An approach to identifying consensus in a subfield: The case of organizational culture

Abstract

Most researchers recognize the importance of social interactions in the creation of scientific knowledge and new paradigmatic approaches. Nevertheless, methods summarizing major paradigms in a field, such as traditional literature reviews, divorce knowledge generation from its highly social context. Based on the assertion that knowledge is generated in part through social interactions among researchers, we introduce a cognitive network approach to identifying areas of consensus in a scientific subfield. This approach involves using a combination of social network analysis and textual map analysis techniques to locate points where meanings and people congregate. We illustrate this approach by examining the literature in the organizational culture subfield. Analyzing 70 texts in the organizational culture area, we use textual map analysis to identify changes in the conceptualization of culture over several decades and social network analysis techniques to changes in the key actors over this same period. We find that consensus within this field has evolved over time and is shaped by the social structure of researchers in the culture field. We discuss the potential contribution of this technique for providing insight into the process by which paradigms become established in organizational theory in particular, and research communities in general.