Mapping Scientific Production on Organizational Knowledge Flow

Abstract

For several years now, we have been living in a society called the knowledge society, in which the primary resource is knowledge. It is no longer just a personal input but also a strategic asset in the development of organizations. In this context, we have an area dedicated to studying and analyzing organizational knowledge flow (KF), which is defined as the process of transferring knowledge between people and/or knowledge processing mechanisms. A lack of studies compiling the most recent scientific production on KF has been identified in the literature analysis. This makes it difficult to understand the current context of the field, identify the main knowledge gaps and trends in this area of study. Thus, the research objective was to map the characteristics of scientific production on the knowledge flow construct by analyzing bibliometric and sociometric indicators to discover the state of the art and suggest future research in the field. An analysis was performed based on over 3,000 articles and reviews extracted from Scopus, Web of Science, and IEEE Xplore databases. The results indicate that (i) research on the flow of knowledge has been stable since 2013, with a constant number of studies and publications in recent years; (ii) the main authors are from the Asian, European, and American continents without having a hegemony; (iii) prominent approaches are the relationship of knowledge flow within knowledge management processes and within the innovation ecosystem; and (iv) the analysis of the flow of knowledge gains potential importance, mainly in guiding action plans in knowledge management (KM) and in the search for better results in organizations.