Sufficiency Economy Philosophy as an ethical framework for sustainable development

The Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP) represents a normative framework for sustainable development grounded in the principles of moderation, prudence, and resilience. Emerging from Thailand as a strategic response to systemic economic shocks and persistent inequality, SEP has been applied across multiple sectors encompassing domains such as corporate governance, education, community empowerment, and ecological sustainability. This study employs a bibliometric analysis of scholarly publications indexed in Scopus between 2012 and 2024, supplemented by author-led thematic interpretation and assisted exploratory analysis to map the intellectual structure and evolving research frontiers of SEP. The analysis identifies five dominant clusters of scholarly attention in the literature: integration of SEP in education systems, ethical transformation of corporate governance, grassroots-based development initiatives, alignment with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and governance models emphasizing moral and ethical leadership. Keyword co-occurrence mapping and citation network analysis reveal a growing but still geographically concentrated research base, with Thailand as the epicenter and limited diffusion into global academic discourse. While SEP is frequently framed in the literature as offering normative and practical relevance to post-growth and resilience-centered development models, its theoretical diffusion remains constrained. This study contributes to the consolidation of SEP scholarship by visualizing its conceptual evolution, identifying research gaps, and suggesting pathways for informing future comparative and cross-contextual research across diverse socio-economic contexts.