Sustainable entrepreneurship: Review of its evolution and new trends

Entrepreneurship has been recognized as a mechanism with which to generate economic benefits. However, due to the emergence of the concept of sustainable development as a pressing issue that is affecting the current global system, it has been pointed out that entrepreneurship should not be based solely on generating wealth. This brought about the emergence of the sustainable entrepreneurship notion which has received rapidly increasing attention in the last decade. This proliferation of studies has resulted in a lack of a theoretical framework, so this field needs to be analyzed, organized and synthetized to bring clarity. The aim of this study is to provide a bibliometric analysis of the status of the field, recognize main topics from existing research and establish future challenges for research. The results based on a sample of 216 articles show that the number of published articles and citations has grown constantly, especially in the last two years. Through bibliometric performance indicators, the most productive and relevant journals, countries, institutions and authors are presented. Moreover, through graphic mapping of strategic diagrams, this study identifies the most significant research tendencies enabling the proposal of several future research directions. The findings of this research can be useful for novel and senior sustainable entrepreneurship researchers, as it contributes to bringing clarity to this field by providing a complementary overview of the evolution and current status, as well as to finding a comprehensive, synthesized and organized summary of the diverse definitions, perspectives and research trends. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.