From ""A"" to ""THE"" Behavioral Theory of the Firm: A Historical Review based on Text Mining

Abstract

This study reviews 564 articles in the past 55 years in the field of the Behavioral Theory of the Firm (hereafter BToF) and reveals the evolutionary process from “A” to “THE” BToF with text mining techniques. Our findings suggest that the development of BToF experienced four phases and themes change in different phases, demonstrating an overall picture of how “A” BToF evolves to “THE” BToF. The finding of co-word network analysis and text clustering and topic modeling approaches further reveal the changing structure of BToF. 14 topics are identified and compared, revealing that performance feedback and aspirations are more likely to be the future research focus. Comparing the average topic weight of the top-cited articles with all articles, we uncover that “A” BToF has a greater academic impact than “THE” BToF which reminds us to go back to “A” BToF and revisit some neglected territories in previous studies. What’s more, BToF has a broader influence on many other theories, such as evolutionary economic and organizational learning theory, while it lacks its own academic identity. Additional bibliometric methods, like author partnership network, are conducted to supplement the results of the text mining techniques.