The dynamic capability view (DCV) is one of the most vibrant approaches to strategic management. In this study, the extant literature published between 1994 and 2011 is analysed, using bibliometric methods in order to explore the scope of this approach and detect current research priorities. For this purpose, the method of bibliographic coupling is introduced in management research, which shifts the focus of analysis from past traditions to current trends. Several clusters of thematically related research are extracted from bibliographic networks, which represent interconnected yet distinct subfields of inquiry within the DCV. The core cluster of the current DCV, which visualizes this research field's nascent but fragile identity, focuses on learning and change capabilities and relates them to firm performance, thus merging aspects of organization theory and strategic management. In addition, several peripheral clusters of research are identified, which reflect a parallel process of differentiation in the overall field. Both trends, i.e. of integration and differentiation, attest to the emancipation of the DCV as a distinct approach to strategic management. However, the DCV still lacks consensual concepts that allow comparisons of empirical studies and advance the theoretical understanding of dynamic capabilities. In the light of the above, some implications of this analysis for further research are discussed.

This study analyses and reviews the literature on public leadership with a novel combination of bibliometric methods. We detect four generic approaches to public leadership (i.e. a functionalist, a behavioural, a biographical and a reformist approach) which differ with regard to their philosophy of science (i.e. objective vs subjective) and level of analysis (i.e. micro-level vs multi-level). From our findings, we derive four directions for future research which involve shifting the focus from the aspect of 'leadership' to the element of 'public', from simplicity to complexity, from universalism to cultural relativism and from public leadership to public followership.

Informal groups play a pivotal role in the socio-cognitive structuring and development of all scientific fields. While most social studies on such groups present a static view, taking a snapshot of them at a certain moment in time, this study sheds a dynamic perspective on invisible colleges and examines empirically how they evolve in the course of time. Drawing on the neo-Kuhnian sociology of science, it defines invisible colleges as communication networks and considers how their emergence and evolution is affected by the organizational features of fragmented adhocracies. The empirical aspect focuses on formal scholarly communication through publication in a sample of seven leading journals in the field of management and organization studies over three decades. The methodology is rooted in bibliometrics and combines cocitation analysis with network visualization. The resulting networks, which reflect the community structure of the field, map 40 different colleges. Seven patterns of how this nested structure evolves are derived: college appearance, transformation, drift, differentiation, fusion, implosion and revival. The paper closes with suggestions for further research on those patterns.

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The study of reputation figures prominently in management research, yet the increasing number of publications makes it difficult to keep track of this growing body of literature. This paper provides a systematic review of the literature based on a large-scale bibliometric analysis. We draw on bibliographic data of 5885 publications published until 2016, inclusively, and combine co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling with network visualization. Results show how research on corporate reputation is embedded in the broader field of scholarship on reputation in general. When zooming into the publication cluster on corporate reputation more closely, the concept's origins in economics, organizational studies, and marketing as well as corresponding theoretical and methodological discussions are revealed. Beyond providing a structured overview of the field, the bibliometric analyses also reveal conceptual incoherencies that lead to ambiguities in research. Our assessment builds on the philosophy of science and is guided by the criteria of good concepts in social sciences. It shows that the concept of corporate reputation lacks internal coherence and could have more theoretical utility. We recommend focusing on corporate reputation as an attitudinal concept and thereby emphasizing the stakeholder who acts as an evaluator of the corporation.