., 2019). therefore, shareholders, whose primary objective is to maximize profit, are more likely to discourage firms from engaging in csr activities. however, on the other hand, csr implementation can improve financial performance and increase business value for shareholders and other stakeholders (coelho et al., 2023). in this regard, some shareholders may prefer firms to engage in csr activities to increase their legitimacy. legitimacy helps firms to enhance their reputation and competitive advantage which eventually improve financial performance and shareholder value in the long term. the existence of conflicting arguments suggests that ownership structure of firms has implications on firm’s csr commitments (pareek & sahu, 2022). As a result, many researchers are interested in studying the nexus between ownership structure and csr. Although the literature indicates that research on ownership structure and csr is inconclusive, it is generally accepted that ownership structure influences a firm’s generous and philanthropic activities (Dakhli, 2021). this is because shareholders of firms as claimants of the residual value in the firms are more likely to prefer firms to engage in csr activities that have long-lasting benefits on the shareholders’ value. this implies that different ownership structure types are expected to have different effects on firms’ csr activities (sahasranamam et al., 2020). Additionally, owners have different preferences for csr activities because they have different interests (pareek & sahu, 2022). this implies that some owners could prefer more socially responsible firms while others could be more interested in firms that focus more on financial performance to generate high returns on their investment without much consideration of the interests of other stakeholders. this implies that different owners have different preferences for firm participation and investment in csr activities. consequently, the csr strategic decisions pursued by firms are likely to depend on different types of owners, which in turn affect the relationship between ownership structure and csr. the existence of conflict arguments and different preferences of shareholders on csr sets the foundational cornerstone of the theoretical discussion of ownership structure and csr research field, which attracts interest from academic researchers, practitioners and policymakers around the world. Following the attention given to csr and the different influences of shareholders on firms’ strategic decisions, several studies have examined ownership structure and csr (Ahmad et al., 2023; chau & gray, 2002; cordeiro etal., 2020; Dakhli, 2021; Mohd ghazali, 2007; oh etal., 2011; sahasranamam etal., 2020; 4 g. Munisi Zaid et al., 2020). however, owing to existence of different types of owners with different preferences, empirical studies on ownership structure and csr have yielded mixed results (oh et al., 2011). in this regard, research on ownership structures and csr is inconclusive (pareek & sahu, 2022). in addition, despite of existence of a significant number of studies on ownership structure and csr research, there is no study that has conducted a comprehensive review of the ownership structure and csr literature to understand how research has evolved and evaluate its future avenues. therefore, this study fills the gap by synthesizing the literature to understand status of future direction of research in ownership structure and csr field. to address the identified gap, this study conducts a bibliometric review of the ownership structure and csr literature to analyse how the research stream has evolved and identify recent trends. use of a bibliometric review helps to identify most influential authors, articles, journals, countries, themes and topics concerning the body of knowledge (Donthu et al., 2021). in this regard, this study uses several bibliometric analyses to review the intellectual structure of ownership structure and csr literature. Furthermore, this study conducts science mapping to identify past and present evolutions of research frontiers. therefore, similar other bibliometric studies such as Alhosani and nobanee (2023) and Batra et al. (2023), this study addresses the following specific questions. Q1. what is the trend of publications on ownership structure and csr research? Q2. which are the most productive and influential contributors to ownership structure and csr research? Q3. what are the prevailing themes in ownership structure and csr research? Q4. what are the past and present research thematic areas in ownership structure and csr research? Q5. what are the future research avenues in ownership structure and csr? By addressing these questions, this study contributes to the literature on ownership structure and csr. to the best of the author’s knowledge, no other study has conducted a bibliometric analysis of ownership structure and csr, although these are key concepts in corporate governance which attracts attention from academic researchers, practitioners and policymakers. in this regard, this is the first study to utilise existing and growing publications of studies related to ownership structure and csr research field to conduct the bibliometric analysis. in addition, this study follows Dartey-Baah and Amoako (2021) suggestion to conduct further studies on csr by conducting bibliometric analysis to provide more insights on csr literature. this study provides an overview of the ownership structure and csr research field, identifies main contributors in the research and reveals key themes which may inform future research avenues. this study makes contributions to ownership structure and csr research field and in business and management literature in general. First, this study presents a review and analysis of the literature, which can serve as valuable sources of information for academic researchers and practitioners seeking a comprehensive understanding of status and trends of ownership structure and csr field. second, this study develops a roadmap that guides academic researchers to conduct studies on different antecedents and consequences in relation to ownership structure and csr. third, this study reveals existing and potential contributors and emerging themes that can potentially help academic researchers set the foundation of future research and identify more avenues for future research in the field. Fourth, this study contributes to a research stream that employs bibliometric methods to understand the status and trends of ownership structure and csr research field. Finally, this study provides more insightful information on ownership structure and csr research field literature, which can help researchers and practitioners who are conducting research and formulating policies relevant to ownership structure and csr field. the rest of the paper is organized as follows: section 2 presents the methodology. section 3 section presents the results of bibliometric analysis. section 4 provides a discussion and section 5 concludes the study. 2. Methodology this study utilizes bibliometric methods to analyse the literature on ownership structure and csr. the bibliometric methods applied quantitative tools to bibliographic data (pandey et al., 2023). these cogent Business & MAnAgeMent 5 methods originated from research in library and information sciences that involves a large volume of bibliographic materials (Broadus, 1987; Donthu et al., 2021). since then the bibliometric has been considered a legitimate method of scientific review in many fields (Khan etal., 2021) including business and management (Donthu et al., 2021; pandey et al., 2023). According to Appio et al. (2014), bibliometric methods introduce objective measures for evaluating scientific publications. this eliminates the potential bias embedded in subjective evaluation and thus represents an important complement to the analytical ability of researchers. Accordingly, bibliometric techniques provide more objective and reliable analysis (Aria & cuccurullo, 2017). Following its usefulness in the analysis of a large body of information, bibliometric analysis is used to reveal emerging trends in articles and journals performance, collaboration patterns and research constituents (Donthu et al., 2021). Additionally, bibliometric techniques enable researchers to explore the intellectual structure of a specific research domain and predict future research trends (Donthu et al., 2021). this study performs a bibliometric analysis of ownership structure and csr in the form of descriptive and network mapping (Aria & cuccurullo, 2017). the descriptive analysis includes citations, citations per publication, citations per author, publication per author, publication per journal and publication per country. Moreover, the study conducted a science network mapping analysis that includes co-citations of publications, bibliographic coupling and co-occurrences of keywords. this study uses Microsoft excel and vosviewer (van eck & waltman, 2023) to perform these analyses and generate bibliometric network maps (van eck & waltman, 2010). 2.1. Data search process the study utilises publications indexed in the scopus database, which is a large multi-disciplinary database of peer-reviewed literature (singh & Arora, 2023). the database is widely recognised and highly recommended for bibliometric reviews (Batra et al., 2023; Donthu et al., 2021). the study utilises data from the scopus database only because of limited access to other databases during the time of conducting the study. however, while the combination of more than one database is recommended; still use of only one database is highly acceptable in the bibliometric methods research as many similar studies use only one database. the study specified the keywords related to ownership structure and csr research. similar to previous studies such as ibrahim et al. (2022), lu et al. (2022) and nguyen et al. (2020), the search was done using a string of keywords developed after a preliminary review of mainstream literature on ownership structure and csr research field. to ensure that alternative forms of usage of the words ‘ownership structure’ and ‘corporate social responsibility’ are captured in the title, abstract or keywords, different keywords related to ‘ownership structure’ and ‘corporate social responsibility’ are considered. More specifically, the ownership structure related keywords are: ‘ownership structure ‘or’ ownership characteristic* ‘or’ foreign owner* ‘or’ foreign shareholder* ‘or ‘concentrated owner* ‘or’ government owner* ‘or’ managerial owner* ‘or’ state owner* ‘or’ director ownership’ or ‘family owner* ‘or’ institution* ownership ‘or’ large shareholder* ‘or’ minority shareholder*’ while the corporate social responsibility related keywords are ‘corporate social responsibility ‘or’ corporate social performance ‘or’ triple bottom line ‘or’ social responsibility ‘or’ accountability ‘or’ pyramid of csr ‘or’ philanthropy ‘or’ corporate social responsive* ‘or’ sustain*’. Furthermore, to increase the scope of more relevant keywords, some words are captured both in their singular and plural forms as well as in short and long forms using the symbol (‘*’). thereafter, the ownership structure related keywords are linked with the corporate social responsibility related keywords. the keywords are linked with operators (or, AnD) to form the search string that is used for searching within the article title, abstract and keywords in the scopus database. As a result, a total of 1,421 documents are generated by the first search query. thereafter, a more refined search query is used. to ensure the quality of the peer-reviewed process the refined search query includes only journal articles. Furthermore, the refined search query limits the subject areas to business, social, economic and environment. Finally, documents are limited to english language only. the keyword search was conducted on 14 February 2023. therefore, based on the refinement of the search query, scopus reveals 1,046 documents published between 1980 and 14 February 2023. table 1 presents the description of keywords search strings, the specified conditions and the number of articles identified from the search process. in addition, Figure 1 presents the overall data gathering process. 6 g. Munisi After checking for duplications, the bibliometric sample is obtained. the sample contains a list of documents with their respective bibliographic details such as authors’ names, document titles, affiliations, publication source and year, abstract, key terms and references. then, the dataset is used to create and analyse various bibliometric maps, tables and graphs using Microsoft excel and vosviewer. 3. Results 3.1. Trend of publications the identification of publications indexed in the scopus was done based on the keyword searches presented in table 1. Figure 2 shows the trend of number of articles published over the years. the results indicate that the first article was published in 1984. Furthermore, the results show that the number of Table 1. Keywords search. Description specified conditions number of articles search query of titLe aBs-KeY titLe-aBs-KeY ((‘ownership structure’ oR ‘ownership characteristic*’ oR ‘foreign owner*’ oR ‘foreign shareholder*’ oR ‘concentrated owner*’ oR ‘government owner*’ oR ‘managerial owner*’ oR ‘state owner*’ oR ‘director ownership’  oR ‘family owner*’ oR ‘institution* ownership’ oR ‘large shareholder*’ oR ‘minority shareholder*’ anD ‘corporate social responsibility’ oR ‘corporate social performance’ oR ‘triple bottom line’ oR ‘social responsibility’ oR ‘accountability’ oR ‘pyramid of CsR’ oR ‘philanthropy’ oR ‘corporate social responsive*’oR ‘sustain*’)) 1,421 Refined search query titLe-aBs-KeY((‘ownership structure’ oR ‘ownership characteristic*’ oR ‘foreign owner*’ oR ‘foreign shareholder*’ oR ‘concentrated owner* ‘oR ‘government owner*’ oR ‘managerial owner*’ oR ‘state owner*’ oR ‘director ownership’ oR’ family owner* ‘oR ‘institution* ownership’ oR ‘large shareholder*’ oR ‘minority shareholder*’ anD’ corporate social responsibility’ oR ‘corporate social performance’ oR ‘triple bottom line’ oR’ social responsibility’ oR ‘accountability’ oR’ pyramid of CsR ‘oR’ philanthropy’ oR’ corporate social responsive* ‘oR’ sustain*’)) anD (LiMit-to (sRCtYPe,’j’)) anD (LiMit-to (DoCtYPe,’ar’)) anD (LiMit-to (suBJaRea,’Busi’) oR LiMit-to (suBJaRea, ‘soCi’) oR LiMit-to (suBJaRea,’eCon’) oR LiMit-to (suBJaRea,’enVi’)) anD (LiMit-to (Language, ‘english’)) 1,046 access included both none open access and open access articles. Query search date February 14, 2023 Years (1980–February 2023) subject area Limited search to ‘business, social, economic and environment’ type of document Limited search to ‘article’. type of source Limited search to ‘journal’. Language Limited search to ‘english language’. Figure 1. Data-gathering process. cogent Business & MAnAgeMent 7 published articles every year remained a single-digit number from 1984 to 2005 when the number increased to ten. From 2005 to 2012, the number of publications ranged from ten to twenty before it increased to 33 in 2013. From there, the number of annual publications increased progressively and reached 99 publications in 2019. As of 2022, number of publications was 196. An increase in publications is the evidence of high interest of researchers in ownership structure and csr research field. the increase reflects the importance of csr and the significance of ownership structure as a key internal governance mechanism that affects firms’ decisions like those related to firms csr initiatives (r. l., 2021; sahasranamam etal., 2020). this followed the increases of attention given to csr by shareholders as csr become widely recognised as one of core components of corporate strategy and an important instrument for minimizing conflicts with different stakeholders and consequently improve firms’ value (Becchetti et al., 2012; chen et al., 2020; Dyck et al., 2019). 3.2. The most influential articles 3.2.1. Citation analysis this study conducts citation analysis to analyse and identify most influential articles according to the number of citations (Appio et al., 2014; Donthu et al., 2021). table 2 indicates the top ten most influential articles in ownership structure and csr research. table 2 shows the top five articles with highest citations were Johnson and greening (1999) with 1,034 citations, followed by Barnea and rubin (2010) with 958 citations, healy etal. (1999) with 953 citations, Marquis and Qian (2014) with 747 citations and Jo and harjoto (2011) with 671 citations. the first ranked article, Johnson and greening (1999) examines the effects of institutional ownership types on corporate social performance. the study was motivated by the emergence of a new stakeholder group, institutional investors such as pension funds, mutual funds, investment bankers, insurance firms and private firms, which influence the strategies, activities and outcomes of firms such as those related to corporate social performance (Johnson & greening, 1999). this article is one of highly cited references in studies which investigate the influence of institutional investors on csr. second article is Barnea and rubin (2010), which was motivated by growth of investment in csr activities and potential conflict of interest between firms’ insiders and minority shareholders in relation to benefits and costs associated with investment in csr. this article is one of studies which examine agency costs resulting from the conflict of interest between investors and managers with regard to high investment in csr activities (Barnea & rubin, 2010). one key findings of this study is that internal managers over-invest in csr for their benefit and reputation (Barnea & rubin, 2010). this article is one of the key references in the research stream that explores the opportunistic behaviour and agency costs associated with csr activities (Jian et al., 2024). Figure 2. trend of publications by year. 14 g. Munisi Figure 5 shows the citation network for journals which publish articles on ownership structure and csr research. the larger the size of the node, the higher the number of articles published in the respective journal. Furthermore, table 7 presents the seven clusters identified in the citation network presented in Figure 5. Analysis of these clusters indicates that the seven clusters represent the sub-thematic area of research in ownership structure and csr field. clusters one and three contain journals mainly focusing on business ethics and social responsibility, reporting and disclosure. clusters two and five consist of journals which focus on finance and economics. cluster five also including journals geographically focused on Asia. cluster six is mainly comprised of journals which focus on social and environment. the citation network also shows connections between different clusters, indicating that the top journals are cross referenced by articles included in the sample of this study. 3.4.2. The most influential journal the number of citations represents the impact of journal on research domain (Donthu et al., 2020). therefore, in addition to identifying the most productive journals based on the number of publications, it is considered worth conducting further analysis to identify the most influential journals based on citations. table 8 presents the list of the ten most influential journals in this research area. table 8 indicates that Table 6. Most productive journals by publications. Rank source total publication Citation total link strength 1sustainability (switzerland) 83 906 120 2Journal of Business ethics 35 5,054 322 3social Responsibility Journal 25 1,045 97 4Corporate social Responsibility and environmental Management 22 1,036 87 5Journal of Cleaner Production 20 720 63 6Corporate governance (Bingley) 16 415 48 7Business strategy and the environment 14 616 60 8Corporate ownership and Control 14 108 12 9Journal of Corporate Finance 13 1,318 47 10 Journal of Financial Reporting and accounting 12 91 51 Figure 5. Most productive journals. cogent Business & MAnAgeMent 15 the top five most influential journal citations are the Journal of Business ethics with 5,054 citations, followed by the Journal of corporate Finance with 1,318 citations, entrepreneurship theory and practice with 1,213 citations, Journal of Financial economics with 1,114 citations and social responsibility Journal with 1,045 citations. entrepreneurship theory and practice and Journal of Financial economics are ranked third and fourth respectively, though they have only three and four publications respectively. Additionally, table 8 indicates that Academy of Management Journal is ranked seventh with 1,034 citations generated from only one publication of Johnson and greening (1999). table 8 shows that sustainability (switzerland) has the highest number of publications, but the journal is ranked ninth based on the number of citations. the results show that the productivity of a journal, measured by the number of publications, does not necessarily explain the impact of journal in the research domain based on the number of citations accumulated by articles published in the respective journal. it is worthy to note that journals shown in table 8 focus on the research thematic areas related to business ethics, corporate governance, social responsibility, environmental management, sustainability and business strategy, finance, economics and banking. this implies that research on ownership structure and csr covers different but interrelated themes. 3.4.3. The analysis of source co-citation the source co-citation analysis, as presented in Figure 6, shows the journals in which most citations of publications on ownership and csr research are based. Due to the existence of different names of Table 7. Cluster of most productive journals. Cluster Journal total publication Citation total link strength Cluster-1 Journal of Business ethics 35 5,054 322 Corporate social Responsibility and environmental Management 22 1,036 87 Corporate governance (Bingley) 16 415 48 Chinese Management studies 9 85 11 Journal of sustainable Finance and investment 7 17 16 emerging Markets Review 7 125 28 international Journal of economics and Financial issues 6 54 9 international Journal of environmental Research and Public Health 5 40 11 Journal of applied accounting Research 5 57 18 Cluster-2 Journal of Corporate Finance 13 1,318 47 Corporate governance: an international Review 10 628 40 Pacific Basin Finance Journal 9 118 23 Finance Research Letters 6 34 5 Journal of Banking and Finance 6 866 36 Journal of Family Business strategy 6 208 26 economic Modelling 5 27 6 Cluster-3 social Responsibility Journal 25 1,045 97 Corporate ownership and Control 14 108 12 Journal of Financial Reporting and accounting 12 91 51 energy Policy 10 357 4 international Journal of Disclosure and governance 9 137 31 Cluster-4 Business strategy and the environment 14 616 60 Meditari accountancy Research 7 82 5 sustainable Development 7 80 17 Journal of Family Business Management 6 38 13 international Business Review 5 217 13 Cluster-5 asia Pacific Journal of Management 9 186 31 Journal of asian Finance, economics and Business 6 47 16 applied economics 5 34 8 Cluster-6 sustainability (switzerland) 83 906 120 Journal of Cleaner Production 20 720 63 environmental science and Pollution Research 7 78 23 Cluster-7 international Journal of innovation, Creativity and Change 9 15 14 sustainability accounting, Management and Policy Journal 5 194 29 16 g. Munisi journals found in the published articles referencing list, which results from the use of different citations and referencing styles, data cleaning is done using a thesaurus file tool provided in the vosviewer (van eck & waltman, 2023). in this exercise, 135 names of journals are replaced. thereafter, the analysis is conducted by setting the minimum number of citations for a journal to 20. table 9 presents the top ten journals with the highest source of co-citations. the top ten co-cited journals shown in table 9 comprise most of the top level journals included in ABs ranking. this implies that authors in this research area prefer to use references from the most reputable journals which are more visible. however, it is worthily noting that the list also includes ‘Journal of cleaner production’, ranked at level 2, and ‘corporate social responsibility and environmental management’ ranked at level 1 by ABs. this suggests that the two journals, though are not highly ranked in ABs, emerge as the most relevant sources of publications of research on ownership structure and csr. specifically, ‘Journal of cleaner production’ indicates on its website that it focuses on publishing articles related to cleaner production, environmental, and sustainability research and practice while, the journal ‘corporate social responsibility and environmental management’ indicates its aim and scope is to publish theoretical and practical contributions associated with the social and environmental responsibilities of businesses in the context of sustainable development. As a result, the scopes of these journals attract manuscripts covering topics related to ownership structure and csr research. Figure 6 shows the source co-citation network of journals with minimum of 20 citations. the source co-citations map network indicates five clusters related to the ownership structure and csr. table 10 presents the top five journals in each cluster. the qualitative review of these clusters shows the clusters are categorised based on the thematic scope of the journals in each respective cluster. cluster-1 is shown in red colour and is the largest cluster with 83 journals. this cluster focuses on corporate responsibility, corporate governance and ethics topics. the most cited journals in the cluster are Journal of Business ethics; corporate social responsibility and environmental Management; corporate governance: An international review; Business strategy and the environment; Accounting, auditing and Accountability Journal. cluster-2 is presented in green and is the second largest cluster with 74 journals. Journals in this cluster focus on thematic areas associated with finance. the most prolific journals in this cluster are the Journal of Financial economics; Journal of Finance; Journal of corporate Finance; Journal of Banking and Finance; and Journal of international Business studies. Table 8. top ten most influential journals. Rank Journal total citations total publications 1Journal of Business ethics 5,054 35 2Journal of Corporate Finance 1,318 13 3entrepreneurship theory and Practice 1,213 3 4Journal of Financial economics 1,114 4 5social Responsibility Journal 1,045 25 6Corporate social Responsibility and environmental Management 1,036 22 7academy of Management Journal 1,034 1 8Contemporary accounting Research 964 2 9sustainability (switzerland) 906 83 10 Journal of Banking and Finance 866 6 Table 9. top ten journals with highest source co-citations. s/n Journals aBsa Ranking 2021 Publisher Co-citations total link strength 1Journal of Business ethics 3springer nature 3,804 188,313 2Journal of Financial economics 4* elsevier 2,275 102,225 3strategic Management Journal 4* Wiley-Blackwell 1,394 79,782 4Journal of Finance 4* Wiley-Blackwell 1,235 59,227 5academy of Management Journal 4* academy of Management 1,219 69,859 6academy of Management Review 4* academy of Management 1,138 63,836 7Journal of Cleaner Production 2 elsevier 842 37,116 8Corporate social Responsibility and environmental Management 1 Wiley-Blackwell 801 46,838 9Journal of Corporate Finance 4 elsevier 734 38,090 10 Corporate governance: an international Review 3 Wiley-Blackwell 660 39,834 aassociation of Business schools. cogent Business & MAnAgeMent 17 cluster 3 is shown in blue and consists of 57 journals. the thematic scope of this cluster is management. the most prominent journals in this cluster are strategic Management Journal; Academy of Management Journal; Academy of Management review; Family Business review, and Journal of Management. cluster 4 is displayed in yellow and consists of 57 journals. the thematic scope of this Figure 6. source Co-citation map. Table 10. top ten journals in each cluster of source co-citations. Cluster no Journal Citations total link strength Cluster-1 Corporate Responsibility, Corporate governance and ethics 1Journal of Business ethics 3,804 188,313 2Corporate social Responsibility and environmental Management 801 46,838 3Corporate governance: an international Review 660 39,834 4Business strategy and the environment 627 37,231 5accounting, auditing and accountability Journal 608 30,622 Cluster-2 Finance 1Journal of Financial economics 2,275 102,225 2Journal of Finance 1,235 59,227 3Journal of Corporate Finance 734 38,090 4Journal of Banking and Finance 635 29,033 5Journal of international Business studies 444 23,034 Cluster-3 Management 1strategic Management Journal 1,394 79,782 2academy of Management Journal 1,219 69,859 3academy of Management Review 1,138 63,836 4Family Business Review 591 33,936 5Journal of Management and studies 521 32,808 Cluster-4 environment, energy and sustainability 1Journal of Cleaner Production 842 37,116 2 sustainability 614 25,806 3Journal of Law and economics 198 10,845 4energy Policy 191 3,989 5Research Policy 123 5,980 Cluster-5 accounting 1accounting Review 655 32,190 2Journal of accounting Research 349 17,037 3Contemporary accounting Research 216 10,904 4Financial times 29 587 18 g. Munisi cluster is centred on environment, energy and sustainability. the most cited journals in this cluster are Journal of cleaner production; sustainability(switzerland); Journal of law and economics; energy policy and research policy. Finally, cluster 5 is in purple. it is the smallest cluster with only four journals. the thematic scope of this cluster is accounting. the journals included in this cluster are Accounting review; Journal of Accounting research; contemporary Accounting research and Financial times. the scope of this cluster is accounting. it is noteworthy to mention that observation of the size of cluster 5 suggests that this cluster is still in its initial stage with regard to its position and influence in ownership and csr research domain. overall, the information presented in Figure 6 and table 10 suggests that research on ownership structure and csr attracts attention to many journals with wide scopes covering topics related to corporate responsibility, corporate governance, business ethics, finance, banking, economics, management, environment, energy, law, sustainability and accounting. this indicates ownership structure and csr research is a multidisciplinary field. therefore, it provides more opportunities of research for researchers interested in understanding the interplay between ownership structure and csr in association with other aspects within and outside the firm. 3.5. The analysis of the most productive country and co-authorship 3.5.1. Most productive countries cross-country collaboration is essential for advancing scientific research (Batra et al., 2023) because it enables researchers from different countries to share information, experience, and knowledge about a specific research field. in this regard, this study analyses the collaboration between countries in ownership structure and csr research field. table 11 indicates the top twenty most productive and influential countries based on the number of publications and citations respectively. table 11 shows that china is the most productive country with 254 publications. A high number of publications from china may be contributed by the unique context of china. First, china’s geopolitical and geo-economics influences in the world could be one of factors which attract research interests in china. second, the institutional environment in china is characterised by state ownership and political influence on many aspects including csr activities (tee et al., 2024). in addition, china’s fast growing economy in recent years, in combination with its institutional environment may contribute to more research interest in china (Yu & chi, 2021). the second most productive country is the usA, which has 183 articles. ranking of china and usA in the first and second positions may indicate that scholars consider the institutional contexts of the usA and china to be more important in research Table 11. Most productive countries by publications and influential countries by citations. s/n Most productive country total publications Most influential country total citations 1 China 254 usa 11,766 2 usa 183 China 6,980 3 uK 99 uK 4,456 4 australia 70 Canada 2,604 5 indonesia 64 australia 2,417 6 Malaysia 62 Malaysia 1,816 7 spain 53 spain 1,776 8 italy 48 italy 1,460 9 india 39 germany 1,116 10 Canada 37 netherlands 1,022 11 Pakistan 36 new Zealand 924 12 south Korea 34 indonesia 591 13 germany 27 France 583 14 Vietnam 25 Pakistan 399 15 new Zealand 24 south Korea 355 16 netherlands 23 india 317 17 France 22 uae 240 18 uae 19 Vietnam 162 19 Japan 17 tunisia 161 20 tunisia 17 Japan 144 cogent Business & MAnAgeMent 19 (cumming etal., 2023). in addition, the usA and china represent the two largest economies in the world but on opposite sides of the spectrum, state control over industry (cumming etal., 2023). these features may be among of factors motivating researchers to conduct research in these two countries. the third ranked country is the uK, which has 99 articles. the uK and the usA are widely recognised as homes to many top researchers, research institutions and funders. these attributes may contribute to many high quality publications, which are likely to be published in many journals, including those indexed in the scopus database. the fourth country is Australia (70), and the fifth is indonesia (64). in addition, the top ten most influential countries by citations are the usA, china, the uK, canada, Australia, Malaysia, spain, italy, germany and the netherlands. interestingly, the analysis indicates that the top three countries in terms of publications are also the top three countries based on citations, albeit in changing positions between china and the usA. the top ranking of the usA by citations above china despite low publications compared to china may be associated with the quality and visibility of publications generated by scholars affiliated with the usA, also by the age of publications affiliated with the usA. this is because the quality (tahamtan etal., 2016) and the age of publications (ibrahim etal., 2022) are determinants of the number of citations. the analysis indicates that most published articles and citations are from western developed countries and emerging Asian countries while countries from the Middle east, south America, eastern europe and Africa have relatively low contributions. this implies that ownership structure and csr research has not received equal attention in many countries. this suggests that ownership structure and csr research has not expanded to developing countries in the Middle east, south America, eastern europe and Africa. this raises the question of whether the results of existing studies are generalizable to developing countries, which have relatively different institutional environments compared with developed countries (Munisi, 2020). this calls for more research in other countries to establish a general theoretical framework in this research field. therefore, future studies should focus on the less explored contexts of the Middle east, south America, eastern europe and Africa. the results presented in table 11 are also shown in Figure 7, to provide a clear visualization of the number of articles by country. 3.5.2. The analysis of country co-authorship country co-authorship is also one of the important types of scientific collaboration in the research field. in this regard, this study identifies and analyses the co-authorship between countries in ownership structure and csr research. the analysis is conducted using vosviewer by setting the country’s minimum number of publications to five and the minimum number of citations to zero. out of 93 countries, 48 countries meet the specified criteria. the countries are ranked using the total link strength in table 12 and the network map in Figure 8. Figure 7. number of articles by country. 20 g. Munisi table 12 shows that in the country co-authorship network, china has the highest total link strength of 170, followed by the usA with a total link strength of 109 and the uK with 72 total link strength. Figure 8 presents seven clusters of country co-authorship. cluster-1 (red) includes eleven countries: the uK, canada, new Zealand, ghana, sweden, ireland, slovakia, Austria, Belgium, south Africa, and the czech republic. cluster 2 (green) contains eight countries: France, turkey, south Korea, egypt, the united Arab emirates, Kazakhstan, tunisia, and Kuwait. cluster 3 (blue) contains seven countries: spain, portugal, Finland, Japan, russia, thailand, and Brazil. cluster-4 (yellow) comprises six countries: the usA, china, hong Kong, taiwan, singapore, and Macau. this cluster represents the largest collaboration, mainly because it includes china and the usA, both of which have a large number of articles and citations. According to hou et al. (2021), countries with large and equivalent economic sizes are more likely to collaborate closely, which may contribute to high co-authorship collaboration between china and the usA. this cluster also includes Asian countries geographically and politically closely connected to china. cluster-5 (pink) has six countries: Australia, indonesia, pakistan, vietnam, romania, and Bangladesh. cluster-6 (cyan) is formed by Malaysia, india, saudi Arabia, Jordan, and nigeria, all of which are Table 12. Country co-authorship for top twenty most productive countries. s/n Country total link strength total publication total citation 1 China 170 254 6,980 2 usa 109 183 11,766 3 uK 72 98 4,456 4 australia 48 70 2,417 5 Pakistan 37 36 399 6 Canada 31 37 2,604 7 Malaysia 29 62 1,816 8 italy 29 48 1,460 9 France 26 22 583 10 spain 25 53 1,776 11 Vietnam 25 25 162 12 netherlands 25 23 1,022 13 uae 21 19 240 14 new Zealand 20 24 924 15 south Korea 16 34 355 16 india 14 39 317 17 indonesia 13 64 591 18 germany 12 27 1,116 19 turkey 12 15 553 20 Belgium 10 5 93 Figure 8. Country co-authorship network map. cogent Business & MAnAgeMent 21 developing countries, indicating developing countries are more likely to collaborate among themselves. however, since developed countries lead in terms of quantity and quality of research publications, there is a need to expand research collaboration between developed and developing countries to enhance the globalization of the research field. Finally, cluster-7 (orange) contains five countries: italy, germany, the netherlands, poland, and iran. this cluster comprises european countries, except iran. Additionally, Figure 9 presents the world map overview of the countries’ collaboration network, with links indicating the frequency of collaborations between countries. the thicker lines the higher the collaboration frequency and the darkness of a country’s colour indicates the relative frequency of inter-country collaborations. this study reveals that a strong collaboration exists between china and the usA with 28 frequencies of collaborations. Followed by collaborations between china and Australia with 15 frequencies; china and uK with 12 frequencies, china and pakistan (12) frequencies, usA and canada (11) frequencies, usA and uK (9) frequencies, china and hong Kong (7) frequencies, usA and south Korea (7) frequencies, usA and Australia (7) frequencies, and collaboration between china and canada (6) frequencies. Furthermore, this study reveals that many pairs of countries’ collaborations have less than five frequencies of co-authorship. this implies that countries’ collaboration within this research field is not yet widely scattered to many countries. the network map indicates that authors’ collaboration mostly follows geographical patterns whereby authors from the same region have strong collaborations. this is in line with literature that suggests that geographical proximity is one of the determinants of countries’ collaborations (hou et al., 2021). this is because cultural links, including the shared language, may facilitate close collaboration between countries (hou et al., 2021). it is noteworthy to mention that the general observation of patterns of countries’ co-authorship collaboration indicates that countries with some similarities are more likely to have high co-authorship collaborations. 3.6. Co-citation analysis co-citation analysis is a bibliometric analysis method used to analyse relationships between documents based on their citations and to map the intellectual structure of a research field. the co-citation of two articles occurs when the articles are cited together in a third article (cumming etal., 2023; small, 1973). if two articles are frequently cited together by other article, it indicates a strong relationship between those articles (cumming et al., 2023; small, 1973). the co-citation analysis seeks to uncover connections and similarities between documents based on their citation behaviours (small, 1973). this implies co-citation analysis reveals connections and associations within the literature domain based on the Figure 9. overview of co-authorship among countries. 22 g. Munisi referenced documents. the method is used to identify emerging themes (Donthu et al., 2021) and clusters of related research domain, which can be valuable for understanding the intellectual structure of the field, track the development of research over time and identify potential areas for future research. therefore, similar to other bibliometric studies, this study uses co-citation analysis to uncover the foundation of themes in ownership structure and csr research. this study utilizes vosviewer to conduct co-citation analysis of cited references to generate major clusters or themes of ownership structure and csr research. in this analysis, this study uses the fractional counting method and sets minimum number of citations of a cited reference to twenty. out of the 60,435 cited references, twenty-two meet the threshold. vosviewer segmented the most co-cited references into three clusters. each cluster represents a foundational theme in ownership structure and csr research field. in the network map of Figure 10, the nodes represent a cited reference, and the size of the nodes indicate the number of documents co-cited. the links between nodes represent a co-citation. Figure 10 presents the structure network map of these clusters while table 13 presents a summary of prominent foundational themes in ownership structure and csr research. 3.6.1. Cluster 1: CSR disclosure cluster one is presented in red and contains nine articles. this cluster started evolving in 1992. the central theme of the cluster is the determinants of csr disclosure. studies in the cluster examine different antecedents of csr disclosure. these studies indicate csr disclosure is influenced by different factors, which are found both within and outside the firms. roberts (1992) examines the ability of stakeholder theory to explain csr disclosure. the study is based on the stakeholder theory proposition which suggests that the importance of stakeholders to the firm is measured by the effects of respective stakeholders on the firms’ strategic objectives. therefore, one of the roles of the firm in csr engagement is to identify key stakeholders of firms and their demands and identify strategies to meet those demands (li et al., 2023; roberts, 1992). Disclosure of csr activities is viewed as one of the most effective strategies for dealing with stakeholders’ demands as firms account of their csr activities sharing information with their key stakeholders. roberts (1992) indicates that the power of certain types of stakeholders is significantly related to the disclosure of csr activities related to those stakeholders. this implies that as the level of stakeholder power increases, the importance of meeting demands of those stakeholders increases (li et al., 2023). Figure 10. network map of co-citation analysis clusters. cogent Business & MAnAgeMent 23 haniffa and cooke (2005) examine the effects of culture on csr disclosure and argue that csr disclosure practices cannot be culture free. the study indicates that the ethnicity and religion of the firm’s management and owners influence csr disclosure as firms attempt to use csr disclosure as legitimation strategies to manage the concerns of a certain cultural group. chau and gray (2002) examine the association between ownership structure and voluntary disclosure. the study shows that the level of outside ownership is positively associated with voluntary disclosure while disclosure is likely to be less in insider Table 13. Co-citation analysis of prominent themes in ownership structure and CsR. Cluster theme authors Citations Year title Cluster 1: CsR disclosure Haniffa, R.M., Cooke, t.e. 50 2005 the impact of culture and governance on corporate social reporting eng, L.L., Mak, Y.t. 40 2003 Corporate governance and voluntary disclosure Khan, a., Muttakin, M.B., siddiqui, J. 40 2013 Corporate governance and corporate social responsibility disclosures: evidence from an emerging economy Roberts, R.W. 37 1992 Determinants of corporate social responsibility disclosure: an application of stakeholder theory Haniffa, R.M., Cooke, t.e. 36 2002 Culture, corporate governance and disclosure in Malaysian corporations Reverte, C. 31 2009 Determinants of corporate social responsibility disclosure ratings by spanish listed firms Brammer, s., Pavelin, s. 28 2008 Factors influencing the quality of corporate environmental disclosure said, R., Zainuddin, Y.H., Haron, H. 24 2009 the relationship between corporate social responsibility disclosure and corporate governance characteristics in Malaysian public listed companies Chau, g.K., gray, s.J. 21 2002 ownership structure and corporate voluntary disclosure in Hong Kong and singapore Cluster 2: Determinants of CsR activities oh, W.Y., Chang, Y.K., Martynov, a. 38 2011 the effect of ownership structure on corporate social responsibility: empirical evidence from Korea orlitzky, M., schmidt, F.L., Rynes, s.L. 32 2003 Corporate social and financial performance: a meta-analysis Johnson, R.a., greening, D.W. 28 1999 the effects of corporate governance and institutional ownership types on corporate social performance Campbell, J.L. 27 2007 Why would corporations behave in socially responsible ways? an institutional theory of corporate social responsibility godfrey, P.C. 25 2005 the relationship between corporate philanthropy and shareholder wealth: a risk management perspective Mcwilliams, a., siegel, D. 25 2001 Corporate social responsibility: a theory of the firm perspective Berrone, P., Cruz, C., gomez-Mejia, L.R., Larraza-Kintana, M. 23 2010 socioemotional wealth and corporate responses to institutional pressures: do family-controlled firms pollute less? Cluster 3: Conflict of interests, institutional environment and CsR engagement Jensen, M.C., Meckling, W.H. 80 1976 theory of the firm: managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure Barnea, a., Rubin, a. 40 2010 Corporate social responsibility as a conflict between shareholders shleifer, a., Vishny, R.W. 26 1997 a survey of corporate governance Dam, L., scholtens, B. 25 2012 Does ownership type matter for corporate social responsibility? Li, W., Zhang, R. 23 2010 Corporate social responsibility, ownership structure, and political interference: evidence from china Dimaggio, P.J., Powell, W.W. 20 1983 the iron cage revisited: institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields 30 g. Munisi value into two schools of thought. the first is the cost-concerned school, which proposes a detrimental effect of csr on firm value while the second is the value-creation school, which suggests a positive effect of csr on firm value (grassmann, 2021). therefore, scholars examine whether csr expenditure is an indication of the existence of conflicts of interest in situations in which firms’ insiders over-invest in csr for their benefit (Barnea & rubin, 2010) or whether csr expenditure aims to benefit firms by increasing the reputation of firms and legitimacy that lead to increased firm value. Barnea and rubin (2010) argue that an increase in csr expenditure may be consistent with firm value maximization if it is a response to changes in stakeholders’ preferences, however, the firm’s insiders, namely managers and blockholders, may seek to over-invest in csr for their private benefit to improves their reputation. Barnea and rubin (2010) investigate the relationship between csr ratings and ownership and capital structures. the study concludes that firm insiders induce firms to over-invest in csr when they bear little of the cost of doing so. in addition, healy et al. (1999) investigate whether firms benefit from expanded voluntary disclosure by examining changes in capital market factors associated with increases in analyst disclosure ratings. According to healy etal. (1999), disclosure rating increases are accompanied by increases in firms’ stock returns, institutional ownership, analyst following, and stock liquidity. healy et al. (1999) indicate that more disclosure makes investors revise upward valuations of the firms’ stocks, increases stock liquidity and creates additional institutional and analyst interest in the stocks. Jo and harjoto (2011) explore the effects of internal and external corporate governance and monitoring mechanisms on the choice of csr engagement and the value of firms engaging in csr activities. the study shows that csr engagement positively influences firm value, however, the relationship between csr activities and firms’ value depends on the types of csr activities implemented by firms. le Breton– Miller and Miller (2006) indicate family controlled business competencies, corporate governance, investments and outside stakeholders’ relationships lead to the sustainability of firms’ value. harjoto and Jo (2011) argue that managers over-invest in csr activities to build their reputations and reduce the probability of turnover. According to harjoto and Jo (2011), firms use csr activities to signals their product quality and reduce conflicts of interest between managers and non-investing stakeholders. Ding et al. (2021) evaluate the connection between corporate characteristics and the reaction of stock returns to covid-19. the study finds that the pandemic-induced drop in stock returns was insignificant among firms with more csr. the finding is supported by the argument that csr engagement acts as an insurance protection for firms during times of great uncertainties (Bae et al., 2021). overall, this cluster discusses the relationship between csr expenditure and firm value. this cluster assumes that expenditure on csr activities can either be detrimental or beneficial to a firm depending on the motives of insiders to engage in csr activities and extent to which those csr activities address the concerns of key stakeholders. Furthermore, the cluster indicates that corporate governance and ownership structure play the role of monitoring managers to ensure they invest in csr activities which not only enhance firm value but also contribute positively to society and environment. in this regard, the discussion in this cluster indicates a lack of conclusive answers on the key question of why a would firm engage in csr activities and thus worthy of further research. 3.7.4. Cluster 4. Ownership structure types, corporate social performance and CSR the thematic cluster four ‘ownership structure types, corporate social performance and csr’ is the fourth largest cluster with 169 articles. this cluster’s central theme is concerned with the relationship between ownership, corporate social performance and csr, with a primary focus on institutional investors. institutional investors are more likely to have large and long term investment horizons that make them more concerned with risk management, market pressure, reputation, disclosure and transparency. Firms which are more responsive to the concerns of institutional investors with regard to corporate social performance are more likely to be better positioned to attract capital and create long-term value both to shareholders and society. As a result, the relationship between institutional ownership and corporate social performance is a subject of interest to scholars in ownership structure and csr research. As a result, different scholars examine this subject. Johnson and greening (1999) discuss the effects of corporate governance and institutional ownership types on corporate social performance. Dyer and whetten (2006) examine the impact of family ownership and management on corporate social performance. the cogent Business & MAnAgeMent 31 study finds that family firms are more socially responsible than nonfamily firms, mainly because family firms are concerned about image and reputation and have a desire to protect family assets. Brammer and pavelin (2006) discuss the relationship between corporate reputation and corporate social performance. Brammer and pavelin (2006) indicate that corporate social performance and long term institutional ownership are key determinants of corporate reputation. the study suggests that a strong record of environmental performance affects corporate reputation, only if the environmental initiatives undertaken by firms align with stakeholders’ concerns. similarly, Dyck et al. (2019) investigate whether shareholders drive the environmental and social performance of firms worldwide. the results suggest that institutional ownership is linked to better environmental and social performance, indicating that institutions are driven by both financial and social incentives. the study also reveals that investors tend to enhance firms’ environmental and social performance following events like the financial crisis, suggesting financial benefits associated with such improvements. this finding is supported by the argument that environmental and social performance can serve as a form of insurance against future adverse economic or social situations (labelle et al., 2018). Additionally, the study reveals that investors from countries with strong community beliefs in environmental and social issues are more likely to improve firms’ environmental and social performance. oh et al. (2011) examine the effect of ownership structure on csr based on the hypothesis that different types of shareholders will have distinct motivations toward the firm’s csr engagement. the study concludes that different owners have different impacts on the firm’s csr engagement. overall, this cluster examines the nexus between institutional ownership, csr and corporate social performance. According to lahouel et al. (2021), corporate social performance is outcomes and results of csr activities. in this regard, the discussion of this cluster focuses on the relationship between institutional ownership and csr but more importantly on the outcomes and results of csr activities implemented by firms. Furthermore, the cluster indicates that the relationship between ownership structure, csr and csp depends on different aspects including different types of ownership structure and motives of shareholders of firms. 3.7.5. Cluster 5. Family ownership, corporate reputation and CSR the fifth cluster contains 81 articles and is the smallest cluster. the central theme of this cluster focuses on the relationship between family ownership and firms’ csr activities. generally, family firms are found everywhere and are widely recognise to play critical roles economic and socially wellbeing in many countries. the significance of roles of family firms attracts researchers to examine different aspects of family firms, including those related to csr activities. According to Mariani et al. (2023), family business csr research focuses either on the relationship between family involvement and csr or on the impacts of csr on family firm performance. Articles in this cluster, such as Block and wagner (2014a, 2014b), cabeza-garcía etal. (2017), cordeiro etal. (2020), gavana etal. (2017), labelle etal. (2018), and Minichilli et al. (2016), employ socioeconomic wealth perspective to examine the relationships between family ownership and csr. According to the socioeconomic wealth perspective, owners of family firms are concerned not only with financial returns but also with their socioemotional wealth through those firms (gómez-Mejía et al., 2007). According to gómez-Mejía et al. (2007), socioemotional wealth refers to non-financial aspects of the firm that meet the family’s affective needs, such as identity, ability to exercise family influence, and perpetuation of the family dynasty. therefore, because socioemotional wealth matters to the family, family-owned firms are more likely to engage in csr initiatives as a strategy to protect their socioemotional wealth. the proposition of the socioemotional wealth perspective acts as a basis of many studies which examine relationships between family ownership and csr activities. Block (2010) examines the relationship between family management, family ownership, and downsizing. Block (2010) finds that family ownership decreases the likelihood of deep job cuts. Following these findings, Block (2010) suggests that family owners care more about their reputation for social responsibility than other owners, which motivates them to avoid deep job cuts. in addition, Block and wagner (2014a) argue that csr is a multidimensional concept that comprises several aspects, which range from employee relations to ecological concerns and product issues. in this regard, Block and wagner (2014a) argue that the effects of family ownership can differ across various csr dimensions. As a result, family firms can be responsible and irresponsible on csr matters at the same time. Block and wagner (2014a) empirically test this argument by examining 32 g. Munisi the effect of family ownership on different dimensions of csr. the findings indicate that family ownership is negatively associated with community-related csr performance and positively associated with diversity, employee, environment and product related aspects of csr. this suggests that the identification of various dimensions of csr and examination of how and why those dimensions are associated with family ownership is one of the interesting research topics in ownership structure and csr domain. Minichilli etal. (2016) examine family ownership, governance and performance during the financial and economic crisis. According to Minichilli et al. (2016), better reputation and identification with relevant stakeholders, including local communities and suppliers, can help family firms to withstand storms during the crisis. cordeiro et al. (2020) investigate the influence of ownership control and female board diversity on corporate environmental performance. the results indicate that the majority of family owners and dual-class owners interact with board gender diversity to influence positively corporate environmental performance. labelle etal. (2018) investigate the engagement of family firms in csr and find that family firms exhibit lower corporate social performance than non-family firms. however, the study also noted that when family owners have less control, they tend to invest more in social initiatives to protect their socioemotional wealth. conversely, when they have more control, economic considerations take precedence over socioemotional wealth, leading to a decrease in social performance. these findings suggest that the extent of family ownership shares influences the participation of family firms in csr initiatives. Additionally, labelle et al. (2018) indicate that family firms operating in stakeholder-oriented countries are more attentive to social concerns than those operating in more shareholder-oriented countries. this cluster recognises the role of family ownership in a firm’s engagement in csr activities for the better of society and environment. Furthermore, this cluster discusses the motivation of family firms to engage in csr activities. overall, discussion in this cluster indicates that family owned firms engage in csr activities either for economic consideration or socioemotional wealth protection. this cluster shows that the relationship between family ownership and csr activities is affected by different factors, including the institutional environment in which firm operates and the dimensions of csr. the existence of differing motives of family firms to engage in csr activities and the possibilities of influence of different factors on family firms’ csr activities warrant further research to advance knowledge on antecedents and consequences of csr activities in family firms. 3.8. Most studied subjects in ownership structure and CSR this study analyses co-occurrences of author keywords using vosviewer (van eck & waltman, 2023) to identify the most researched subjects on ownership structure and csr research based on the publications obtained from scopus database. however, before conducting the keyword co-occurrence analysis, a thesaurus for vosviewer (van eck & waltman, 2023) is prepared to clean the data, whereby plurals of similar words and words with different spellings are combined to eliminate duplication of keywords. in the analysis of keyword co-occurrences, the minimum number of occurrences of a keyword is set to five. the results, indicate that out of the 2,448 keywords, 95 keywords meet threshold. For each of these 95 keywords, the total strength of co-occurrence links with other keywords is calculated. Keywords with the highest total link strength are selected. Figure 12 shows the keyword co-occurrence analysis and graphical presentation of their relationships. the closer the nodes are to each other, the stronger the relationship between the keywords. if two or more keywords appear together in the same publication, they are considered strongly linked (Donthu et al., 2021). the larger node shows the number of times linked keywords co-occur in multiple publications. the network map of keywords indicates the conceptual framework of the research field (Kiliç et al., 2015). the map presents a clear view of the most occurring keywords and their linkages. Keyword co-occurrence is based on the assumption that publications carrying common author keywords address a common theme (Ding etal., 2001). therefore, this study analyses keywords co-occurrence to understand the thematic flow of ownership structure and csr research. table 15 presents a list of author keywords which occurred ten times or more in publications related to ownership structure and csr research obtained from scopus. table 15 shows that the keyword corporate social responsibility has the highest frequency of occurrence of 307. this is expected because the keyword is one of main keywords included in the search string, as shown in table 1. the second ranked keyword is corporate governance, which occurred 186 times, while the third is ownership structure, which occurred 155 times. other prominent keywords cogent Business & MAnAgeMent 33 include family ownership (83), institutional ownership (74), china (62), sustainability (49), corporate social responsibility disclosure (41), foreign ownership (32) and financial performance (31). the observation of the prominence of these keywords implies many publications in ownership structure and csr research study these themes. For example, corporate governance is considered as one of key determinants of the firm’s engagement in csr activities (harjoto & Jo, 2011; Jo & harjoto, 2011, 2012; Khan et al., 2013). According to agency theory, the separation of ownership and control of firms creates agency problems and conflicts of interest between shareholders and managers (Jensen & Meckling, 1976). in this regard, managers may overinvest in csr activities for their benefit (Barnea & rubin, 2010). corporate governance as monitoring mechanisms helps prevent these acts and ensures managers engage in csr activities which are more beneficial to firms and their stakeholders. in addition, following the importance of csr activities to firms’ performance and sustainability, the effects of corporate governance on csr have been expanded beyond merely dealing with agency conflicts but also towards ensuring that firms conduct themselves ethically, accountably and social responsibly (Jain & Jamali, 2016). this makes the relationship between corporate governance and csr a complex relationship. As a result, this attracts researchers to investigate the relationship between corporate governance characteristics and different dimensions of csr. Among high occurring keywords are family ownership, institutional ownership and foreign ownership, which are the types of ownership structures. the firm ownership structure is one of key internal governance mechanisms of firms (Munisi et al., 2014). in this regard, ownership structure affects different aspects of firms, such as those related to csr activities. this is because different owners have different motives and preferences, which affect firms’ csr initiatives. As a result, different scholars examine the relationship between different types of owners and different dimensions of csr. For example, Farooq et al. (2023), liu et al. (2024), and Mariani et al. (2023) examine family ownership, chen et al. (2020), coffey and Fryxell (1991), Dyck et al. (2019), garcía-sánchez et al. (2020, 2022), neubaum and Zahra (2006) explore institutional ownership. in addition, guo and Zheng (2021), Khan et al. (2013), oh et al. (2011), and tokas and Yadav (2023) examine foreign ownership. table 15 indicates the keyword ‘china’ has 62 frequencies of occurrences and it is ranked number six in the list of most co-occurring themes. in addition, as indicated in table 11, china is a leading country based on the number of publications in ownership structure and csr research. therefore, it is not surprising for china to be among the highest co-occurring author keywords because it is expected that some of authors conducting research in the china context to include china as one of keywords in their publications. Figure 12. Keywords network map visualization. 34 g. Munisi it is widely recognised that one of the objectives of firms to engage in csr activities is to enhance their financial performance and sustainability. sustainability is linked to the protection of the environment and the improvement of the lives of people, who interact with firms, while enhancing the firm financial performance (Meseguer-sánchez etal., 2021; savitz, 2013). in this regard, effective csr engagement is concerned with the triple bottom line that combines social, environmental and economic issues (savitz, 2013). therefore, engagement in csr activities that create positive impacts to society, environment and financial performance is expected to lead to sustainability (savitz, 2013). As a result, sustainability is considered one of the key outcomes of csr activities. this attracts different scholars to examine the nexus between csr and sustainability (Meseguer-sánchez et al., 2021). in addition, a conventional primary objective of the corporate firm is to maximize shareholders’ value (sahasranamam et al., 2020). Advocates of this view argue that the resources of the firm should be utilised to finance the activities which can help the firm to achieve its primary objective. As a result, the question of whether it is worthwhile for firms to engage in csr activities continues to attract scholars to examine how csr engagements contribute to the financial performance of firms (orlitzky et al., 2003; saeidi et al., 2015; van Beurden & gössling, 2008). consequently, this makes the theme of financial performance one of the most studied themes in ownership structure and csr research. Table 15. Most occurring author keywords. s/n author keyword occurrences Links total link strength 1Corporate social responsibility 307 89 544 2Corporate governance 186 78 378 3ownership structure 155 77 302 4Family ownership 83 53 148 5institutional ownership 74 42 127 6 China 62 28 76 7 sustainability 49 34 78 8Corporate social responsibility disclosure 41 37 76 9Foreign ownership 32 27 48 10 Financial performance 31 24 63 11 agency theory 29 37 69 12 state ownership 28 25 42 13 emerging markets 26 30 52 14 Firm performance 25 24 49 15 Disclosure 24 24 55 16 Corporate social performance 24 18 37 17 sustainability reporting 24 30 48 18 sustainable development 23 32 50 19 Board of directors 22 26 57 20 Malaysia 20 27 58 21 Firm value 19 24 43 22 stakeholder 18 20 42 23 Corporate philanthropy 18 19 33 24 Content analysis 17 25 39 25 Managerial ownership 17 16 34 26 stakeholder theory 16 17 36 27 india 16 21 39 28 earnings management 16 20 36 29 institutional theory 15 15 25 30 ownership concentration 14 17 34 31 Family business 14 10 17 32 indonesia 13 18 25 33 state owned enterprise 13 12 16 34 esg 13 14 25 35 Legitimacy theory 12 20 38 36 social responsibility 12 14 17 37 governance 11 13 18 38 innovation 11 9 15 39 Corporate social responsibility reporting 11 15 24 40 green innovation 11 10 12 41 Developing countries 10 13 20 42 Board independence 10 16 31 43 Profitability 10 15 24 44 Board characteristics 10 14 31 45 Business group 10 11 25 46 government ownership 10 14 20 47 environmental performance 10 16 24 cogent Business & MAnAgeMent 35 table 15 indicates that corporate social responsibility disclosure is one of the keywords with high co-occurrence. csr disclosure is one of the important aspects of a firm’s engagement in csr activities. Adoption of effective management and engagement of stakeholders in csr activities requires firms to communicate and account for their csr activities to stakeholders. in addition, different firms may have different motives and preferences to engage in csr activities and more importantly to disclose csr activities (giannarakis, 2014; Mathews, 1995; Zamil etal., 2023). these motives and preferences influence the type, quantity and quality of csr disclosure. this poses the question of what csr matters should be disclosed and how, why, and when should be disclosed. As a result, this question attracts researchers to examine both antecedents and consequences of csr disclosure, which makes corporate social responsibility disclosure one of the most co-occurring keywords in this research field. Additionally, it is worthwhile to note that among the most occurring keywords indicated in table 15, are some of the theories used in ownership structure and csr research publications obtained from scopus database. these theories are agency theory, which occurred 29 times, stakeholder theory (16), institutional theory (15) and legitimacy theory (12). this implies that studies in ownership structure and csr research are founded on theoretical frameworks mainly based on these theories (Frynas & Yamahaki, 2016). this aligns with the discussion provided in the introduction section of this study. in addition to the identification of the most studied themes, this study analyses author keywords based on the average year of publication by categorising years of publications into three different periods to evaluate the time progression of key themes in ownership structure and csr research literature. the analysis helps to understand the thematic development of ownership structure and csr research over the years. the analysis includes the top nineteen most co-occurring keywords in each period as presented in table 16. the first period ranges from 2016 backwards. the most studied theme in this period is the disclosure with 24 frequencies of co-occurrences. other themes are stakeholder (18), governance (11), developing countries (10), voluntary disclosure (9), privatization (8) and stakeholder engagement (8). the stakeholders’ management and csr disclosure are among of highly studied themes in csr research. this is because firms may use csr disclosure to communicate their accountabilities on their csr initiatives to stakeholders to maintain effective stakeholders’ management. the second period ranges from 2017 to 2019. this period covers many conventional key themes related to ownership structure and csr constructs. the most prominent themes during this period are csr (307), corporate governance (186), ownership structure (155), family ownership (83), institutional ownership (74), china (62) and sustainability (49). this indicates that many studies during this period focus on the relationship between corporate governance, ownership structure and different aspects in Table 16. temporal evolution of keywords based on average year of publication. 2016 Backwards oCa2017 − 2019 oC 2020–2022 oC Disclosure 24 Corporate social responsibility 307 state ownership 28 Malaysia 20 Corporate governance 186 emerging markets 26 stakeholder 18 ownership structure 155 sustainability reporting 24 governance 11 Family ownership 83 Firm value 19 Developing countries 10 institutional ownership 74 earnings management 16 Voluntary disclosure 9 China 62 esg 13 Privatization 8 sustainability 49 green innovation 11 stakeholder engagement 8Corporate social responsibility disclosure 41 Jordan 9 annual reports 7Foreign ownership 32 Banks 8 Performance 6 Financial performance 31 Political connection 8 Russia 6 agency theory 29 Firm size 6 environment 6 Firm performance 25 integrated reporting 6 Philanthropy 5 Corporate social performance 24 investment horizon 6 new Zealand 5sustainable development 23 Corporate sustainability 6 Family management 5Board of directors 22 sustainability Disclosure 5 Bangladesh 5 Corporate philanthropy 18 Board gender diversity 5 Corporate ownership 5Content analysis 17 Moderating effect 5 Leverage 5 Managerial ownership 17 gender diversity 5 social performance 5stakeholder theory 16 Covid-19 5 oC: occurrence. 36 g. Munisi relation to csr such as sustainability, environmental and financial performance. Furthermore, the presentation indicates that some of the studies conducted during this period are related to china. the third period ranges from 2020 to 2022, and the most prominent themes in this period are state ownership (28), emerging markets (26), sustainability reporting (24), firm value (19), earning management (16), environmental, social and governance (esg) (13) and green innovation (11). sustainability reporting on the economic, environmental, social, and governance performance of firms is an important aspect of csr. As a result, sustainability reporting, esg and firm value have high frequencies of occurrences in this research field. in addition, earning management is an act of managers to use their discretions to alter information to influence decisions based on reported information (prior et al., 2008). in this regard, managers may manipulate csr disclosure to send positive signals about the firm’s csr activities to stakeholders in order to gain support from them (prior etal., 2008). this has made earnings management one of the most extensively researched topics in csr research and therefore one of most studied themes during this period. the keyword green innovation emerged as one of most studied themes during the period as well. green innovation is recognised as an important means for firms to improve economic, social and environmental performance concurrently in the long term. As a result, researchers are interested to examine the relationship between csr and green innovation. Moreover, the keyword covid-19 came into focus during the period. this follows the outbreak of covid-19, which leads to increase of researchers interests to explore the effects of covid-19 on various aspects of firms in relation to their csr initiatives. Furthermore, this study analysed the evolution of themes found in ownership structure and csr research. Figure 13 presents the evolution of the themes used in publications for years, according to the keyword co-occurrence per year network. Based on observation of Figure 13, it is evident that the focus of topics and themes has evolved over time. Figure 13 indicates that at the beginning, the focus is on philanthropy, leverage, corporate ownership, privatization, performance and family management, which are in dark blue. later, the concentration of themes changes to disclosure, voluntary disclosure, environment and developing countries, which are in light blue. the next move focuses on more common themes related to ownership structure and csr, which are in green. Finally, the most recently studied themes are emerging markets, sustainability reporting, earning management, esg, green innovation, political connection, integrated reporting, investment horizon, corporate sustainability, sustainability disclosure, board gender diversity, gender diversity, sustainable development, state ownership, firm value and covid-19. these recently studied themes represent the contemporary and emerging future research avenues in ownership structure and csr area. Figure 13. network of keyword co-occurrence per year network. cogent Business & MAnAgeMent 37 4. Discussion this study conducts a bibliometric analysis of the literature on ownership structure and csr to evaluate the current status of research and provide avenues for future research. specifically, the study aims to analyse the structure and evolution of this research area based on publications, authors, journals, co-authorship, co-citation, bibliographic coupling and co-occurrence. second, the study identifies the most productive and influential authors based on the number of publications and citations respectively. third, the study identifies the most productive countries and country co-authorship. Finally, the study identifies key thematic research clusters and suggests avenues for future research to advance the knowledge of academic researchers, practitioners and policy makers on ownership structure and csr field. the bibliometric analysis reveals a number of aspects of the current status of ownership structure and csr research field. this study indicates that the number of publications in this research area started slowly in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, but in the 2020s they reached more than one hundred publications. the growth of research in this area is a testimony of the importance of csr as an enabler of firms to improve financial performance and be responsive to the interests of other stakeholders (carroll, 2021). this has attracted researchers to examine the various antecedents and consequences of csr (carroll, 2021). one of the key antecedents of csr is the corporate governance mechanisms (sahasranamam et al., 2020) including ownership structure. ownership structure is considered a key internal governance mechanism of firms and has implications for various aspects of firms, including csr (Dakhli, 2021; lin & nguyen, 2022; pareek & sahu, 2022). consequently, ownership structure and csr have become an interesting research field (Dakhli, 2021; sahasranamam et al., 2020). this study indicates that the most influential article by citations in ownership structure and csr is Johnson and greening (1999), with 1,034 citations. the article examines the effects of institutional investor types and governance devices on two dimensions of corporate social performance. the second article is Barnea and rubin (2010), with 958 citations. the article investigates the relationship between firms’ csr ratings, ownership and capital structures. the other most influential articles are healy et al. (1999), with 953 citations; Marquis and Qian (2014), with 747 citations; and Jo and harjoto (2011), with 671 citations. the top five most productive authors by publication are garcía-sánchez i.-M. with nine publications, followed by hussainey K., Khan Arifur, Muttakin M.B., and Aibar-guzmán B., each with six publications. in addition, this study identified the most influential authors based on citations. the top five most influential authors are Jo h., with 1,169 citations generated from three publications. the second author is harjoto M.A., with 1,130 citations from three publications. this is followed by greening D.w. and Johnson r.A., each with 1,034 citations, which are generated by the single publication co-authored by these authors. the fifth author is Muttakin M.B., with 1,014 citations from six publications. Moreover, this study analysed co-authorship to identify collaboration among authors, which is ranked based on total links, total links strength, number of publications and citations. the findings indicate that there are few total links and low total link strength among authors, which suggests that authors collaboration in ownership structure and csr research is not strong. this study determines the most productive journals based on the number of publications generated by the respective journals. the top five most productive journals are sustainability(switzerland), with 83 publications, Journal of Business ethics, with 35 publications, social responsibility Journal, with 25 publications, followed by corporate social responsibility and environmental Management; and Journal of cleaner production, with 22 and 20 publications respectively. therefore, the findings indicate that sustainability(switzerland) is the most influential outlet for publications on ownership structure and csr. the top five most productive journals provide researchers and practitioners with the sources of literature references and outlets for research outputs. in addition, this study identifies the most influential journals based on total citations. the findings indicate that the most influential journals are the Journal of Business ethics, followed by the Journal of corporate Finance, entrepreneurship theory and practice, Journal of Financial economics, social responsibility Journal, corporate social responsibility and environmental Management, Academy of Management Journal, contemporary Accounting research, sustainability (switzerland), and Journal of Banking and Finance. these journals cover topics related to research thematic areas related to business ethics, management, social responsibility, accounting and finance. this finding suggests that ownership 38 g. Munisi structure and csr research is related to business ethics, management, social responsibility, sustainability, accounting and finance. Analysis of total citations provides a specific overview of sources of citations of publications in ownership and csr research. this study highlights the sources of literature for existing and potential authors in relation to this research area. the study reveals china as the most productive country in ownership structure and csr research with 254 publications, followed by the usA with 183 publications, the uK and Australia with 99 and 70 publications respectively. this suggests that authors affiliated with china are generally the most productive in this research area. this implies that china provides more research avenues in this area which lead to many publications. this provide opportunity for scholars to collaborate with authors affiliated with china. however, the usA is the most influential country based on citations, followed by the uK and china. the first ranking of the usA is not only attributed to the number of publications but also the country is well recognised as the centre of excellence in research in different fields, including business and management field. As a result, the usA generates a significant number of high quality publications, which are highly cited as well. Furthermore, high citations accumulated by publications from the usA may be attributed to the age of publications from the usA as the age of publication is one of the key determinants of the number of citations (ibrahim et al., 2022). this study indicates that china is the most prominent country in co-authorship, followed by the usA and the uK. A strong co-authorship collaboration is observed between china and the usA, followed by china and Australia, china and the uK, china and pakistan, the usA and canada, the usA and the uK as well as the usA and hong Kong. this suggests that, except for china, collaborations in ownership structure and csr research are still highly concentrated among authors from developed countries. this study reveals that countries’ collaboration follows geographical location and other similarities between countries such as size of economic development and cultures. in addition, this study reveals that most collaborations of authors are limited to authors from the same institution and country. the lack of high collaborations between countries highlights the need for researchers to increase efforts to enhance collaborations by expanding research to other countries. expansion of research collaborations is specifically important in emerging and developing countries, which offer different and unique contexts due to their distinct characteristics compared to developed countries (Munisi, 2023). this is important because the literature suggests that external environmental factors, such as regulatory frameworks and law enforcement, influence csr (Ali et al., 2022). Furthermore, previous studies indicate that inadequate legal requirements and weak institutions have a negative impact on csr (Ali et al., 2022). therefore, differences between countries may affect generalization of research findings in different contexts. co-citation analysis identifies three thematic clusters of foundation research structure of ownership structure and csr research. these themes, which are most common in ownership structure and csr research, focus on csr disclosure, determinants of csr activities, conflict of interests, institutional environment and csr engagement. Furthermore, bibliographic coupling analysis identifies five present thematic clusters of ownership structure and csr research. the first cluster focuses on political influence, ownership structure and csr; second cluster concentrates on corporate governance, ownership structure and csr disclosure; third cluster discusses csr expenditure, conflict of interest and firm value; fourth cluster focuses on ownership structure types, corporate social performance and csr; and fifth cluster explores topics related to family ownership, csr and csr disclosure. the analysis of keywords co-occurrence indicates that the most prominent keywords are corporate social responsibility, corporate governance, ownership structure, family ownership, institutional ownership, china, sustainability, corporate social responsibility disclosure, foreign ownership, and financial performance. in addition, other keywords with slightly high frequencies of co-occurrences are state ownership, emerging markets, firm performance, disclosure, corporate social performance, sustainability reporting, sustainable development, and board of directors. the high co-occurrences of these keywords suggest strong links between these keywords and csr. this implies that these keywords are considered both as antecedents and consequences of csr by scholars in ownership structure and csr research field. specific ownership structures such as family ownership, institutional ownership, foreign ownership, and state ownership have high frequencies of co-occurrence. this observation suggests that csr activities are related to different types of ownership structures. the observation is in line with the argument that ownership structure plays a significant role in the firms’ csr activities. Furthermore, analysis of keyword cogent Business & MAnAgeMent 39 progression overtime identifies temporal evolution of prominent themes over time and existence of contemporary and emerging themes in ownership structure and csr research. 5. Future research directions After conducting content analysis using co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling, and evaluating the key themes resulting from keyword co-occurrence, this study identifies specific areas which present opportunities for future research contributions. the following paragraphs describe and discuss the identified areas. 5.1. Technology innovation, ownership structure and CSR radical development and deployment of technology have raised questions regarding the moral responsibility for development and deployment of technology such as Artificial intelligence, internet of things and robotic process automation (herrmann, 2023; Krkač, 2019). therefore, increases in the development and deployment of technology provide a new area of research that addresses ethical considerations in the development and use of technology innovation to ensure fairness, transparency, accountability and privacy in firms operations (herrmann, 2023). Also, this provides an avenue to study the potential use of technology to address social and environmental issues while helping the firms to enhance economic performance. these avenues include to understanding how technology can be utilised to drive environmental sustainability by optimizing the use of resources and mitigating environmental risks. in addition, although technology innovation can enable firms to improve economic, social and environmental performance, it has potential to disrupts work processes and organizational structures which may have negative impacts on the workforce (Yu et al., 2023). therefore, future research could examine the effects of technology on employees’ well-being and how to utilise technology to reduce negative impacts. Additionally, it is crucial to consider stakeholder management and engagement as important aspects of csr (o’riordan & Fairbrass, 2014). therefore, future study could delve into stakeholders’ perceptions and concerns regarding technology innovation and its effects on society and environment. Furthermore, it could be beneficial to explore how firms could use technology to effectively engage with stakeholders for the better common good. Moreover, future research could investigate the interrelationship between technological innovation, ownership structures and csr. understanding this interrelationship will contribute to ethical, sustainable and socially responsible development and implementation of technology innovation such as green innovation in firms’ operations for the common good. 5.2. Political influence, ownership structure and CSR political systems play a significant role in shaping the institutional environment and stakeholders’ perspectives on the csr strategies of firms. the increases of government role and attention on csr put more pressure on the firms to behave socially responsibly, whether they like it or not (huang & Zhao, 2016). As a result, csr strategies are influenced by the political systems as firms strive to adhere to institutional norms to maintain legitimacy. enhanced legitimacy helps the firms to obtain stakeholders’ endorsements, which in turn contribute to competitive advantage, good financial performance and sustainability of the firm (Zheng et al., 2015). given the significant impacts of political influence on firms, political influence on csr strategies is one of the interesting themes in ownership structure and csr field (tee et al., 2024). therefore, understanding the effects of political influence on ownership structure and csr research provides opportunities for future research. in this regard, future research could investigate the impact of political connections on firms’ involvement in csr activities. specifically, they could investigate the interrelationship between ownership structure, political connections, and csr implementation and disclosure. it is widely recognised that corporate governance mechanisms play crucial roles in shaping the behaviour of firms, so the future study could examine how these mechanisms moderate the relationship between ownership structures, political connections and csr. in addition, future studies could explore how stakeholders, such as investors and customers, perceive and respond to csr initiatives 46 g. 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