A Bibliometric Analysis of Publications on Knowledge Risks as a Subfield of Knowledge Management

Abstract

The research presented in this paper is part of a larger project concerning knowledge risks that can manifest alongside knowledge processes within organizations. The aim of this paper is to reveal the most important scientific evolutions in the field of Knowledge risks, considered as a narrow field within the bigger field of Knowledge management. The methodological approach is based on the use of the bibliometric software R-Stata Bibliometrix, specialized in Science Mapping Workflow, in order to extract meaningful results about the thematic evolution of the Knowledge risks field. The methodological approach assumes that the co-occurrence of two keywords within the same article indicates a link between those topics. Our results show that “knowledge risks” is a very specialized area, but with an important transversality. The concept of “knowledge risk” often appears as a secondary concept in research published in various fields, the publications within the field of Knowledge management being a minority in the total publications where the concept is found. The main novelty of our research consists in a mixed approach, both quantitative and qualitative, of the bibliometric analysis, using bigrams to understand the evolution of this particular scientific field. The results are important for improving the design of future scientific research on knowledge risks.