Emerging Research Themes Research Articles

Over 33 years of the hospitality research: a bibliometric review of the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management

PurposeThis paper aims to proffer a broad overview of publications in the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management (IJCHM) by conducting bibliometric analyses for the duration ranging from 1989 to 2022.Design/methodology/approachThe research approach analyses the top authors, publications, most collaborative countries and top co-occurring keywords and significant themes published in IJCHM with the help of the Scopus database. The study entails performance analyses on IJCHM. A de-duplicating process was used to study the evolution of themes, so that the keywords identified from co-occurrences of authors’ keywords and thematic evolution map were refined to first- and second-order themes, further leading to the development of inductive analysis proposing aggregate themes.FindingsThe findings of this study not only help paint a comprehensive picture of the customer experience, but also illustrate how topics have evolved in the literature and reveal the most relevant upcoming fields of research. The thematic evolution map reveals thematic areas. There is evidence of contributions by authors across the world and spanning a multitude of themes such as business ethics, corporate and firm performance, stakeholders and avenues for the management of disruption, specifically in times of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.Research limitations/implicationsSignificant trends in authors, publications, nations, authors’ keywords and themes as uncovered by this study can greatly help budding authors understand the expectations and emerging research themes that define the IJCHM.Originality/valueThrough extensive bibliometric analyses, this study has created a historical log of the publications in IJCHM. It has identified the key research trends for future research and presented a conceptual framework based on the keyword analysis map and thematic evolution.

The ecological drivers and consequences of wildlife trade.

Wildlife trade is a key driver of extinction risk, affecting at least 24% of terrestrial vertebrates. The persistent removal of species can have profound impacts on species extinction risk and selection within populations. We draw together the first review of characteristics known to drive species use - identifying species with larger body sizes, greater abundance, increased rarity or certain morphological traits valued by consumers as being particularly prevalent in trade. We then review the ecological implications of this trade-driven selection, revealing direct effects of trade on natural selection and populations for traded species, which includes selection against desirable traits. Additionally, there exists a positive feedback loop between rarity and trade and depleted populations tend to have easy human access points, which can result in species being harvested to extinction and has the potential to alter source-sink dynamics. Wider cascading ecosystem repercussions from trade-induced declines include altered seed dispersal networks, trophic cascades, long-term compositional changes in plant communities, altered forest carbon stocks, and the introduction of harmful invasive species. Because it occurs across multiple scales with diverse drivers, wildlife trade requires multi-faceted conservation actions to maintain biodiversity and ecological function, including regulatory and enforcement approaches, bottom-up and community-based interventions, captive breeding or wildlife farming, and conservation translocations and trophic rewilding. We highlight three emergent research themes at the intersection of trade and community ecology: (1) functional impacts of trade; (2) altered provisioning of ecosystem services; and (3) prevalence of trade-dispersed diseases. Outside of the primary objective that exploitation is sustainable for traded species, we must urgently incorporate consideration of the broader consequences for other species and ecosystem processes when quantifying sustainability.

Trends in Multidiscipline Management Research: Past, Present and Future of FIIB Business Review

This study aims to guide scholars on emerging research themes and publication trends by reviewing the published intellectual contributions in the FIIB Business Review (FBR)—a multidisciplined management journal since its inception. FBR has been indexed in Scopus and Academic journal guide (AJG) and continues to achieve new heights. This article has used bibliometric analysis of the leading publication themes of the journal between 2011 and 2022. This work uses the Scopus database to find the publication trend and most impactful papers, main themes and keywords of publication, futuristic themes and target ideas for FBR. In 2021, the average citation value for three years was 2.292 compared to 0.778 in 2020. Journal of Business Research, Journal of Marketing and Journal of Finance are the top three most cited journals in FBR. The journal has shown usefulness for scholars mainly related but not limited to strategic management, marketing, organizational behaviour and finance, among others, by contributing to areas like digital transformation, team problems, organizational conflicts, COVID-19 problems, sustainability and financial crises. Areas of future research and limitations are discussed.

A bibliometric analysis of Library Review trends

PurposeThis paper aims to identify and understand changing research themes within this field and apply a novel technique for text mining.Design/methodology/approachStatistical text mining methods are applied as an approach to bibliographic analysis to nearly 30 years of papers published in Library Review and Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication to identify key research themes and analyse how they have evolved over this period.FindingsKey stable research themes include students, literacy, learning, research, while emerging research themes include social media, networking and knowledge sharing through information and communication technology.Originality/valueA novel approach to bibliometric analysis is applied to a large collection of texts published in the library field.

Financial reporting quality during a crisis: a systematic review

PurposeThis paper presents a systematic literature review, including content and bibliometric analyses, of the impact of a crisis on financial reporting quality. In addition, this review identifies emerging research themes and provides future directions.Design/methodology/approachThe adopted systematic literature review approach finds 29 highly cited articles on the effect of a crisis on financial reporting quality, with an additional seven studies for analysis identified in a review of emerging literature.FindingsThis study consolidates prior research findings on financial reporting quality during a crisis under four major themes: (1) earnings quality and its determinants; (2) audit quality around a crisis; (3) conservatism, valuation effects and corporate governance; and (4) financial stability and regulations. Mixed and inconclusive findings are documented for most themes, suggesting that this literature is still in its infancy and that room exists for further theoretical refinement.Practical implicationsThe study's findings potentially have important ramifications for managers, standard setters, government regulators and policymakers. By highlighting examples of changes in firms' reporting practices during a crisis, the study provides a context in which to understand the influence or potential influence of the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on firms' financial reporting practices.Originality/valueTo the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study to systematically review and synthesise prior research findings on the quality of financial reporting during economic crises. The study identifies many unexplored research areas regarding crises, with possible direct implications for financial reporting practices. The impact of these issues needs to be carefully considered and understood, with the current coronavirus pandemic demonstrating that firms have the opportunity to compromise ethical aspects of their decisions as they experience pressure to maximise profits.

From Amundson, Aris, and Sargent to the future of process systems engineering

In this paper, we attempt to provide a perspective on the field of process systems engineering (PSE) by tracing its evolution back to the pioneering work of Neal Amundson, Rutherford Aris, and Roger Sargent, and highlighting their legacies that continue to guide research in PSE to this day. We underscore the growth in the technical scope of the field from the adoption of control and optimization methods for analyzing chemical engineering problems to the advancement of the methods themselves. We comment on the extended scope, current state, and major trends in PSE while reflecting on the intellectual identity of our field that has developed over time. PSE is positioned to play a crucial role in addressing major societal challenges, such as sustainability and health. While considering a diverse set of applications, it will also be critical to further advance theory which allows us to address the complexity that underlies these problems. Finally, we outline a few emerging research themes that could serve as initial food for thought in a broader discussion on future research directions in PSE.

Mapping talent agility: a bibliometric analysis and future research agenda

PurposeThis study explores the concept of “talent agility” since its inception using bibliometric analysis and paves the way for future research agenda in the field of business and management.Design/methodology/approachThe articles were retrieved from the Scopus database comprising 67 publications from 2001 to September 2020. This study has applied bibliometric techniques such as citation analysis, co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, co-authorship analysis, and co-occurrence keyword analysis.FindingsThe bibliometric analysis reveals the publication trends, most influential authors, articles, journals, countries, and important keywords. Subsequently, it presents the network connections among them in the field of talent agility. It identified emerging research diversifications in the literature on talent agility.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitation of this study is the extraction of research articles from a single database, i.e. Scopus. This study provides insights to the researchers and practitioners on comprehensive understandings of the emerging concept “talent agility”, an overview of the publication trends, emerging research themes identified in the clusters, and suggests possible directions for further study.Originality/valueThis study provides the intellectual structure of talent agility literature and its advancement over the periods.

Circular Economy in tourism: Overview of recent developments in research

The article provides a review of the recent developments and trends in the research on Circular Economy (CE) in tourism and identifies possible research gaps. CE is becoming one of the hot topics in tourism research due to its increased importance in policymaking, especially in Europe. However, the review shows that research on CE in tourism is in its early stages. The studies have mainly focused on CE in tourism at the micro level from environmental and business management perspectives especially in hotels and restaurants. In addition, emerging research themes include circular consumption behaviour, CE and smart tourism, cooperation and networking with the local supply chain as well as circular tourism destination development. Thus, tourism scholars are encouraged to shift their perspective more from micro to macro level to get a holistic picture of CE in tourism. The article outlines some ideas for a research agenda on CE in tourism.

Conclusion: what innovations would enable the tourism and hospitality industry to re-build?

PurposeThis paper aims to provide answers to the question: “What innovations would enable the tourism and hospitality industry to re-build?”.Design/methodology/approachAt the outset, it redefines the concept of ‘Innovation” in the context of the hospitality and tourism industry. It then focuses on post-pandemic re-building best practices in tourism and hospitality. It captures the essence of the articles in this theme issue collection on innovative actions from around the world and presents concluding remarks.FindingsThis article summarises the key findings of this theme issue and it draws generalized conclusions about re-building the tourism and hospitality industry. In conclusion, 14 key learning outcomes are presented. These include topics such as: rethinking tourism and hospitality products and services, sustaining resilience, collaboration between the government, academia and industry, special interest tourism, domestic tourism, crisis management, digital transformation, the health and safety of all stakeholders, operational efficiencies and environmental sustainability.Research limitations/implicationsThis research contributes to the emerging research theme of tourism and hospitality post-pandemic re-building.Practical implicationsThere are a number of practical implications in terms of industry approaches to the adoption of innovative strategies to re-build tourism and hospitality operations around the world.Originality/valueReaders who are interested in international best practices of hospitality and tourism should find this concluding article of interest.

Global Trends in Board Capital: A Bibliometric Analysis

This study aims to identify and highlight the research development on board capital and develop a quantitative synopsis of critical themes, contributions, and knowledge gaps to guide future researchers. A search string was created to extract data from the Scopus database and fulfill the study objective. The final dataset consisted of 148 articles after the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The study employed a bibliometric analysis technique to analyze the global development of board capital literature based on the study objectives. Moreover, the study used Microsoft Excel for the frequency analysis, VOSviewer to present the data visualization, and Harzing's Publish or Perish to analyze the citation metrics. The findings revealed the most active country and institution publishing research on board capital in the United States of America (USA) and the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. The emerging and recent research themes on board capital were foreign experience, China, non-independent directors, directorship, and accounting expertise. The study contributes by providing a bibliometric analysis of board capital research streams and identifying emerging research themes for future research. Future research should broaden the database sources and the document types.

A bibliometric analysis of person-organization fit research: significant features and contemporary trends

Person-organization (PO) fit is broadly defined as the compatibility between an individual and their employing organization that occurs when the characteristics of the two entities are well matched. It is related to higher levels of organizational commitment, job satisfaction, job retention, organizational citizenship behaviours, and job performance. In recent years, there has been a significant and hastening increase in the number of journal articles published in which person-organization fit is a major feature of the study. This study documents the historical and contemporary nature of this field using bibliometric methods to provide an overview of PO fit research and to analyse contemporary trends. After screening, 887 refereed journal articles were surfaced in the Scopus database that featured PO fit. Descriptively, this study identifies leading journal articles, authors, countries, and collaborative networks. Analytically, the paper identifies and discusses major and emerging research themes. These include an increase in studies exploring PO fit and its impact on employee engagement during their employment. Other contemporary themes include an increasing interest in ethical issues related to PO fit and the interaction of PO and person-job fit. These three topics are critically discussed. Conversely, the analysis shows a lessening of the occurrence of PO fit studies focusing on the early employment phases of recruitment, selection, and socialization. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ways in which PO fit research is changing, the positive skew in PO fit research, and the limitations of this study.

COVID‐19 pandemic, vaccine nationalism and counterfeit products: Discourse and emerging research themes

Although “vaccine nationalism” and vaccine diplomacy have thus far typified the COVID‐19 vaccine rollouts around the globe, there remain limited scholarly insights on global vaccine distribution strategies. This research note (RN) examines the global vaccine distribution strategies and implications for public policy and governments. In conceptualizing the global vaccine distribution strategies into three competing perspectives (i.e., “vaccine nationalism,” vaccine diplomacy, and global initiative), this article highlights the divergent effects of different approaches in terms of ushering elements of nationalism and ethnocentrism. By contextualizing the discourse on the COVID‐19 pandemic into the three competing perspectives and highlighting the role of pharmaceutical companies and COVID‐19 vaccine passport, the study also offers pathways for further examination of the subject incorporating the contextual conditions.

Interpersonal Haptic Communication: Review and Directions for the Future

Touch between people is an integral part of human life. Touch is used to convey information, emotions, and other social cues. Still, everyday remote communication remains mainly auditive or audio-visual. The theme of this article, interpersonal haptic communication, refers to any communication system that supports mediation of touch between two or more persons. We first present a scoping review of the state of the art in interpersonal haptic communication, including physiological and psychological basis of touch, affective and social touch, and mediated social touch. We then discuss emerging research themes that shape the future of interpersonal haptic communication, identify research gaps and propose key research directions for each theme. Finally, societal impact and ethical aspects are discussed.

Reference price research in marketing: a bibliometric analysis

PurposeReference price is a key input in deciding product/service prices by organizations and has a significant influence on consumer purchase decisions. This study aims to provide a deeper understanding of reference pricing literature using bibliometric analysis and offers specific research questions for future research in this domain.Design/methodology/approachUsing a sample of 309 articles published between 1977 and 2021, the study conducts bibliographic coupling, citation analysis, cluster analysis, content analysis, keyword analysis and a three-field plot to map the intellectual structure of reference price.FindingsThe content analysis gave seven research clusters: (1) modeling reference price, (2) consumer perceptions of price (un)fairness, (3) price framing, (4) comparative price-based promotion, (5) reference price formulation, (6) pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing and (7) range theory and price perceptions. The study also delineates reference price literature across several parameters like authorship, highest cited paper, most popular journal, institutions, region-wise publication trend and author-networks. The emerging research themes for future scholars working in this domain have also been highlighted.Originality/valueThis is the first comprehensive study to explore reference price from a bibliometric lens. The study highlights and discusses the recent themes on reference price, from both academic and managerial perspectives.

Environmental Finance: An Interdisciplinary Review

• We provide a systematic review of environmental finance. • Environmental finance research has experienced significant growth in recent years. • Current main research streams are identified and reviewed. • Emerging research themes are proposed and analyzed. • We provide an interdisciplinary research agenda for environmental finance. Environmental finance has gained considerable attention globally as an emerging interdisciplinary research area. This study uses bibliometric analysis to systematically review major studies on environmental finance-related areas published since the 1970s. Through a bibliometric analysis of 892 environmental finance-related articles sourced from the Web of Science database, we identified the main research streams and illustrated the trending research themes of environmental finance. We find that publications related to environmental finance have increased exponentially over the past decade. Current research streams include corporate and social responsibility (CSR), climate negotiations, natural gas price volatility, national policy, and cost comparisons. Further analysis of the recent five years of literature shows that emerging research topics include climate finance, sustainable finance, firm value, climate risk, and green bonds. Finally, we conclude with a future research agenda for environmental finance.

Attaining sustainable development goals (SDGs) through supply chain practices and business strategies: A systematic review with bibliometric and network analyses

AbstractSustainable development goals (SDGs), adopted by the United Nations in 2015, are gaining importance in all the industrial sectors. The attainment of SDGs will lead to simultaneous betterment of human lives, environment and economic prosperity. Therefore, the adoption and implementation of SDGs in the supply chain (SC) activities is the need of the hour. In this regard, there is a need to analyse the extant SC literature focussing on SDGs. This study reviews the articles on SDGs in SC published in last 6 years (2015–2021). A total of 144 articles are shortlisted for the analysis. Bibliometric and network analyses are performed to create an intellectual map of the field and to visualise the network among authors and keywords, respectively. Various emerging research themes are identified using bibliometric coupling analysis. The content analysis of the articles has been performed by considering different activities and stages of SC. Articles are also mapped on various dimensions of SDGs. The strategies associated with adopting sustainable practices in SC to achieve SDGs have also been elucidated. Finally, future research propositions have been presented which can help in achieving SDGs in the SC.

Thailand tourism: a systematic review

ABSTRACT This research performs a systematic review of research on Thailand tourism. We identified emergent research themes and explored the conceptualization of studies regarding the development of Thailand tourism. In accordance with the theory, context, characteristic, and methodology (TCCM) framework, this work offers a comprehensive outline of relevant studies and gaps in the existing literature to edify and advance future research agendas. It successfully enriches knowledge about Thailand tourism in the extant tourism literature. Moreover, this review contributes to Thailand tourism literature and travel industry, particularly during the transitional period from the “old normal” to the “new normal” tourism era.

Service-Centric Heterogeneous Vehicular Network Modeling for Connected Traffic Environments.

Heterogeneous vehicular communication on the Internet of connected vehicle (IoV) environment is an emerging research theme toward achieving smart transportation. It is an evolution of the existing vehicular ad hoc network architecture due to the increasingly heterogeneous nature of the various existing networks in road traffic environments that need to be integrated. The existing literature on vehicular communication is lacking in the area of network optimization for heterogeneous network environments. In this context, this paper proposes a heterogeneous network model for IoV and service-oriented network optimization. The network model focuses on three key networking entities: vehicular cloud, heterogeneous communication, and smart use cases as clients. Most traffic-related data–oriented computations are performed at cloud servers for making intelligent decisions. The connection component enables handoff-centric network communication in heterogeneous vehicular environments. The use-case-oriented smart traffic services are implemented as clients for the network model. The model is tested for various service-oriented metrics in heterogeneous vehicular communication environments with the aim of affirming several service benefits. Future challenges and issues in heterogeneous IoV environments are also highlighted.

Deep Learning for Image and Point Cloud Fusion in Autonomous Driving: A Review

Autonomous vehicles were experiencing rapid development in the past few years. However, achieving full autonomy is not a trivial task, due to the nature of the complex and dynamic driving environment. Therefore, autonomous vehicles are equipped with a suite of different sensors to ensure robust, accurate environmental perception. In particular, the camera-LiDAR fusion is becoming an emerging research theme. However, so far there has been no critical review that focuses on deep-learning-based camera-LiDAR fusion methods. To bridge this gap and motivate future research, this paper devotes to review recent deep-learning-based data fusion approaches that leverage both image and point cloud. This review gives a brief overview of deep learning on image and point cloud data processing. Followed by in-depth reviews of camera-LiDAR fusion methods in depth completion, object detection, semantic segmentation, tracking and online cross-sensor calibration, which are organized based on their respective fusion levels. Furthermore, we compare these methods on publicly available datasets. Finally, we identified gaps and over-looked challenges between current academic researches and real-world applications. Based on these observations, we provide our insights and point out promising research directions.

Social media research trends in tourism city context

PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic has a massive impact on people’s lives, the wealth of nations, tourism cities, economic and social media. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to challenges and innovations to deal with multiple direct and indirect impacts. This research aims to explore the development of social media research in the tourism city context to highlight emerging research themes, methodological approaches.Design/methodology/approachThis study searched and filtered on the Scopus Web and Web of Science to collect databases and applied hybrid methods. The VOSviewer algorithm was used in the paper to generate maps from bibliographic and text data. Furthermore, a polynomial trend line was used to depict the data fluctuations of papers in the relationship between documents and years. Besides, other mathematical and statistical tools to measure the inter-relationships and impacts of social media publications within the tourism city research area, identify valuable insights and determine a framework for social media research trends.FindingsThe study outcomes expressed the development in social media research trends from 2005 to 2021 in the tourism city context of topics (social media, social networking (online)), methodology (sentiment analysis), publication outputs with most extensive collaborations and some other contents to form a framework of social media research trends in tourism cities.Research limitations/implicationsResearch data is mainly from reviews of articles that may not account for all trends in reality.Practical implicationsThis research is original that will apply to future social media researchers and institutions.Social implicationsPolicy makers could base on the research trends to examine their future tourism development orientation.Originality/valueThis research assists social media scholars in understanding trends and themes in tourism city contexts that they could apply in their business area. Moreover, there is a desire to comprehend an overview of the related literature of social media science in tourism city contexts. The outcomes showed the limitations of lacking journals and volume of social media research. The results contribute to meaningful insights by having a more holistic understanding of social media through aggregated data sources.