Interorganizational learning: a bibliometric review and research agenda

Scholarly interest in interorganizational learning (IOL) has spiked in the past decade because of its potential to absorb, transfer and create valuable knowledge for enhanced innovative performance and sustained competitive advantage. However, only a handful of review studies exists on the topic. The evolution of IOL has not been studied explicitly and there is a lack of understanding of the field trends. To fill this gap, this paper aims to comprehensively review the literature on IOL and map its evolution and trends using bibliometric techniques. In particular, the authors use visualization of science mapping freeware to systematize the findings and interpret the results.

The authors synthesize the findings using “evaluative bibliometric techniques” to identify the quality and quantity indicators of the IOL research and use “relational bibliometric techniques” to determine the structural indicators of the IOL field such as the intellectual foundations and emerging research themes of IOL research.

Through an analysis of 208 journal publications obtained from the Scopus database, the authors determine the leading authors, countries, highly cited papers and their contributions to the IOL literature. By identifying the key hotspots, intellectual foundations and emerging trends of IOL, the authors provide promising avenues in IOL research.

To the best of the knowledge, this study is the first to systematically review the IOL literature and provide future research directions.