Journal of International Management: A 25-year review using bibliometric analysis

The Journal of International Management (JIM) is a leading international academic journal in the field of international business. This study presents a retrospect of the publications in JIM for the last 25 years (as JIM was founded in 1995) through a bibliometric methodology using the Scopus database and Web of Science. The study graphically maps the bibliographic material using VOS viewer software and applies co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, and co-occurrence of author keywords. We identify that the journal has expanded consistently and steadily in terms of both number of publications and citations. The collaboration network has expanded over the years, and the geographical focus is more global, encompassing Asia and Oceania. Bibliographic coupling of JIM publications reveals several distinct, major themes in the international management/business domain. Conventional international management themes that have emerged include market entry modes, globalization, international human resource management, cross-cultural management/leadership, and expatriate management. New emerging themes include emerging markets, global sourcing, innovation performance, digital firms, diversity of global teams, internationalization in uncertain environments, and virtual teams. A summary of the shifting research trends and themes in the discipline and their development is presented in this review, culminating in future directions for prospective publishers of JIM.     

Mapping the changes in management science: A review of ‘soft’ OR/MS articles published in Omega (1973–2008)

The paper proposes a framework to map the development of management science (MS) and uses it to survey the MS literature published in Omega, the International Journal of Management Science. The management science discourse over the last 35 years is mapped in four paradigms: (1) optimisation/normative; (2) interpretative/learning; (3) critical; and (4) a post-modern management science approach. Using a set of keywords and authors’ names associated with the main features of each MS discourse, articles published between 1973 and 2008 are grouped. Results seem to suggest that Omega, a US-based journal, has been mainly developing publications under the optimisation paradigm; only very few papers adhering to the interpretative/learning and critical paradigms have been given space in Omega. The handful of papers from the interpretative paradigm are seen as attempts of UK-based academics to open some space for ‘soft’ operational research (OR) or ‘problem structuring methods’ in a positivistic outlook that seems to pervade US management science practice. Results of the survey and features of MS literature published in Omega are discussed. The paper aims to raise awareness amongst management scientist, systems and operational researchers of the differences between the MS/OR practice in both countries.     

A bibliometric analysis of operations research and management science

Bibliometric analysis is the quantitative study of bibliographic material. It provides a general picture of a research field that can be classified by papers, authors and journals. This paper presents a bibliometric overview of research published in operations research and management science in recent decades. The main objective of this study is to identify some of the most relevant research in this field and some of the newest trends according to the information found in the Web of Science database. Several classifications are made, including an analysis of the most influential journals, the two hundred most cited papers of all time and the most productive and influential authors. The results obtained are in accordance with the common wisdom, although some variations are found.     

What is the future of work? A science mapping analysis

This article aims to systematise and provide a structure for research into the Future of Work (FoW). We used SciMAT to conduct a science mapping analysis based on co-word bibliographic networks. The Web of Science (WoS) database was used for article retrieval, and a total of 2,286 documents were identified from 1959 to 2019. Our results are counterintuitive, as concerns over satisfaction, leadership values or corporate social responsibility (CSR) appear alongside traditional human resource management (HRM) themes, such as organisational commitment or careers, as well as more current FoW themes, such as the impact of technological change on employment, wage inequality, vulnerable workers, telework or talent management. In addition, we offer a classification of the most prolific FoW research themes and challenges into technological, social, economic and political categories.     

基于文献计量的大数据管理决策研究热点分析

传统的模型驱动的决策范式正在演变成大数据驱动的决策新范式,国家自然科学基金委员会于2015年启动了“大数据驱动的管理与决策研究”重大研究计划,以推动我国管理学领域大数据的基础研究.本文以重大研究计划资助的14个项目的文本信息,及2012年~2019年在51种管理类重要国际期刊上发表的近6000篇论文为基础,利用文本挖掘与文献计量方法,从词粒度和主题粒度展开比较分析,并对部分以大数据作为关键词的文献按研究方向进行分类分析.对比分析结果清晰地呈现出大数据驱动的研究在管理学领域的研究态势和创新脉络;剖析国内学者与国际领域主流关注的焦点与异同;揭示出大数据驱动的管理与决策方向上研究热点及其演化趋势,以及未来值得深入研究的一些科学问题.     

Forty years of European Management Journal: A bibliometric overview

The European Management Journal (EMJ) is a renowned peer-reviewed journal of international reputation in the fields of business and management research since 1982. EMJ publishes original and high-quality conceptual, empirical, and review research papers that contribute to the advancement of the body of knowledge and its application in the field. Until the time of this overview, 2164 papers (including 2004 articles, 96 editorials, 28 conference papers, 27 notes, and 3 short surveys) have been published in the journal between 1982 and 2020. We analyzed all these articles using bibliometric techniques to examine the impact of the journal’s publications, most productive and influential authors, and their contributions in the field of business and management research. Co-authorship among the top authors, co-occurrences of the topics, co-citations of the journals, bibliographic coupling of the authors, affiliating institutes, and countries were analyzed by applying network analysis techniques using VOSviewer software. The advancement of research in the field of management during the last decade is also critically discussed in order to understand recent developments in the field of business and management research.     

Visualizing the landscape and evolution of leadership research

Complementing prior quantitative and qualitative reviews of the leadership literature, we conduct a bibliometric analysis of leadership articles. Our bibliometric review provides a different perspective by portraying the landscape and developmental trajectory of leadership research over time via co-citation and co-occurrence analyses. Using a scientific visualization tool CiteSpace and 6528 leadership works collected from the Web of Science database from 1990 to 2017, we detect and visualize the landscape of leadership research and track how this landscape has evolved. After mapping the landscape, we discuss the insights gleaned from our bibliometric review, with a focus on open questions, future research directions, and implications. In doing so, our review provides readers with a systematic understanding of the development of the leadership field and a roadmap to spark leadership research and move this literature forward.     

Extending the pursuit of flow (lean) management to encompass sales,general and administrative functions

Abstract

Operations management tends to be treated independent of other business functions—the silo syndrome. In this article, we call for operations management (OM) to broaden its perspective by strengthening linkages with other functions of the business, thereby to realize competitive advantages and strategic integration, as well as to avoid resource misallocation. The issues involved are presented and tested by examining the effects of intermeshing sales, general and administrative (SG&A) expenditures with customer-centred flow manufacturing, the latter being measured by system inventory as surrogate for customer lead time. In doing so, we designate trends in total inventory as the independent variable—representative of a dominant target of flow/lean management—and trends in SG&A expenditures as the output variable. The research tasks are enabled by inventory and SG&A data being widely available in companies’ audited financial statements. Such hard data offers methodological and validation advantages over, say, opinion-based survey research. The research adds bulk to existing flow/lean management theory and can be helpful in inducing primary business functions (e.g. OM, finance, sales and marketing) and sub-functions (such as SG&A and management accounting) to engage in cross-functional efforts in the cause of flow-oriented process improvement and company competitiveness.     

How can MNEs benefit from internationalizing their R&D across countries with both weak and strong IPR protection?

Although MNEs internationalize their R&D not only in developed countries but also in emerging economies that typically feature weak protection of intellectual property rights (IPR), it remains unclear how this strategic decision affects their productivity performance. This limitation has resulted in a rather incomplete understanding of why some MNEs become more productive through R&D internationalization while others do not. This study develops a new explanation, suggesting that R&D internationalization does not affect the productivity of all MNEs equally because of differences in the idiosyncratic way in which MNEs geographically distribute their R&D units across weak and strong IPR protection countries. In advancing this explanation, the study challenges the view that weak IPR protection is disadvantageous for MNEs by showing that (and specifying how) it: 1) increases the efficacy of MNEs' internal R&D, 2) strengthens the advantages of accessing globally dispersed knowledge, and (3) improves MNEs' ability to exploit cross-country differences in IPR protection. The study enhances understanding of the complex role of IPR protection, shifts scholarly attention from the degree of R&D internationalization to how MNEs should internationalize their R&D, and clarifies how the IPR context of their location choices matters.     

Making things click: Distributive leadership in an online division of an offline organization

The business model that looks likely to dominate the future in the wake of the convergence between Internet and traditional economies is the “bricks and clicks” organization. We conducted an in-depth study of the top executives of a prototypical Fortune 500 company's online division. We tracked and interviewed the president and other top management team (TMT) members over the first 22 months of the launch of the e-business venture. Our findings show that two contextual features, the extraordinary speed and the unsettling complexity/ambiguity of the online business environment, profoundly affected not only leadership requirements but also other key managerial processes, including communication, decision making, and vision. Within this disorienting context, two substantive themes emerged: (1) coping with organizational identity/image tensions with the offline parent organization and (2) becoming a holographic learning organization. We draw upon and extend some of the emerging literature on shared/relational and dispersed leadership to explain how dotcom leaders can adapt to the challenging contextual and substantive features of the e-business environment through the practice of distributive leadership, which we distinguish from prior related articulations of the concept.     

Management innovation: A systematic review and meta-analysis of past decades of research

Managerial innovation has gained increased popularity in research and practice because of its positive effects on organisational renewal and performance. Regardless of the growing number of studies on management innovation, there is still a lack of research that integrates and synthesises this body of knowledge. This study undertakes a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature to gain insight into existing empirical studies on management innovation. Our content analysis and review of 66 studies from 1981 to 2017 analyses the trends and background of research into management innovation. In addition, we develop a model of management innovation grounded in selected theoretical lenses to advance our understanding of the different drivers, moderators, mediators and outcomes of management innovation. Results of the meta-analysis show that management innovation is positively related to organisational size (r_c = .282), knowledge management (r_c = 0.608), organisational learning (r_c = 0.692), firms’ overall performance (r_c = 0.393), and financial performance (r_c = 0.269). Finally, we have identified several research gaps and provided a future research agenda in the context of managerial innovation.     

Is offshoring dead? A multidisciplinary review and future directions

Offshoring has represented a dominant business practice in the past three decades, prompting considerable research across multiple business domains to understand its various facets. By applying bibliometric techniques (Donthu et al., 2021), the authors of the current article aim to take stock of this rich, multidisciplinary literature. With performance analysis, author network analysis, bibliographic coupling, and topic trend analysis, they identify its underlying intellectual structure and map its temporal, spatial, and thematic evolution. The analysis of 111 key journals and 668 articles, spanning more than three decades (1989–2022) comprises four distinct time periods and longitudinal trends that support meaningful visual representations of the bibliographic data. The findings reveal six foundational themes for offshoring research: (1) offshoring and global supply chains, (2) offshoring of IT/business processes, (3) outcomes of offshoring, (4) governance mechanisms in offshoring and success strategies, (5) drivers of offshoring, and (6) backshoring of manufacturing. Based on the temporal and topic trend analysis, this article concludes with recommendations for broad further research avenues that can shed light on the future of offshoring in the post-pandemic world.     

The use of advanced management techniques in R & D

The paper discusses information collected in a study carried out by Bradford University Management Centre in 1985/86 to establish the state-of-the-art in the use of advanced management techniques in R & D departments of UK organisations. Data from two questionnaires were supplemented by more detailed discussions with selected respondents and a survey of the relevant literature was carried out. Indications are that both project management in R & D and managerial development of R & D staff are receiving attention, particularly from senior management. As yet, however, the potential of recent advances in computer technology and of existing MS techniques has not been fully realised. In this context, the effectiveness of present training courses in project management techniques is questioned.     

Craft,magic and the re-enchantment of the world

This essay challenges the prevailing view of progressive rationality and disenchantment as set out in Max Weber's social theory and reproduced in organizational neo-institutionalism. We observe that rationality and disenchantment cannot exist in the absence of magic, mystery and enchantment. We argue that the contemporary celebration of rationality and disenchantment is a modernist discourse that has marginalized equally compelling instances of re-enchantment. Drawing from the popular press and management research we identify five themes of re-enchantment in the world; the rise of populism, the return of tribalism, the resurgence of religion, the re-enchantment of science and the return to craft. We use these phenomena to elaborate four alternative constructs – authenticity, reflexivity, mimesis and incantation - that counterbalance the over rationalized and paralyzing concepts in neo-institutionalism – legitimacy, embeddedness, isomorphism and diffusion.     

Learning from mixed OR method practice: The NINES case study

Despite continued interest in the use of mixed OR/MS methods, limited attention has been paid in the literature to generic lessons that could be gained from mixing methods in practice. Many organisational problems demand the use of a mixed method approach and thus recognising and sharing lessons could prove beneficial to both practitioners and researchers. This paper reports on an in-depth evaluation of a case study involving risk identification and quantification of the Northern Isles New Energy Solutions (NINES) project which sought to trial and plan a new energy system. The intervention involved a mixed method approach and client feedback on the efficacy of the approach was sought. The evaluation reported in this paper is carried out using a set of themes taken from the literature and seeks to highlight transferable lessons. The set of lessons that emerge are presented along with their implications for both general OR modelling practice and the specific situation of mixing OR/MS methods. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the work and directions for future work which will be of interest to both practitioners and researchers interested in mixed method OR/MS work.     

Management science in the United States and Europe: A decade of change in the literature

This paper focuses upon the investigation of change in the management science literature from 1965 to 1974. Both subject areas and reported areas of implementation are investigated. The study classifies the content of each article published during the past decade in the following set of European and American journals: United States—Management Science; British—Operational Research Quarterly; and German—Zeitscrift für Operations Research. A comparison of the results along both inter and intra country dimensions is presented.     

R&D,productivity, and market value: An empirical study from high-technology firms

Although prior research has addressed the influence of production activity and research and development (R&D) on productivity, it is not clear whether production and R&D affect the market value of a firm. This study proposes and verifies an R&D value chain framework to explore the relationship among productivity, R&D, and firm market values, as measured by Tobin's q theory. By doing so, we attempt to link new theoretical insights and empirical evidence on the effects of R&D efforts and basic production activities to the market valuations of high-technology firms. The value chain data envelopment analysis approach was proposed to estimate parallel-serial processes of basic operations and R&D efforts. This approach can be used to simultaneously estimate the profitability efficiency and marketability efficiency of high-technology firms. This area has rarely been studied, but it is particularly important for high-technology R&D policies and for further industrial development. Using the R&D value chain perspectives of model innovations and extensions proposed in several previous studies, we examined the appropriate levels of intermediate outputs. Production efficiency and R&D were combined to estimate the appropriate levels of intermediate outputs for high-technology firms. Based on the intermediate output analyses, we developed an R&D efforts decision matrix to explore and identify operational and R&D efficiency for high-technology firms. Our sample firms are displayed on a four-quadrant action grid that provides visual information on current short-term operational efficiency and decision making on long-term R&D strategic positions. The empirical findings from the R&D value chain model can provide information for policymakers and managers and suggest the adoption of various policies that place more emphasis on profitability and marketability strategies.     

10 Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology,Work and Organization

Abstract

We begin by juxtaposing the pervasive presence of technology in organizational work with its absence from the organization studies literature. Our analysis of four leading journals in the field confirms that over 95% of the articles published in top management research outlets do not take into account the role of technology in organizational life. We then examine the research that has been done on technology, and categorize this literature into two research streams according to their view of technology: discrete entities or mutually dependent ensembles. For each stream, we discuss three existing reviews spanning the last three decades of scholarship to highlight that while there have been many studies and approaches to studying organizational interactions and implications of technology, empirical research has produced mixed and often‐conflicting results. Going forward, we suggest that further work is needed to theorize the fusion of technology and work in organizations, and that additional perspectives are needed to add to the palette of concepts in use. To this end, we identify a promising emerging genre of research that we refer to under the umbrella term: sociomateriality. Research framed according to the tenets of a sociomaterial approach challenges the deeply taken‐for‐granted assumption that technology, work, and organizations should be conceptualized separately, and advances the view that there is an inherent inseparability between the technical and the social. We discuss the intellectual motivation for proposing a sociomaterial research approach and point to some common themes evident in recent studies. We conclude by suggesting that a reconsideration of conventional views of technology may help us more effectively study and understand the multiple, emergent, and dynamic sociomaterial configurations that constitute contemporary organizational practices.