Research productivity patterns in the organizational behavior and human resource management literature

Abstract

Closely following the analysis approach used for similar studies in the economics and finance literature, we present the first study to examine if there exists an empirical regularity in the bibliometric patterns of research productivity in the organizational behavior (OB) and human resource management (HRM) literature. Our results present strong evidence that there indeed exists a distinct empirical regularity. It is the so-called Generalized Lotka's Law of scientific productivity pattern: The number of authors publishing n papers is about 1/nc of those publishing one paper. The observed pattern in the OB and HRM area is interestingly very consistent with those in much older, related business disciplines.