The Visible Colleges of Management and Organization Studies: A Bibliometric Analysis of Academic Journals

Abstract

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.

Mapping collaboration networks in talent management research

“…One possible fruitful line of research would be to perform a co-citation analysis. This would enhance our understanding of the theoretical origins, intellectual structure and outlook of TM research, as well as the disclosure of 'invisible colleges' (see Batistic and Kase, 2015, Cerne et al, 2016, Vogel, 2012. Indeed, co-citation analysis would allow for a better appraisal of knowledge flow among academic papers and specialties (i.e., the cross-pollination of ideas across knowledge domains) (Ciotti et al, 2016, Nerur et al, 2015.…”

“…Recent literature reviews (Gallardo-Gallardo and Thunnissen, 2016;Gallardo-Gallardo et al, 2015;Thunnissen et al, 2013;McDonnell et al, 2017) offer complementary views on the breadth of TM research, some of them combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. Despite their undeniable value for evaluating the state of the art of TM research and for guiding discussion about its future development, they do not offer an explanation of the social organization of the field that is inextricably intertwined with the field intellectual development (see Vogel, 2012). Hence, a proper analysis of the social construction of the field (i.e., its social networks or scientific communities) is needed to provide further insight of the intellectual development of TM as a discipline.…”

Understanding scientific communities: a social network approach to collaborations in Talent Management research

“…By performing a co-citation analysis we would able to enhance our understanding of the theoretical origins, intellectual structure and outlook of TM research, as well as the disclosure of 'invisible colleges' (see Batistic and Kase, 2015, Cerne et al, 2016, Vogel, 2012. Further, citation and co-citation analysis would allow for a better appraisal of how patterns of knowledge flow among academic papers and cast light on the salience of homophily for knowledge transfer between papers (Ciotti et al, 2016).…”

A Transformação Social De Uma Ferramenta Estratégica Em Uma Organização Familiar Brasileira

“…Um esforço que se insere dentro de um movimento acadêmico contemporâneo para ampliar estudos com base na teoria da prática (VOGEL, 2012;BISPO, 2013). A discussão das práticas é a base da compreensão do "fazer estratégia" envolvendo a transformação da ferramenta aqui investigada.…”