Intellectual Capital and Environmental Sustainability: A Bibliometric Approach on Its Foundations and Evolution

ABSTRACT This work presents a theoretical perspective based on a bibliometric analysis of the research on intellectual capital and environmental sustainability (IC&ES) during the period 1990–2022. Using the Web of Science as the reference database, 291 valid documents were collected and examined through a performance bibliometric analysis and a science mapping analysis based on co‐word bibliographic networks, with SciMAT as the analytical tool. This study provides a comprehensive overview of the IC&ES literature from a holistic perspective, enabling the assessment of the increasing scholarly attention to this research topic. Through an in‐depth analysis, the specific themes and thematic areas that shape the IC&ES literature are identified, along with their evolution dynamics and interrelationships. The main contribution lies in the identification of four thematic areas—Showing, Inventing, Profiting, and Greening—as well as these cross‐fertilizing subdomains that illustrate the main trends and highlight the versatility of the intellectual capital concept and the interdisciplinary nature of the IC&ES field. The findings indicate that the literature on the topic is undergoing a growing specialization, marked by conflicting perspectives from which significant implications can be drawn.