Introduction

In recent years, there has been a marked increase in interest in understanding the evolution of economic activities. Stakeholders at all levels are setting new benchmarks, converging on the need for organisations to review their inefficiencies. This momentum is moving towards the adoption of sustainable models that prioritise people in both their operational frameworks and decision-making processes (Mio et al., 2020). In the midst of this shift, the concept of ‘sustainable development’ has proliferated, giving rise to various streams of research (Hopwood et al., 2005). The introduction of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 marked a turning point, providing a universal blueprint to guide global efforts to achieve socio-economic and environmental sustainability (Mio et al., 2020). The essence of the SDGs lies in harmonising economic growth with the preservation of systemic sustainability, calling on organisations to undertake significant transformations in their management and production processes.

From this moment on, the SDGs have attracted the attention of academics interested in business and economics, even more if considering that the private sector is a key factor in the achievement of the SDGs (UN, 2015). Thus, academic research has advocated the transformation of business behaviour towards a more social approach. In this context, attention has focused on the social economy (SE) as a viable model for progress towards the SDGs. The SE is praised for its potential to produce positive socio-economic effects, such as employment generation, social cohesion, democratic development, social innovation, equal opportunities and balanced spatial development (European Commission, 2020; Utting, 2015; Piketty, 2020). In parallel, international organisations such as the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) have called for SE in their discourses, highlighting the need for organisations with positive effects on quality job creation, local development, improved social welfare and citizen empowerment (Utting, 2015). Moreover, national governments have become increasingly concerned with the search for more sustainable economic and business development models to reverse existing socio-economic imbalances (Angulo et al., 2017; Bastida et al., 2020a; Pérez-González & Valiente-Palma, 2020). Consequently, they have developed an institutional framework for the promotion and development of SE entities, as well as deployed policies to promote social innovation and enterprises (OECD/EU, 2017; Chaves-Avila, 2020).

Despite this growing interest, empirical research on the role of SE organisations as catalysts for sustainable development in the SDG framework remains scarce, with few exceptions (e.g. Mozas, 2019). This gap points to an important research opportunity to further explore SE contributions to the SDGs. Therein lies the potential for academic research to advance sustainability by elucidating the contributions of SE organisations to the SDGs and, by extension, outlining a pathway for business transformation (Adams et al., 2020; Castro et al., 2020; Christ & Burrit, 2019; Rosati & Faria, 2019).

This paper aims to fill this gap through a comprehensive bibliometric analysis using the Web of Science (WoS)Footnote 1 database. Our aim is to map the current academic landscape around the interaction between SE and the SDGs. We delve into the most prolific areas of research, the key topics addressed by scholars, the leading countries in this area of research, trends over time, and the most active journals and scholars within the field. Our approach differs from traditional bibliometric reviews by leveraging a set of bibliometric tools, which enhances the robustness of our findings. Through this analysis, we aim to uncover new avenues of research and point to critical gaps in the existing discourse, making a significant contribution to the ongoing academic dialogue on SE and the SDGs.

The Concept of Social Economy and Sustainable Development Goals

Social Economy (SE) has garnered increasing global academic attention (Barth et al., 2015; Chaves-Avila, 2020; Chaves-Avila & Gallego-Bono, 2020; Chaves-Avila & Monzon, 2019). SE organisations prioritise social and environmental goals, reinvesting most profits into the organisation (EU, 2021). SE is characterised by voluntary cooperation, mutual aid, democratic/participatory governance, autonomy, and independence. SE entities emphasise people and social purpose over capital in profit and asset distribution (UN, 2023).

While lacking a single definition, SE broadly encompasses private entities rooted in values like prioritizing people over financial results, democratic governance, solidarity, sustainability and environmental commitment. It includes various organisation types and legal entities like cooperatives, mutual benefit societies, social enterprises, non-profit associations, foundations and community groups (Monzon & Chaves, 2008; EU, 2022). These private organisations place social objectives at the core of their activity, making them socially orientated private entities (Barth et al., 2015; Chaves-Avila & Monzon 2019; Chaves-Avila & Savall 2019). Several terms are used for or linked to SE, such as the third sector, social enterprises (Bridge et al., 2020; Salamon & Sokolowski, 2016), the solidarity economy (Borzaga et al., 2019) and the voluntary and non-profit sector (Powell & Bromley, 2020). However, within the European institutions and EU countries, the prevailing approach is that of the SE (Chaves-Avila & Monzon, 2019; EESC, 2017; Macías Ruano et al., 2021).

Despite this plethora of definitions, the delimitation of the concept of SE is basic to bibliometric analysis. Consequently, for the purposes of this paper, we follow the definition proposed by CIRIEC International, commonly accepted by the EU (Chaves-Avila & Monzon, 2019). Thus, we define SE as follows:

‘A set of formally organised private companies, with autonomy of decision and freedom of membership, created to satisfy the needs of their members through the market, producing goods and services, insuring or financing market, producing goods and services, insuring or financing, and in which the eventual distribution of profits or surpluses among the members as well as decision-making are not directly linked to the directly linked to the capital or contributions contributed by each member, with each member having one vote for each of them. The social economy also includes those private entities that are formally organised and formally organised private entities with decision-making autonomy and freedom of membership that produce non-market services for the benefit of families, whose surpluses, if any, cannot be appropriated by the economic agents who set them up’.

This definition is based on the criteria established by the European Commission’s Manual for the compilation of satellite accounts for SE organisations and by Barea and Monzón (2006). It is also in line with the delimiting criteria established by the SE organisations themselves (SEE, 2000Footnote 2) as well as with the definitions formulated in the economic literature, including Desroche (1982), Defourny and Nyssens (2017), and Demoustier et al., (2006).

On the other hand, in 2015, the political leaders of more than 150 countries approved the 2030 Agenda on SDGs, which take the form of 17 goals aimed at poverty eradication and sustainable development in its social, economic and environmental dimensions (UN, 2015). Although these goals are widely accepted by civil society, academic opinion on this Agenda is highly controversial. For example, some scholars have been critical, calling for improvements in the design and concrete indicators of achievement (Hák et al., 2018; Spangenberg, 2017). Conversely, others have been convinced by the initiative (Biermann et al., 2017; Dalevska et al., 2019) while other authors highlighted the need for individual goals to be interlinked for the expected benefits to emerge (Breuer et al., 2019; Tosun & Leiniger, 2017; Williams et al., 2019). The need to identify concrete actions to be implemented to follow up on sustainable development initiatives is also a recurrent criticism (Mio et al., 2020).

Previous research has analysed the contributions of business to the achievement of the SDGs (Garcia-Sanchez et al., 2020; Pizzi et al., 2021). However, as noted by Witte and Dyliard (2017), the literature specifically linking the private sector to the SDGs is scarce. Consequently, scholars have highlighted the need for more research on the role of business and organisations in working towards the SDGs (Spangenberg, 2017). In this regard, institutions (UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Social and Solidarity Economy -UNTFSEE) and academics (Bastida et al., 2020c; Mozas, 2019; Utting, 2015) have recently highlighted the importance of the SE in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda as it represents the plural economy, balance, sustainability and an integrated approach needed to meet the challenge. Furthermore, previous research has shown that SE supports general well-being, citizen empowerment, equity, employment and local development (Chaves-Avila & Savall 2019; Itçaina & Richez-Battesti, 2018; Utting, 2015). Prior studies have also focused on the macroeconomic roles of SE, such as its effect on territorial development and a better distribution of earnings (Mozas, 2019; Sánchez Espada et al., 2018), the quality of employment (Díaz & Marcuello, 2014) and the achievement of equal opportunities (Bastida et al., 2020b). These outcomes fulfil the central spirit of SDGs; thus, SE is seen as a first step towards balancing economic growth and sustainability (Siebold et al., 2019).

Despite this logical link between SE and the SDGs, more efforts are needed to show how SE organisations are relevant for achieving the SDGs. In turn, this is a critical step for all organisations to understand how organisational culture, through the mobilisation of principles and values, can guide their operations towards sustainability. Therefore, this paper undertakes a systematic review of the literature developed after the SDG framework to answer one main research question: What is the role of SE in achieving the 2030 Agenda?

Method

Bibliometrics is defined as the statistical analysis of written publications, such as books and articles. Bibliometric analysis offers a quantitative approach to literature review, allowing for the examination of patterns, trends and emerging themes in large bodies of research (Van Eck et al., 2014). This methodology is particularly adept at navigating large datasets, making it a useful tool for identifying the most influential research and detecting emerging trends in a specific field of study (Ellegaard & Wallin, 2015; Sivarajah et al., 2017). Unlike traditional narrative reviews, which can select and interpret studies subjectively, bibliometric methods allow objective, reproducible and systematic mapping of fields of knowledge (Van Eck et al., 2010). This approach is particularly beneficial in fields that are experiencing rapid growth or where there is a large literature, as it helps to identify not only the volume of research but also key contributors, influential works and evolving areas of interest (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017; Moral-Muñoz et al., 2020). By employing bibliometric analysis, our study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the academic landscape around the SE and the SDGs, highlighting the development, interconnections and gaps in existing research. Our application of bibliometric tools, including the Web of Science (WoS) database and software such as VOSviewer, is designed to conduct a comprehensive and reproducible analysis, ensuring a comprehensive and unbiased review of the field of SE and the SDGs.

To collect data for this review, it is imperative to choose a citation database that comprehensively indexes all literature related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Among the databases commonly employed by the research community for bibliographic searches and bibliometric analysis, Scopus and Web of Science stand out as noteworthy options (Harzing & Alakangas, 2016; Mishra et al., 2020). In this study, we opted for the Web of Science (WoS) core collection citation database as the main source for data collection, processing and analysis, primarily because it allows us to track the verified citations of each of the contributions. Furthermore, this database enjoys an excellent reputation as the main citation database and has well-structured bibliographic data storage practices (Harzing & Alakangas, 2016; Singh et al., 2021). The year 2015 was chosen as the starting point for data collection due to the adoption of the SDGs in September 2015, and we extended the timeframe to October 2021, covering the most recent available data. In addition, using the R Bibliometrix software, bibliometric production is analysed through scientific maps, identifying topics that have been the subject of research between 2015 and 2021, their composition, relationship and evolution, which makes it possible to determine their conceptual and knowledge structure. Thus, it is possible to indicate the structure and evolution in a scientific field, as well as the leading actors.

For developing the review protocol, this work follows the guidelines provided by Sivarajah et al. (2017) and Aria and Cuccurullo (2017). Thus, the following conditions have been applied in the selection of relevant papers:

  1. a.

    The Web of Science (WoS) database was identified as a source of relevant studies on this topic. By using this database as a reference, the most common indicators of the impact of a publication are also available, such as the productivity and impact of authors.

  2. b.

    The study exclusively analysed peer-reviewed journal articles, thus omitting other types of documents such as conference papers and book chapters, due to the variability of their peer-review processes, accessibility, and standardisation.

  3. c.

    The analysis covered a broad time frame, based on tracking research efforts on the SDGs. In this sense, understanding the evolution of a field of study such as the SDGs requires a historical context. The background to the SDGs can be traced back to the UN conferences and international agreements that took place throughout the 1970s and 1980s. We therefore set out to trace the roots and evolution of the concepts that eventually led to the SDGs. Specifically, work has been located from 1965 to 2021. However, when we combined our two topics of interest (SDGs and ES) we found a high concentration of papers from 2015 onwards. Consequently, the comprehensive literature review covers the period from that year onwards.

  4. d.

    The search included articles belonging to the disciplines of Business and Management and/or Economics, following the classification provided by WoS.

  5. e.

    To delimit the scientific production, Boolean operators were used to select those papers that included a direct reference to the SDGs and/or SE in their titles, keywords, or abstracts (e.g., ‘SDGs’, ‘Sustainable Development Goals’, ‘Agenda 2030’, ‘Sustainable Development Agenda’ and ‘SE’). In this sense, it should be noted that the imprecision in the definition of SE previously pointed out has been transferred to its conceptualisation. Although the concept of SE is gaining presence and relevance, it coexists with other denominations, the predominant ones being ‘social and collaborative economy’ and ‘social enterprise’ (Duque et al., 2021; Macías Ruano et al., 2021). We have therefore included these terms in the search.

  6. f.

    Both conceptual and empirical papers were selected.

The PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews) diagram (Page et al., 2021) was used to describe the search process (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
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Source: Adapted from Page et al. (2021). Own elaboration

PRISMA diagram used in the search.

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Following recent research (Vrontis & Christofi, 2021), we introduced five inclusion/exclusion criteria (Table 1) in the literature searching section: (1) timeframe, (2) keywords, (3) databases, (4) documents language, (3) publication type, (4) research subject and (5) search boundaries.

Table 1 Sample inclusion and exclusion steps and criteria
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Table 2 presents the literature search protocol used during this search.

Table 2 Summary of the literature search protocol
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These requirements were followed by the process of cleaning and adjustment, i.e., revision of separators between terms, conversion from character format to numerical format, the elimination of duplicate records and correction of errors in names or dates. Subsequently, this information was evaluated using the R software (version 3.6.3) package bibliometrix (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017). This has allowed the search and identification of research topics, the most relevant authors and their thematic networks, and the analysis of performance. Finally, the data were imported into Vosviewer software (version 1.6.17, July 22, 2021), which was used to obtain strategic diagrams and thematic evolution maps. Subsequently, a specific analysis of this information was carried out (Cobo et al., 2012).

Results

Table 3 provides information on papers retrieved from WoS. Our initial search yielded 706 publications published in 225 relevant journals indexed in the Business & Management and/or Economics category. On average, these articles had about 3 co-authors and received 12.75 citations, and their average age is less than four years. It is therefore a new field of study with a high scientific output, a moderate number of authors, a significant number of citations and in which Economics and Business studies play a relevant role. In addition, 2758 keywords identified by the authors were found, which can be normalised to 1716 according to the keyword criteria available in WoS (Table 3). In line with the predominant focus among EU countries, SE seems to be the preferred focus of the authors. Equally, Sustainable Development Goals (and acronymous) mainstream most papers. Table 4

Table 3 Information filtering process
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Table 4 Main keywords
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Year of Publication

Concern for sustainability is not a recent topic. In fact, the initial search for the concept of SDGs or SE in the WoS revealed the existence of papers published as far back as 1965. In total, some 30 papers were published before 2000. However, a thorough analysis of this research shows that the studies do not address SE in the sustainable development stream, being rather reflections on economic development from social perspectives.

However, as the twentieth century progressed, this topic has become a major concern on the global agenda, especially in the wake of key milestones such as the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (Rio 92), the Declaration of Principles for Sustainable Forest Management and Agenda 21 of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. These seminal events paved the way for the conceptualisation of sustainable development. In September 2001, the United Nations introduced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a set of shared goals for the international community to achieve by 2015, marking significant progress in areas such as health, maternal and child mortality, social equity, gender justice and poverty reduction. The MDGs were instrumental in fostering international collaboration and individual responsibility among member states, laying a solid foundation for progress. With the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, comprising 17 goals and 169 targets under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, sustainability gained even greater attention in various sectors, such as finance, governance and environmental decision-making.

The combined search for ‘SDG AND SE’ shows how this growing concern has been reflected in research, and how SE-focused researchers have been identifying the implications that SE has for facilitating the implementation of the SDGs. According to WoS, the current stream (SDGs AND SE) first appeared in a journal in 2000 (Fig. 2). According to these data, the academic production on SE and the SDGs is irregular, although with an increasing trend. As noted before, the SDGs are heirs to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were published after the UN Millennium Declaration (2000). The achievement of these MDGs was assessed in 2012, during the Rio + 20 Summit. Based on this assessment of the MDG results, the UN presented the SDGs in September 2015. As can be seen in Fig. 2, all these actions are accompanied by the general research framework of SE scholars. Thus, from 2000 to 2012, the number of publications increased, especially from 2009 onwards. Then, in the context of Rio + 20, there is a new emphasis on this topic, which remains relatively stable until 2015. From this year onwards, coinciding with the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, academic interest in this topic increases until 2017. Finally, after a small decline, there is a big boom in publications after 2020.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Source: own elaboration

Average citations per year.

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Figure 2 illustrates the average number of citations per year, reflecting the academic impact and visibility of articles over time. This figure does not represent the year of publication but demonstrates the maturation of academic interest and recognition as articles accumulate citations in subsequent years. This distinction underlines the growing academic engagement with the themes of the SDGs and the SE, particularly in the wake of major global sustainability milestones. The trend highlighted in Fig. 2 underlines the growing relevance and visibility of research in these areas, particularly in response to global sustainability initiatives and evolving economic and social paradigms.

This recent increase in interest is probably related to two factors: on the one hand, the strategic lines designed by the EU to overcome the crisis triggered by COVID-19, within the framework of a new sustainable economic paradigm; on the other hand, the strong support for SE by European institutions as a development model to face the crisis. In addition, the reflected behaviour is a good example of what happens in practice with citations, since as time passes since its publication, the articles are gaining a greater visualisation, and therefore increasing their number of citations, either for content-related issues, for their application to the economic and social environment or for the improved reputation of authors and institutions.

Countries and Authors

Corresponding authors and their affiliations in each paper were considered in the analysis of the most predominant ones. Table 5 shows the top 10 countries doing the most research on these issues. As seen, US researchers are particularly interested in the relationship between SE and SDGs. Consistent with the importance of SDG as a country strategy, US publications amount to 112, 17 more than UK academics, who are in the second place. European academics — including the UK — increase the number of articles published to around 170, well above those from other nationalities. Again, the commitment of European institutions to the SE seems to be behind this research interest.

Table 5 Country of origin of authors (*)
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As seen, of the five main countries, three belong to the Anglo-Saxon environment (USA, UK, and Australia). These three countries account for 48.7% of the total publications, indicating their prominent position in the research field. Spain (74) and Italy (41) stand out within the European environment. There is also a low presence of emerging countries, where only India has a significant number of papers (20). In short, it is evident that the geographical context has an influence, thus it seems that the progress of scientific production shows a heterogeneous pattern at the global level.

Measuring research performance at the individual level (i.e., micro-level analysis) is somewhat problematic, as researchers should produce a high impact on a specific period to have reliable indicators (Rey-Martí et al., 2016). As for this measure, the citations an article receives are a popular bibliometric indicator that is taken as a proxy for its quality, although it shows the popularity of the paper rather than the relevance of the study. Table 6 shows the authors with the highest number of publications, either considering the number of articles or weighted by the number of co-authors. This result suggests that this is a scientific field without a high concentration of authors.

Table 6 Most referenced authors (*)
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In terms of papers that have received the highest number of citations among papers included in this study (Table 7), Martin’s contribution (2016) clearly stands out, with almost 91 citations per year. Surprisingly, the second positions in this ranking are for a recent paper (2018) which has 263 citations. Notably, we note that two articles refer to the ‘collaborative economy’ without explicitly mentioning the ‘social economy’, suggesting a possible interchangeability of terms. However, it is important to note that citation frequency alone does not definitively indicate that the scientific community considers these terms to be synonymous, as this is a complex dynamic influenced by several factors beyond terminological equivalence. Therefore, while our results highlight a connection between these terms in certain contexts, this does not necessarily reflect a universal scholarly consensus on their interchangeability.

Table 7 Most cited papers
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Journals

Identifying journals that publish relevant research on a topic is particularly important, as it makes it easier to decide which journals to consult for a literature review to find arguments to support a study, or to become familiar with research areas that need further development. Table 8 shows the journals that have published the most articles on SE and SDGs, together with their respective impact factor, as indexed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) of the Science Citation Index (SCI). The h-index of the journals is also included. As can be seen (Table 8), the journals publishing research in this field are of relevance, mostly in the first–second quartiles.

Table 8 Main journals
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Networks

Figure 3 illustrates the four main elements that make up the bibliographic analysis, the first of which is the concomitance of the keywords. This figure provides an interesting insight into how authors approach SE in the context of the SDGs, allowing the identification of the basic topics in an area of study. The size of the map nodes shows the frequency of each of the keywords obtained, the links the co-occurrence relations between two terms (the more times they appear together, the larger connection) and the clusters (colours) indicate the affinity of the themes. As seen, these thematic areas are highly interconnected, and three clusters can be observed:

  1. a)

    Cluster 1 (in red) offers a micro-level approach or organisational perspective, based on the more direct effects of sustainable management on business and entrepreneurship, especially through human resource management (job satisfaction or performance).

  2. b)

    Cluster 2 (in green) is located at the margins of psychology and management. Thus, some effects of sustainable behaviour such as trust, satisfaction and collaborative consumption are highlighted. As can be seen, the concept used by academics in this cluster is ‘sharing economy’, rather than the prominent SE.

  3. c)

    Cluster 3 (in blue grey) attaches the highest number of related keywords. Some characteristics of SE organisations (participation, democratic management, power-sharing, governance) are used, as well as some positive effects of SE, such as employment, work, networks, community and innovation. As can be seen, researchers in this group preferentially use the SE. In addition, governance is the most frequent keyword, suggesting that scholars consider sustainability as a matter of commitment and strategy within organisations.

Fig. 3
figure 3

Source: own elaboration

Networks.

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Also, data show that most authors publish with colleagues from their own country, with little collaboration with authors from other nationalities (only 37% of papers have co-authors from other countries). Canadian and Spanish authors show the lowest level of collaboration, whereas UK scholars show the highest collaborative trend. Spanish researchers collaborate mainly with colleagues from the USA and Switzerland, while surprisingly Spanish researchers are out of the European cluster of research.

It is also worth noting that there is a tendency towards collaboration rather than competition between the journals (box 3). Moreover, four of the journals seem to constitute a reference group in this line of research, led by Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics. In particular, these are the Journal of Business Ethics, Regional Studies, and Canadian Public Policy-Analyse de Politiques.

Advanced Analysis

This section presents the results that may be affected by the author’s decisions, and therefore encompasses a conceptual map (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017) and a strategic diagram (Cobo et al., 2012). The conceptual structure map reflects the interrelationships between the keywords through a Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) of the keywords, so it identifies major areas of research that are related to each other. This analysis results in a intuitive two-dimensional graph that uses plane distance to reflect the similarity between the keywords. Keywords approaching the centre point have received close attention in recent years (Xie et al., 2020).

As seen in Fig. 4, four main areas have been identified, which correspond to major lines of research. In the first place, and from the lowest to the highest number of associated keywords, is the reference to the collaborative economy, and therefore everything related to the sustainability of resources. This is followed by references to the impact of companies on the economy, based on collaborative consumption and consumer satisfaction (blue). In third place comes the more social dimension of SE, with networks and participatory power-sharing in organisations. Finally, the largest volume of research (in red) concerns SE and management information, including a multitude of terms such as governance, accountability, performance and others related to the expected outcomes, such as well-being and responsibility. Studies related to public policy are also concentrated in this area.

Fig. 4
figure 4

Source: own elaboration

Conceptual structure map.

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Next, these keywords are grouped into themes according to their centrality (relevance) and density (number of papers), resulting on a diagram known as a strategic diagram (Fig. 5). Moreover, the size of each circle of the different clusters will reflect the number of documents associated with that theme.

  • The upper right quadrant (high density and high centrality) contains the ‘driving’ themes, which are developed and important for constructing the scientific field. Analysis of the strategic diagram shows that commitment to sustainability is a driving force for research in this thematic area, as befits SE organisations whose functioning is based on a set of widely held principles.

  • The upper left quadrant (high density and low centrality) represents ‘niche’ themes, i.e., internally developed themes, which are isolated from the other themes and play a secondary role in the scientific field. The relationships between SE organisations and energy, microfinance, labour or management are research niches that need further development. These are very defined topics within the studied area, but they have not been studied together with other topics, so they are peripheral themes within the thematic area.

  • The lower right quadrant (low density and high centrality) represents the basic or cross-cutting themes, i.e., those that are important for the scientific field, but less developed. Work focussing on the performance, impact and governance of SE entities, supportive policies and innovation are core topics, that is, they are topics that have been used in numerous investigations, but they are underdeveloped. These are topics that arouse great interest, along with the motor topics, being studied together with more topics described in the subject area under study.

  • Finally, the lower left quadrant (low density and low centrality) includes the emerging or declining topics; these are underdeveloped themes, with a certain tendency to increase or decrease, emerging or declining, respectively. It is interesting to note that there are no declining themes, which confirms the continued interest in this research. Consequently, there are no issues at risk of disappearing nor are they relatively new.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Source: own elaboration

Strategic diagram.

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In an additional step to the traditional bibliometric analyses, we combined the conceptual structure map and the strategy diagram to get a clearer idea of the content of each group of terms and the relationships between them. For this purpose, research containing at least 5 of the analysed keywords was analysed. Descriptive statistics for the variables journal, publisher, area, year and countries were calculated for each group of terms using IBM-SPSS Statistics 27. The relative positions of the terms vary slightly from those obtained for the full sample. In this context, what we find is that the terms highlighted in the structure map as belonging to the main cluster (i.e., the red one) move into all cells of the strategic diagram, implying that the research topics reflected in these keywords are actually the ones driving research in the field of the relationship between the SDGs and the SE. Table 9 shows the result of this advanced analysis.

Table 9 Main research concepts
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Similar to what was previously mentioned, the driving theme is innovation. Their temporal validity demonstrates that they maintain this driving role. Indeed, the SDGs focus on promoting sustainable development in areas such as poverty eradication, gender equality, education, health and climate action. The SE, which encompasses cooperatives, mutuals, social enterprises and other forms of non-profit organisations, has a strong focus on economic, social and environmental sustainability. Researching innovation in this context can help find sustainable solutions to address the SDGs. In addition, innovation in SE can drive projects and business models that have a positive impact on communities, aligning with several SDGs that aim to improve people’s lives at the local level. Similarly, SE innovation often manifests itself in the form of new approaches and creative solutions to address social and economic problems. These solutions can inspire and complement efforts to achieve the SDGs by bringing fresh and sustainable ideas to solve complex challenges. All the research belongs to the area of Business and Economics, and its authors come from Australia (9), Spain (7), France (4), Belgium and the UK (3), Germany, New Zealand and the USA (1).

Research that includes emerging or declining terms has its highest frequency in the period 2017–2020: 7 research projects include the term performance. Its annual evolution shows that this term does not come from emerging topics, although it cannot be affirmed that it comes from declining topics either (the drop in 2021 may be cyclical). The analysis in this section seems to reveal shifts in research priorities, seeking to respond to emerging challenges or changes in the sustainable development agenda that lead to more specific research, away from generalities such as the broadly conceptualised terms business or economics. In contrast, the examination of niche concepts (responsibility, SE, consumption or markets) suggests that researchers may consider other aspects of the SDGs to be more critical today, implying a shift in attention and emphasis on certain terms.

It should also be noted that scientific research often benefits from advances in methodologies and research approaches, which may influence how SDG issues are addressed and studied. In this sense, the mainstreaming of research on the SDGs previously noted in this paper, within the framework of a new common thinking approach, underlies the incorporation of new or developing thematic areas. Indeed, although several authors belong to the area of Business and Economics, 60% report affinity with others (agriculture, business, food science, technology, nutrition and dietetics, geography, history, mathematics, psychology, development studies, education and educational research, and other topics of social sciences), which suggests that the approach to these topics has a multidisciplinary character.

Finally, there is a set of terms that remain relevant, such as policy, leadership, governance, well-being, entrepreneurship, power and participation. These themes prove to be basic or core to SE and SDG research. As reiterated in this article, politics is essential as it can have a significant impact on promoting or limiting SE organisations, as well as fostering the achievement of the SDGs through the SE through the implementation of public policies. Similarly, management and governance are key aspects for the effective functioning of SE organisations. The research can examine how appropriate management and governance can contribute to the achievement of SDG-related goals such as poverty eradication and gender equality.

On the other hand, the SE seeks to improve the welfare of people and communities. Research can assess how SE initiatives and organisations influence people’s well-being and how this relates to the SDGs related to health, education and economic well-being. Along the same lines of practical application, social entrepreneurship and social enterprises are important components of the SE. Research can analyse how these initiatives can address social and environmental challenges and contribute to the SDGs related to sustainability and reducing inequalities. Finally, the active participation and empowerment of communities and individuals are fundamental in the SE and in the pursuit of the SDGs related to gender equality, social justice and peace. Research can explore how the SE can foster people’s participation and power in decision-making and the development of their communities.

Together, these terms represent key aspects of how the SE can contribute to the implementation of the SDGs. Research in these core areas should continue, to facilitate and expand the available knowledge of the interaction of these dimensions and how SE organisations can be effective agents of change to address the global challenges outlined in the SDGs. Authors are from the UK (17 authors), Canada (14 authors), USA (11 authors), Spain (8 authors), Belgium (7 authors), Australia (6 authors), France (5 authors), China (4 authors), and Chile, Greece, Italy and New Zealand (1 author).

Table 10 summarises these results:

Table 10 Summary of results
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Discussion

This bibliometric analysis responds to the recent call by Kolk et al. (2017) on the need to systematise previous research on the SDGs to provide a coherent framework to facilitate the study of the role that companies and organisations can play in the fulfilment of the 2030 Agenda. Our study explores SDG-focused studies in the SE stream, as this economic sector has traditionally been in an advantageous position on the path to sustainable economic growth (Chaves-Avila & Savall, 2019; Itçaina & Richez-Battesti, 2018; Utting, 2015).

Our results reveal that research on this topic is clearly incipient. For example, two of the most cited studies only present a general framework on SE and its benefits in addressing an equitable and sustainable economy (Martin, 2016; Schot & Steinmueller, 2018). The role of business and organisations in achieving the SDGs is being addressed by different functional specialists such as accounting (Bebbington & Unerman, 2018), consumption (Ter Huurne et al., 2017) or innovation (Schot & Steinmueller, 2018). However, it should be noted that most articles do not really focus on SE, either because they use alternative concepts (e.g., collaborative economy) or because the authors base their analyses on correlative domains to support their arguments (e.g., inequality, climate, or R&D). In addition, the most cited articles also include non-academic reports, such as those from banking and consultancy (Costanza et al., 2016; Griffith-Jones, 2016). Taken together, they become a block of thought alluding to an alternative approach that emphasises sustainability, ecological, transdisciplinary and cooperative endeavour, as well as global consensus.

Although the SDGs seem to require a transdisciplinary approach, our analysis reveals that the lack of focus in this regard jeopardises the opportunity for SE to drive a transition towards sustainability. However, our review clearly shows that ‘innovation’ is the most promissory concept within research in this area. Understanding the relevance of SE as a new way to make business and to develop economic growth in a friendly and sustainable way can be decisive to improve the role of SE on the attainment of SDGs. Moreover, as noted by Chesbrough and Crowther (2006), ideas from outside the companies can provide a driver for innovations and sustainable growth, a model referred to as ‘open innovation’. Again, SE is on a leading position since relationships with its local environment are one of the definitory characteristics of this economic field. Thus, this relationship — together with the idea of open innovation — might be beneficial to support sustainable development in SE organisations and might be useful to attain the SDGs.

Moreover, the focus on the SDGs in the reviewed publications highlights new areas of empirical work, including the debate on the actual contribution of SE to sustainability. In this regard, SE scholars must start from the difficulties associated with identifying and measuring the actual socio-economic effects of moving towards sustainability. Thus, several studies have already shown that SE has positive macroeconomic effects such as territorial development, local employment and favouring equal opportunities, ensuring sustainability (Bastida et al., 2020b; Díaz & Marcuello, 2014; Sánchez Espada et al., 2018). The overall validation of these findings would be a clear departure from other business organisations, which have been accused of ‘greenwashing’ or selective attention to reporting their sustainable performance (Lyon & Montgomery, 2015). In this sense, some basic terms such as welfare, power and entrepreneurship — understand as related to SE — can be also drivers for further development.

Our analysis also shows that Europe is the main geographical location where research on SE and SDGs is being conducted. In addition, multiple EU institutions have called for public policies to promote SE at European, national and regional levels. According to these institutions, SE contributes not only to a more sustainable, smart and inclusive economic model but also to the European social model. Thus, Member States should better integrate SE enterprises in their public policies. There is therefore evidence of a correlation between the EU’s efforts to promote SE as a way to achieve the SDGs and the interest of academics at the European level. Thus, although ‘policy’ belongs to the group of basic terms, on the view of the importance that EU institutions put on SE and SDGs, this field seems to deserve further development. These studies can provide empirical starting points to help researchers better understand the conditions for achieving the 2030 Agenda (e.g., social, cultural, or legislative). Studies that analyse success stories of progress towards these goals by SE entities can be instrumental, especially if comparative contexts are introduced. Consequently, SE is better positioned to become an agent of sustainable development from academia.

In contrast, while the interest of SE academics in some facets of sustainability is significant, there are still many gaps in research on other goals also included in the 2030 Agenda. For example, future research may be useful to understand how SE organisations integrate the SDGs into their internal processes and decision-making. Future lines of research should also advance the processes of designing and evaluating effective and efficient SE policies to support the proper development of the sector and, in turn, the maximisation of its impact in terms of spatial equity, improved labour market quality and equal opportunities, as well as the achievement of the other SDGs. More interestingly, having a structured and clarified outline of what are the keys to the functioning of SE organisations to contribute to this transformation can provide a general framework of strategic change for companies, which manages to adapt their functioning to the current context demanded by society as a whole. This research is particularly appropriate for the present time, as promotion measures can be articulated through the New Generation Funds. Their application to organisations can contribute to a restructuring towards a sustainable growth paradigm that respects the environment and puts people at the centre of their activity.

Moreover, as already noted, the SE coexists under various denominations, even highlighting regional preferences (Macías Ruano et al., 2021). Future research should therefore isolate ‘social economy’ and other similar terms, in particular those focusing on ‘social enterprises’. This will allow for a more detailed and accurate description of research trends and regional variations within each subcategory. Our analysis also revealed a notable discrepancy between the most highly cited journals and authors in SE and those in which the majority of SE papers are published. This finding suggests a complex dynamic in publication practices within the field, potentially influenced by the emphasis on high-impact journals. In addition, our keyword selection strategy, focusing on ‘SDGs or SE’ rather than a more integrative ‘SDGs and SE’ approach, may have biased our results. This limitation highlights the need for more nuanced criteria in bibliometric analyses within the field of SE, especially in relation to the SDGs. Given this limitation, future research directions could include employing more targeted keyword strategies such as ‘SDGs and SE’ for greater precision, conducting comparative bibliometric analyses between high-impact and SE journals, implementing longitudinal studies to understand evolving publication trends, broadening the scope to encompass interdisciplinary research related to SE and SDGs, and integrating qualitative content analysis of highly cited articles. Furthermore, recognising the limitation of focusing only on English-language papers, future research should consider including studies published in multiple languages to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the global discourse around the SDGs and the SE. Additionally, given our decision to include only papers in our study, we encourage future researchers to expand the analysis by incorporating a variety of sources such as documents in multiple languages, conference proceedings, book chapters, and qualitative analyses. Taken together, these approaches could provide a clearer understanding of the dynamics of publishing in the SE and its relationship to the SDGs.

Nevertheless, the ‘thematic niches’ in our review show that the SDGs are not really addressed as a central opportunity by SE academics. Moreover, it seems that academics have prioritised some specific SDGs (e.g., labour, policy design or microfinance) while ignoring others that do not fit into their comfort zones. As a result, SE academics are missing the opportunity to endorse with their studies that the characteristics and strategies of SE legitimise it to lead the way towards achieving the SDGs.

Conclusion

The SDGs represent a momentous challenge for governments, society and business, but also for academics interested in transferring their knowledge and research results to society to help move towards a more sustainable new reality. Indeed, although often overlooked, scholars can and should play an important role in shedding light on how business and organisations can move towards the SDGs.

Research to date has highlighted the role that SE can play in achieving the SDGs, given SE’s socioeconomic positive effects and its differentiating elements from other activities. From the available academic literature, our study shows that this is an emerging topic in which SE specialists still have some way to go before they can function as real drivers of change towards sustainable economic growth through the generation and application of knowledge. In turn, this dual role can help raise awareness in society in general, and future leaders, of the importance of a new economic paradigm that combines growth and sustainability. However, to do so, academics need to strengthen both the approach and the outcome. On the one hand, more studies focusing exclusively on the field of SE and its correlation with the SDGs are needed. As a derivative of these studies, the common and differential areas between SE organisations and the rest of business activities should be explored in order to explore commonalities that favour the advancement of the business production system towards the SDGs. On the other hand, it would be desirable for studies to be more evidence-based and to address the SDGs in a cross-cutting manner. In this sense, results on the SDGs already advanced (employment, local action, equality) should be combined with other less explored SDGs.

Our study also shows that the driving theme of research in this area remains the differential commitment of social SE entities to certain values and principles. Therefore, exploring the effects of the principles and values of SE entities on the path to sustainability can be decisive in driving research in this topic. In short, researchers in the field of the SE should not miss the opportunity to become true agents of sustainability and prescribers of a change on business development and growth that is not only necessary but also demanded by citizenship.