A Systematic Literature Review of Knowledge Management: Directions for Future Research

Abstract

Management and international business scholars have studied the influence of knowledge management on the success of global organizations in the past three decades. To explore the current state of knowledge management research and push it further, we systematically reviewed 199 articles from 47 leading journals in the business (IB) and management field published from 2001 through 2020. Adopting qualitative content analysis, we analyse the literature and categorize it into nine frontier issues: knowledge creation and acquisition; knowledge storage; knowledge transfer and sharing; knowledge application; knowledge management process; learning and absorptive capacity; distance; embeddedness; and innovation. Our analysis also covers knowledge management research: publication outlets, methodological approaches, global reach (home and host countries), and theories adopted by the scholars. This thematic analysis approach helps us identify knowledge management research areas that received dominant and less scholarly attention. By doing so, our findings suggest that knowledge management research is far from being diversified from knowledge transfer and sharing related topics, and there is still room for knowledge management research to grow around other suggested themes in this study. We concluded our study by discussing emerging issues and future directions in knowledge management scholarship, practical implications, and limitations of this study.