Compliance Without Integration: Governance‐Centered ESG Discourse in K orea

ABSTRACT This study examines the institutional and disciplinary contours of ESG‐labeled social‐science scholarship in Korea by analyzing 1541 peer‐reviewed articles indexed in the Korea Citation Index from 2009 to August 2025. Using TF/TF–IDF analysis, Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling, and keyword co‐occurrence network analysis, it investigates how ESG is organized within KCI social‐science research and which vocabularies occupy central or peripheral positions. The findings reveal a management‐ and performance‐centered configuration in which ESG is primarily articulated through corporate management, firm value, performance evaluation, ratings, reputation, and organizational practices. Topic modeling identifies three partially overlapping thematic bundles: Performance, Valuation, and Ratings; CSR, Reputation, and Stakeholder Perception; and ESG Practices and Organizational Outcomes. Network analysis further shows that structurally influential keywords are concentrated around managerial, evaluative, and firm‐performance‐related vocabularies. Social and environmental concerns are not absent, but they tend to be embedded within corporate and performance‐oriented frames rather than operating as independent organizing centers. The study contributes to ESG and institutional discourse research by showing how a globally diffused sustainability label becomes organized within the analyzed KCI social‐science field, while pointing to the need for broader engagement with social policy, labor, and environmental governance perspectives.