Unveiling the intellectual structure and evolution of external resource management research: Insights from a bibliometric study
对2000-2015年间1290篇外部资源管理论文进行文献计量分析，识别出整合与运营效率、创新与价值创造、组织间关系、知识转移与学习四个研究集群，帮助学者定位研究并找到跨学科关键文献。
In the current hyper-competitive economy, it is increasingly important to understand how firms can and should access and leverage external resources, such as customer knowledge or supply-chain partners' capabilities. In this paper, we report the results of bibliometric analyses on external resource management (ERM) research in nine representative journals, and elaborate the underlying patterns and dynamics in this relatively young research area. A total of 1290 articles ranging from year 2000 to 2015 were analyzed with text-mining and visualization methods. We found that the annual number of ERM publications is steadily increasing, and identified and described four distinct research clusters focusing on integration & operational effectiveness, innovation & value creation, inter-organizational relationships, and knowledge transfer & learning. The identification of research clusters and key works and authors in this multidisciplinary research field can assist future research in better positioning their studies and finding the key references across disciplinary silos.