Page 8 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SCIENCES: THEORY AND PRACTICE, V.83, # 1, 2026, pp. 4-19

The first part is a query conducted predominantly through the academic search engine
Google Scholar, known for its comprehensive indexing of global scientific literature.
The search was restricted to a defined time interval (January 2010 - September 2025).
This period enabled us to include both the studies that theorized voluntary reporting
and the more recent, emerging studies that are beginning to analyze the impact of
regulations such as the CSRD.

The research first employs a searching for papers that directly addressed the concept
of sustainability audit or assurance. The search was then refined by combining it with
terms related to the regulatory context (CSRD, ISSA 5000, mandatory, regulation).
Finally, the results were filtered to retain only those that explicitly discussed assurance
outcomes, such as credibility, trust, greenwashing, or reporting quality. The initial
collection of studies was further analyzed. In a first phase, the duplicates were
eliminated from the collection and after the titles and abstracts were further examined,
the irrelevant papers were excluded. Subsequently, only articles from peer-reviewed
academic journals that had ESG auditing as their central theme, not just ESG reporting
in general, were kept in the final collection.
A final sample of 47 papers was selected as the most relevant to answering our
research question.
The final sample contains a mix of theoretical papers, conceptual essays, qualitative
case studies, and quantitative empirical research, each with distinct methodologies
and objectives.

In the following phase, the abstracts and introductions of the studies were reviewed.
Subsequently, we initiated a process of “open coding”, systematically extracting relevant
passages and concepts related to: the theoretical frameworks used; the demonstrated
benefits of auditing; the challenges identified (both technical and organizational); and, in
particular, the discussions about the gap between limited and reasonable disclosure.

These initially identified relevant concepts were then compared, refined, and iteratively
grouped into broader conceptual categories. Through this method, we allowed the themes
to emerge naturally, directly from what we read. We thus avoided imposing new pre-
established categories. The final themes we identified (e.g., "auditing as a legitimation
mechanism," "internal challenges of data preparation," or "market expectations gap") were
validated by reviewing the entire sample to ensure coherence and representativeness.

Furthermore, the second approach of the study employs Vos Viewer mapping to
identify the conceptual networks ESG-related. This second approach allows a better
understanding of the research evolution and trends starting with 2020, and to
document the conceptual correlations present in previous literature that shaped the
knowledge in the field.

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