A Bibliometric Analysis of Research on Auditing for Sustainable Corporate Governance

Auditing has been playing an increasingly critical role in corporate governance, which can contribute to the organizations by ensuring a legal, reasonable, and sustainable development. Thus, auditing has become a research hotspot, which leads to the rapid development of auditing methods and technology. In this study, we conducted co-word analysis and co-citation analysis to explore the research trends and hotspots in auditing, based on 3993 papers published in the Web of Science from 2002 to 2019. Results showed a rapid increase in the number of publications, a broader scope of themes, and tighter interconnections among keywords. Since the global economic crisis, corporate governance has gained wide attention to prevent the next financial crisis. Audit quality is the most dominant theme across the study periods, as credible audit quality is a precondition for corporate sustainability. More specific and prominent themes of audit quality have been the attractive hotspot in recent years, including the professional skepticism and the integrated report. Furthermore, emerging technologies, such as big data, have been introduced to improve audit efficiency and quality.