A review of knowledge management research in the past three decades: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

PurposeThis study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis on knowledge management from journals in the Scopus database between 1988 and 2021. The paper covered the past three decades of publications and carried out performance analysis and science mapping analysis of articles.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses bibliometrics, performance analysis and science mapping analysis of 1,016 articles extracted from the Scopus database. The study examined the scientific productivity of articles, productive authors, citable documents, most relevant institutions, cited countries, co-occurrence of keywords, thematic mapping, co-citations and collaboration of authors and countries. The study used Biblioshiny as a tool to carry out the performance analysis and science mapping analysis.FindingsThe results show that the number of publications has significantly increased in the past decade, 88.4% of authors contribute at least a single article, 8.3% of authors published two articles, 2% of the authors published three documents and 0.6% of the authors contribute four papers. The USA, China and Australia were the most productive countries in terms of the total number of citations and foreign collaborations. Journal of Knowledge Management, Knowledge Management Research and Practice, VINE Journal of Information and Knowledge Management and International Journal of Technology Management are the top outlets in the knowledge management literature.Originality/valueOver the past decade, the research on knowledge management construct has exploded because of the growing interest of researchers and practitioners in the field. Despite being a well-developed field, few studies have applied bibliometric analysis in the knowledge management literature. The study is more comprehensive in terms of the actors and methods involved in analyzing the scientific production of articles in the area of knowledge management.