Sustainable banking: A literature review and integrative framework

The literature on sustainable banking has been prolific since the beginning of the century. This context prompts the need to understand and categorize an increasingly heterogeneous body of sustainable banking literature. We perform a literature review using bibliometric techniques of 676 articles pu...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Aracil, Elisa, Nájera-Sánchez, Juan-José, Forcadell, Francisco Javier
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
Repositorio:BURJC-Digital. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
OAI Identifier:oai:burjcdigital.urjc.es:10115/19169
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10115/19169
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Sustainable banking
Banks
Co-word analysis
Ethics
Green bonds
Microfinance
Sustainable responsible investment
Descripción
Sumario:The literature on sustainable banking has been prolific since the beginning of the century. This context prompts the need to understand and categorize an increasingly heterogeneous body of sustainable banking literature. We perform a literature review using bibliometric techniques of 676 articles published between 1995 and 2019 in the Web of Science (WoS) database. Our results provide a perspective on the evolution of the sustainable banking literature over time and across academic categories and journals. An integrative framework emerges from the review, providing a comprehensive perspective of the nine clusters or thematic areas in sustainable banking literature embedded in three domains: Ethical Foundations, Sustainable Products, and Business-Case. The framework integrates the rich literature on sustainable banking, maps the predominant research areas, and highlights the primary research gaps. Finally, the literature review demonstrates a progressive convergence of the instrumental and ethical approaches to sustainable banking. This convergence highlights the importance of both the vivid societal debate around the role of banks in the advancement toward sustainability and the business rationale for banks to engage in sustainable strategies.