Mapping 50 Years of Small Group Research ThroughSmall Group Research

Abstract

At its 50-year milestone, we assess the Small Group Research ( SGR) corpus to reflect on the development of group research over the past half century. To do this, we examine the evolution of the corpus’s context and content. We examine its context by assessing its impact, which journals it communicates with, and the internationality of its authors. We examine its content—the topics discussed in its articles—using keyword clustering and co-occurrence network analysis. We identify 10 research communities and track their relationships over the four editorial periods associated with the SGR corpus (lagged 2 years for influence): 1970–1981, 1982–1991, 1992–2010, and 2011–2019. Our analyses indicate that the global and local study of group dynamics has fluctuated over time and that phenomenologically based topics connect theoretical topics and stimulate theoretical development. We also provide three criteria to identify communities and topics of group research most likely to benefit from future integration.

Research evolution in banking performance: a bibliometric analysis

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Past, present and future of bank marketing: a bibliometric analysis of International Journal of Bank Marketing (1983–2020)

“…In terms of performance analysis , this study examines performance in terms of (1) publication and citation trends, (2) top contributing authors, institutions, countries, (3) top-cited and citing journals and (4) top-cited articles, thereby shedding light on the impact, influence and productivity (Emich et al. , 2020; Glänzel, 2003; Pattnaik et al.…”

“…In terms of performance analysis, this study examines performance in terms of (1) publication and citation trends, (2) top contributing authors, institutions, countries, (3) top-cited and citing journals and (4) top-cited articles, thereby shedding light on the impact, influence and productivity (Emich et al, 2020;Gl€ anzel, 2003;Pattnaik et al, 2020;Donthu et al, 2021a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h) of IJBM. Several metrics were used for evaluation in the performance analysis, such as total publications (TP), which denote the contributions of research constituents (e.g.…”

Research patterns and intellectual structure of Managerial Auditing Journal: a retrospective using bibliometric analysis during 1986-2019

“…A number of recent studies have analysed thematic structures within individual journals. For example, Merig o et al (2018) explore publication, citation and thematic trends in Information Science, while similar investigations have been conducted for the Journal of Knowledge Management, Small Group Research and International Business Review by Gaviria-Marin et al (2018), Emich et al (2020) and Rialp et al (2019) respectively. This expansive approach is adopted here in exploring the history of outputs in the MAJ over more than three decades.…”