Unveiling the Past, Present, and Future of Statutory Sustainability Reporting: An Integrated Application of Bibliometric and Qualitative Content Analysis
系统回顾了1980至2025年间409篇法定可持续性报告文献，识别出五个核心知识主题，并提出了未来研究方向，适合希望了解该领域研究脉络的学者。
ABSTRACT Despite the growing prevalence, the research faculty of legislative sustainability disclosures is still at the nascent stage and requires a synthesized review to direct future research inquiries. Thus, the present study systematically reviews the literature on statutory sustainability reporting (SSR) and intellectually maps the research clusters to discover the prominent knowledge themes as well as the future research agendas. Considering the POWER framework as the review protocol, the study selects 409 research articles published on the Scopus database from 1980 to 2025 to analyze the bibliometric performance and research themes through qualitative content analysis. The findings unveil the following five multilayered knowledge themes: (i) evolution of SSR dimensions, (ii) financial and strategic implications of SSR, (iii) nexus between sustainable performance, and SSR, (iv) value relevance of SSR in the capital market, and (v) corporate accountability and transparency implications of SSR. Moreover, the study also elaborates theme‐wise research questions and pathways to guide future research for advancing the body of knowledge. The current research is a first‐of‐its‐kind to provide a comprehensive appraisal of the extant state of SSR literature and paves the way forward to further develop the research domain.