strategic management

Strategic Management JournalStrat. Mgmt. J., 25: 981–1004 (2004)

Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/smj.397

CHANGES IN THE INTELLECTUAL STRUCTUREOF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT RESEARCH:A BIBLIOMETRIC STUDY OF THE STRATEGICMANAGEMENT JOURNAL, 1980–2000

ANTONIO-RAFAEL RAMOS-RODRIGUEZ* and JOSE RUIZ-NAVARROFaculty of Economic and Management Sciences, University of Cadiz, Cadiz, Spain

The aim of this paper is to identify the works that have had the greatest impact on strategicmanagement research and to analyze the changes that have taken place in the intellectual struc-ture of this discipline. The methodology is based on the bibliometric techniques of citation andco-citation analysis which are applied to all the articles published in the Strategic ManagementJournal from its first issue in 1980 through 2000. Copyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

. . . a statistical record of ideas . . . would allowus to identify the precise moment in history thatideas emerge, chronicle their growth and spread,determine the exact duration of their validity inthe collective mind and afterwards trace their pathtowards decline, erosion into mere cliche and ulti-mate disappearance beyond the horizon of time.(Ortega y Gasset, 1967)

INTRODUCTION

Once a scientific discipline has reached a certaindegree of maturity, it is common practice forits scholars to turn their attention towards theliterature generated by the scientific communityand, treating it as a research topic in its own right,to conduct reviews of the literature with a viewto assessing the general state of the art. Normally,these types of study are considered as adopting theimpressionist approach and their findings tend toreflect the subjective views of their authors.

Keywords: strategic management research; bibliometrics;co-citation analysis∗ Correspondence to: Antonio-Rafael Ramos-Rodrıguez, Facultyof Economic and Management Sciences, University of Cadiz,Duque de Najera 8, 11.002 Cadiz, Spain.E-mail: [email protected]

The purpose of this paper is to gain an impres-sion of strategic management research and its evo-lution by considering the works of a great numberof researchers in the field over an extended periodof time using bibliometric methods. The aim,following the suggestion of White and McCain(1998), is to ascertain how the discipline hasevolved by focusing on and describing what ap-pears, as it were, in the rear-view mirror.

The term bibliometrics refers to the mathemat-ical and statistical analysis of patterns that appearin the publication and use of documents (Diodato,1994). The techniques used in this paper are knownas citation and co-citation analysis. Citation analy-sis is based on the premise that authors cite docu-ments they consider to be important in the develop-ment of their research. Therefore, frequently citeddocuments are likely to have exerted a greaterinfluence on the discipline than those less fre-quently cited (Culnan, 1987; Tahai and Meyer,1999).

Similarly, co-citation analysis of documentsrecords the number of papers that have cited anyparticular pair of documents and it is interpretedas a measure for similarity of content of the twodocuments. The approach is instrumental in iden-tifying groupings of authors, topics, or methods

Copyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 26 February 2002Final revision received 1 December 2003

982 A.-R. Ramos-Rodrıguez and J. Ruız-Navarro

and can help us understand the way in whichthese clusters interrelate (Pilkington and Liston-Heyes, 1999). White and Griffith (1981), McCain(1990), and White and McCain (1998) give adetailed description of this procedure for authorco-citation analysis. Its validity as a means ofexploring the intellectual structure of a scientificdiscipline has been amply demonstrated in numer-ous studies (Small, 1973; White and Griffith, 1981;McCain, 1986; Culnan, O’Reilly, and Chatman,1990; White and McCain, 1998; Ding, Chowd-hury, and Foo, 1999).

Therefore, starting from the hypothesis that thebibliographic references cited in research papersare a reliable indication of their influence, the aimof the present study is to identify the more influ-ential documents and analyze the relational linksbetween them, in order to appreciate the changesthat have taken place in the intellectual structureof strategic management research.

Useful value added is offered by this paper, notonly because it is the first to apply bibliometrictechniques to strategic management research liter-ature, but also because, in so doing, it complementsand improves the findings of other studies that haveapproached the subject from the qualitative per-spective. It is, however, no substitute for extensivereading and fine-grained content analysis (Whiteand McCain, 1998).

The paper is divided into four main sections.The first is a review of literature; the second con-tains a description of the methodology employed,in particular, the co-citation technique; the thirdpresents and discusses the results of the empiricalstudy; and, finally, the fourth section presents asummary and discussion of the conclusions to bedrawn from this investigation, indicates its limita-tions, and suggests future research.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Several articles report the use of bibliometrictechniques to study other areas of managementresearch. For example, Culnan (1987) maps theintellectual structure of Information Systems Man-agement research by conducting a co-citation anal-ysis of works published by a series of authors whocould be considered representative of the disci-pline; Culnan et al. (1990) explore the structure ofOrganizational Behavior research by applying fac-torial analysis techniques in an author co-citation

study; Hoffman and Holbrook (1993) examinethe intellectual structure of Consumer Researchby conducting a bibliometric study of the Jour-nal of Consumer Research; Usdiken and Pasadeos(1995) investigate the reasons that lead Europeanand North American authors to select differentpaths of research in the field of Organization Stud-ies; Pasadeos, Phelps, and Kim (1998) identifythe most influential authors and works in adver-tising research and describe the co-citation net-works that exist between them; Tahai and Meyer(1999) published a journal citation analysis in theStrategic Management Journal to identify the mostinfluential journals in the field of Management;Pilkington and Liston-Heyes (1999) use biblio-metric techniques (factorial analysis of co-citationmatrix) to investigate the intellectual pillars ofthe Production and Operations Management lit-erature and explore whether these are distinctfrom those commonly associated with its rivalfields: Operations Research, Management Science,and Industrial Engineering. Ramos-Rodrıguez andRuız-Navarro (2000) explore the intellectual struc-ture of Strategic Change research by conductingan author, work, and journal co-citation analysisof a 30-year period. Recently, Ponzi (2002) hasexplored the intellectual structure and interdisci-plinary breadth of Knowledge Management in itsearly stage of development, using principal com-ponent analysis on an author co-citation frequencymatrix.

To the best of our knowledge, no such studyhas dealt with the field of strategic managementresearch; therefore this paper aims to fill a gapin strategic management literature by applyingbibliometric techniques to a representative col-lection of research articles relating to this disci-plinary area, with the intention of complement-ing and enhancing the findings of other studiesthat have described it from a more qualitativeperspective.

METHODOLOGY

Instead of using books, doctoral theses, or scien-tific congress records as our source of scientificdocuments for the purposes of this study, we choseto use articles published in a journal, because thesecan be considered ‘certified knowledge.’ This isthe term commonly used to describe knowledgethat has been submitted to the critical review of

Copyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strat. Mgmt. J., 25: 981–1004 (2004)

The Intellectual Structure of Strategic Management Research 983

fellow researchers and has succeeded in gainingtheir approval. Research articles play a fundamen-tal role in the said certification process (Callon,Courtial, and Penan, 1993). The use of citationsfrom articles in research journals, moreover, is astandard practice that enhances the reliability ofresults.

To obtain a representative collection of strategicmanagement research articles, we decided to takeall the articles published in the Strategic Manage-ment Journal (SMJ ) from its first issue in 1980through 2000. The reasoning behind this choicecan be summarized as follows: (1) by their nature,all the published articles address strategic manage-ment issues, which saves us the arduous task ofsifting through other journals in search of articlesrelating to the discipline that concerns us; (2) thispublication enjoys a reputation as a leader amongmanagement journals, particularly those dealingwith business strategy (Tahai and Meyer, 1999);(3) it is highly regarded by researchers in thefield; (4) being a publication that is unrestrictedin its willingness to accept contributions, it is atrue reflection of the current topics of scientificinterest; (5) its entire contents are to be found indatabases of the type required for citation analysistechniques.

There is, however, some bias involved in thischoice. A large number of journals publish articlesdealing with issues of strategy, but, since they arenot specialized in strategic management, a labori-ous selection process would be required in orderto find articles dealing exclusively with strate-gic management. Nor have all of these journalsbeen copied onto databases of the type requiredfor this kind of research. We are, however, rea-sonably confident that the articles analyzed area representative sample of strategic managementresearch.

The SMJ serves to define the development ofthis field (Hoskisson et al., 1999) and signifiesthe field’s move towards a new paradigm, bywhich it has become a more ‘scientific,’ empir-ically oriented research discipline (Schendel andHofer, 1979). By using the SMJ, therefore, ourstudy covers the period during which the disciplinehas achieved its full development.

Moreover, since it was our aim to assess changesin influence of the most cited works, it was nec-essary to divide the study period into a numberof sub-periods. Accordingly, bearing in mind thatit was not our intention to identify real periods

but simply to register changes over the course oftime, we opted to divide the study period into threeequal and consecutive sub-periods, each spanning7 years.

From the Social Science Citation Index1 viaCICA (Andalusian Centre for Scientific Data), weretrieved the set of all articles published in theSMJ from 1980 through 2000. We then createda file with all the references cited in the saidarticles. There are, however, certain inconsisten-cies2 in the coding used in the database. Sincethe bibliometric software3 employed in this studyrecognizes only exactly coinciding strings of char-acters, a manual normalization process is requiredin order to guarantee accuracy, especially in thespelling of authors’ names, the journals in whichthe articles appear, and the first edition of eachbook cited.

Bibliometric analyses have traditionally beendivided into two categories, according to whetherthey yield activity or relationship indicators. Theformer provide data relating to the force of impactor strength of influence of research efforts, whilethe latter trace the links and interaction betweendifferent researchers and different fields of re-search. The end result is a full description ofthe content of the research effort and its develop-ment (Callon et al., 1993). Citation and co-citationanalysis, respectively, are the techniques most fre-quently used to obtain these indicators.

The study was conducted in two separate stages(Figure 1). The first stage was a citation analy-sis to compute the frequency of citation of thebibliographic references used in all the articlesanalyzed, in order to identify the works that hadmade most impact on the scientific community.The sample period of 21 years was then dividedinto three equal, consecutive 7-year sub-periods:1980–86, 1987–93, and 1994–00, and the study

1 Social Science Citation Index (SSCI ) is a database that recordsnot only the title, authors, source, keywords, and other datarelating to each article but also the bibliographic referencescontained in it. It is, therefore, an index of citations managedby the U.S. Institute for Scientific Information (ISI ), whichhas registered the contents of approximately 4100 journals ofworldwide distribution dating back to 1972.2 Thus, we find that ‘PORTER ME, 1980, COMPETITIVESTRATEGY’ and ‘PORTER M, 1980, COMPETITIVE STRAT-EGY’ are two citations of the same well-known work by MichaelE. Porter; in the first citation the author’s name is coded withtwo initials and in the second with only one.3 We used BIBEXCEL software, designed by Professor OllePersson of the Institute of Information Sciences at the Universityof Umea (Sweden).



All articles published inStrategic Management Journal: 1980-2000

Impact indicators

Citation count

Descriptive analysis

Changes in influence

Interpretation and discussion

7-year subperiods1980-86; 1986-93; 1994-2000

Co-citation matrix

Convert to correlation matrix

Selection of unit to map

Multidimensional Scaling

Maps

Relation indicators

Figure 1. Design of the empirical study

CITATION SAMPLE (n articles)

REFERENCES:

Author 1 (1987) Author 10 (1998)

Author 11 (1998)

Author 12 (1998)

Author 13 (1998)

Author 14 (1998)

Author 3 (1999)

Author 4 (2000)

Author 5 (1998)

Article # 1

REFERENCES:

Author 15 (1998)

Author 2 (1998)

Author 6 (2001)

Author 16 (1998)

Author 17 (1998)

Author 18 (1998)

Author 19 (1998)

Author 20 (1998)

Author 21 (1998)

Author 22 (1998)

Author 23 (1998)

Author 24 (1998)

Author 6 (2001)

REFERENCES:

Article # 2 Article # 3

REFERENCES:

Article # n

Author 2 (1998)

Author 2 (1998)

Author 6 (2001)

Author 6 (2001)

Author 6 (2001)

Author 7 (2002)

Author 8 (1969)

Author 9 (2000)

Co-citation [Author 2 (1998), Author 6 (2001)] = 3

(...)

Figure 2. Co-citation count

was repeated in order to observe any changes thatmight have taken place in the influence of theseworks.

The second stage was to perform a co-citationanalysis based on the most cited document of thewhole sample period (1980–2000), and of eachof the sub-periods, in order to trace relationships

between them and identify schools of thought andprevailing topics of research.

Co-citation analysis is based on the distributionfrequencies obtained from the citations count, byforming all the pairs possible from the 100 mostfrequently cited documents and counting all thearticles that cite both documents (Figure 2). These



counts are then arranged on a 100 × 100 squaresymmetrical matrix in which the main diagonalremains undefined (because there is no point incounting the co-citation of a document with itself).The analysis is limited to the 100 most cited doc-uments because the software used does not per-mit calculation of correlations matrices of greaterdimensions.

Once the co-citation counts were obtained, weused the computer techniques described in McCain(1990) to map the intellectual structure of the dis-cipline. According to this, the closeness of docu-ment points on such maps is algorithmically relatedto their similarity as perceived by citers. We user-Pearson as a measure of similarity between doc-ument pairs, because it registers the likeness inshape of their co-citation count profiles over allother documents in the set (White and McCain,1998).

The use of r-Pearson as a measure of similar-ity rather than the raw co-citation frequency offersat least two advantages: (1) for any given pair ofdocuments, Pearson’s correlation coefficient servesas a measure, not of the frequency with which thetwo were cited (raw citation frequency), but of thedegree of similarity between their co-citation pro-files and those of the rest of the works considered:two works that are always co-cited along with athird, but rarely with any others, will have strongpositive correlation and can be said to be consid-ered by the citing population to have some rela-tionship or similarity to one another. Secondly, thecorrelation coefficient also overcomes differencesof scale between a document that is very frequentlycited and other very similar ones less frequentlycited, because this fact would limit their possibil-ity of being co-cited (Kerlinger, 1973; White andMcCain, 1998).

There are two ways to treat the main diagonalwhen calculating correlation coefficients. The firstof these involves taking the sum of the three high-est scores and dividing them by two, which givesan overall indication of the relative importance ofa given work within the field (White and Griffith,1981); the other option (McCain, 1990) is simplyto consider it missing data and to apply the cri-terion of omitting the two cases (pairwise delete).For the purposes of this study, after trying boththese methods, we have taken the second optionbecause no significant differences were seen in theresulting configurations. For this reason and forthe sake of simplicity, we decided to ignore the

scores on the main diagonal when calculating thecorrelation coefficients for the pairs of documents.

The next step in the process was to plot the datain a sufficiently reduced space to form a readablegraph. For this we decided to use multidimen-sional scaling, henceforth MDS, which requires theuse of a similarity matrix. It is a procedure bywhich maps are made from the correlation matrixof the items under analysis in order to explorethe structure underlying the whole set of items.MDS, therefore, gives a table with the coordinatesfor each document plotted on a two-dimensionalplane. Its main purpose is to collate the maximumamount of information from the original data inonly two or three dimensions; in other words, toreduce the spatial dimension. This simplificationinevitably distorts the original distances and can-not fully account for all the variance that appearsin the proximity matrix.

The software package used in this case sum-marizes the variance in terms of a goodness offit index known as ‘stress’,4 which represents theapproximate difference between points in the orig-inal pattern and how they appear in the final one.This index can be complemented with Sheppard’sdiagram.5

The stress value depends on the number of itemsanalyzed and their original configuration, such thatfor a given initial configuration the stress indexincreases with the number of items analyzed; inother words, the more items that are mapped, thepoorer the goodness of fit. This fact was decisivein determining the number of documents that wereselected for mapping. Figure 3 gives the stressvalues for the numbers of items mapped in eachof the periods analyzed. We decided to map the50 documents most frequently cited between 1980and 2000 and the 20 most cited during each of

4 The raw stress value of a configuration is defined by: stress =∑[dij − f (δij )]2, where dij denotes the reproduced distances,

given the respective number of dimensions, and δij denotesthe input data (i.e., observed distances). The expression f (δij )

indicates a non-metric, monotone transformation of the observedinput data (distances). Thus, the smaller the stress value, thebetter the fit of the reproduced distance matrix to the observeddistance matrix (STATISTICA VI Manual).5 In a Sheppard diagram the original distances are plotted onthe x-axis and the distances that appear in the new arrangementon the y-axis. With the appropriate scale, a cluster of pointsarranged in a diagonal line will be indicative of goodness of fit.



0

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the sub-periods because the resulting stress valueis indicative of a good fit.6 Note that more itemscould have been included on each map, but wedecided to include only as many documents aswould yield acceptable goodness of fit indices; thatis, we opted for quality in terms of goodness of fitrather than quantity in the number of documentsthat were mapped.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This section contains the results of the citation andco-citation analyses of the bibliographic referencesmade by the 1045 authors in the 870 articlespublished in the SMJ from its foundation in 1980through 2000. As we have explained in the sectionon methodology, in order to highlight changes inthe intellectual basis this set of articles was dividedinto three subsets: one for each of the sample sub-periods. The first comprised 165 articles publishedin the issues that appeared between 1980 and1986; the second, a total of 324 works publishedbetween 1987 and 1993; and the third, 381 articlespublished in the last sub-period, 1994–2000. In all41,674 bibliographic references to 21,696 differentworks were analyzed, giving an average of 47.9references per article.

A preliminary study of the citations showed thatby far the most frequently cited publication wasthe SMJ (Table 1), a fact which compensates forsome of the bias resulting from not including morejournals in the study.

Moreover, the frequency distribution of the datesof the citations analyzed (Figure 4) reveals thatmost of the cited works were published from themid-1970s onwards; that is, at a time that largelycoincides with our study period.

The most influential works in strategicmanagement research: 1980–2000

The first and second columns in Table 2 show the50 most cited works and their frequency in thearticles published in the SMJ during the 21 yearscovered by the study, arranged in order of thenumber of citations.

Obviously, the works of earliest date havebeen available to the scientific community for the

6 Kruskal (1964) suggests interpreting ‘stress’ values as follows:0 = perfect; 0.025 = excellent; 0.05 = good; 0.1 = fair; 0.2 =poor.

Table 1. Journal citation frequency

Cited journal Citationsreceived

Relativefrequency

Strategic Management Journal 3930 17.6%Academy of Management Journal 1717 7.7%Administrative Science Quarterly 1649 7.4%Academy of Management Review 1311 5.9%Harvard Business Review 836 3.7%Management Science 783 3.5%Journal of Financial Economics 474 2.1%American Economic Review 461 2.1%Journal of Management 384 1.7%Organizational Science 349 1.6%Others journals cited 10,411 46.7%Total cites to journal’s articles 22,305 100.0%

longest time and thus, strictly speaking, have themost opportunity of being cited. This could biasresults but only to a limited degree, in our view,because influence is a construct that depends onthe passing of time; in other words, in order tobe considered influential, a work not only has toaccumulate citations but has to do so over a fairlylengthy period of time.

A few remarks regarding the data thus obtained:

• Of the 20 most frequently cited works, 18 werepublished in book form and only two as articlesin journals. Given that most of the articles thatappear in the journal considered in this study areNorth American in origin, this indicates a con-trast with the findings of Usdiken and Pasadeos(1995), regarding the tendency among authors ofthat nationality to use articles published in jour-nals as their source of data for research workand therefore to rely more heavily on empiricalstudies.

• Porter (1980, 1985) represents a contributionto industrial economics, in particular, the struc-ture–conduct–performance paradigm, of suchweight as to place this author at the forefront ofthose influencing strategic management researchduring the period considered.

• The two articles included among the 20 mostinfluential works were written by Wernerfelt(1984) and Barney (1991). The former was thepioneer of the resource-based view of the firm,while the latter advanced this by developing amodel for identifying the features of strategicresources and thus for defining those constitut-ing a source of competitive advantage. There is



0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

1739

1861

1884

1890

1900

1906

1909

1915

1920

1923

1926

1929

1932

1935

1938

1941

1944

1947

1950

1953

1956

1959

1962

1965

1968

1971

1974

1977

1980

1983

1986

1989

1992

1995

1998

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Table 2. Raw and relative citation frequency

Rank Document cited 1980–2000n = 870

1980–86n = 165

1987–93n = 324

1994–2000n = 381

1 Porter (1980) 266 30.6% 41 24.8% 121 37.3% 104 27.3%2 Rumelt (1974) 166 19.1% 40 24.2% 83 25.6% 43 11.3%3 Porter (1985) 135 15.5% 0 0.0% 60 18.5% 75 19.7%4 Chandler (1962) 131 15.1% 35 21.2% 56 17.3% 40 10.5%5 Williamson (1975) 131 15.1% 13 7.9% 62 19.1% 56 14.7%6 Nelson and Winter (1982) 114 13.1% 0 0.0% 40 12.3% 74 19.4%7 Pfeffer and Salancik (1978) 107 12.3% 19 11.5% 38 11.7% 50 13.1%8 Miles and Snow (1978) 105 12.1% 20 12.1% 52 16.0% 33 8.7%9 Cyert and March (1963) 103 11.8% 25 15.2% 41 12.7% 37 9.7%

10 Thompson (1967) 103 11.8% 27 16.4% 43 13.3% 33 8.7%11 Hofer and Schendel (1978) 101 11.6% 39 23.6% 44 13.6% 18 4.7%12 Wernerfelt (1984) 95 10.9% 1 0.6% 15 4.6% 79 20.7%13 Barney (1991) 88 10.1% 0 0.0% 5 1.5% 83 21.8%14 Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) 88 10.1% 22 13.3% 35 10.8% 31 8.1%15 Andrews (1971) 80 9.2% 18 10.9% 34 10.5% 28 7.3%16 Penrose (1959) 76 8.7% 3 1.8% 22 6.8% 51 13.4%17 Ansoff (1965) 75 8.6% 28 17.0% 30 9.3% 17 4.5%18 Williamson (1985) 72 8.3% 0 0.0% 28 8.6% 44 11.5%19 Scherer (1980) 67 7.7% 5 3.0% 27 8.3% 35 9.2%20 Quinn (1980) 66 7.6% 10 6.1% 40 12.3% 16 4.2%21 Prahalad and Hamel (1990) 64 7.4% 0 0.0% 19 5.9% 45 11.8%22 Dierickx and Cool (1989) 63 7.2% 0 0.0% 7 2.2% 56 14.7%23 Jensen and Meckling (1976) 63 7.2% 2 1.2% 26 8.0% 35 9.2%24 Weick (1969) 61 7.0% 6 3.6% 26 8.0% 29 7.6%25 March and Simon (1958) 59 6.8% 10 6.1% 24 7.4% 25 6.6%26 Mintzberg (1978) 58 6.7% 7 4.2% 39 12.0% 12 3.1%27 Bower (1970) 50 5.7% 13 7.9% 21 6.5% 16 4.2%28 Child (1972) 50 5.7% 8 4.8% 19 5.9% 23 6.0%29 Aldrich (1979) 49 5.6% 6 3.6% 24 7.4% 19 5.0%30 Barney (1986) 49 5.6% 0 0.0% 7 2.2% 42 11.0%31 Hannan and Freeman (1984) 47 5.4% 0 0.0% 18 5.6% 29 7.6%32 Lippman and Rumelt (1982) 47 5.4% 1 0.6% 20 6.2% 26 6.8%33 Mintzberg et al. (1976) 46 5.3% 14 8.5% 21 6.5% 11 2.9%34 Burns and Stalker (1961) 45 5.2% 14 8.5% 20 6.2% 11 2.9%35 Cohen and Levinthal (1990) 45 5.2% 0 0.0% 6 1.9% 39 10.2%36 Hambrick and Mason (1984) 45 5.2% 0 0.0% 26 8.0% 19 5.0%37 Rumelt (1984) 45 5.2% 0 0.0% 13 4.0% 32 8.4%38 Buzzell et al. (1975) 44 5.1% 23 13.9% 17 5.2% 4 1.0%39 Tushman and Anderson (1986) 44 5.1% 0 0.0% 15 4.6% 29 7.6%40 Hannan and Freeman (1977) 43 4.9% 3 1.8% 21 6.5% 19 5.0%41 Schendel and Hofer (1979) 43 4.9% 16 9.7% 18 5.6% 9 2.4%42 Palepu (1985) 42 4.8% 0 0.0% 21 6.5% 21 5.5%43 Rumelt (1991) 41 4.7% 0 0.0% 7 2.2% 34 8.9%44 Christensen and Montgomery (1981) 40 4.6% 4 2.4% 28 8.6% 8 2.1%45 Wrigley (1970) 40 4.6% 19 11.5% 16 4.9% 5 1.3%46 Peteraf (1993) 39 4.5% 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 39 10.2%47 Porter (1987) 39 4.5% 0 0.0% 19 5.9% 20 5.2%48 Rumelt (1982) 39 4.5% 5 3.0% 28 8.6% 6 1.6%49 Teece (1982) 38 4.4% 0 0.0% 16 4.9% 22 5.8%50 Caves and Porter (1977) 37 4.3% 4 2.4% 15 4.6% 18 4.7%

Note: n = number of articles published in every period.



no doubt, therefore, about the impact and rel-evance of these two articles in developing theresource-based view of the firm. Related works,such as Penrose (1959), Dierickx and Cool(1989), Lippman and Rumelt (1982), Rumelt(1984), Teece (1982), and Peteraf (1993), arealso seen to have exerted significant influence.

• Other examples of works that maintained a highprofile over the whole of the sample period arethose that introduced key concepts to the dis-cipline, such as Rumelt (1974), who exploresthe relationship between diversification strategy,corporate structure, and performance; Chandler(1962), who establishes the basis for a bet-ter understanding of the corporate developmentprocess within the firm, particularly the phe-nomena surrounding diversification; Miles andSnow (1978), who produced a typology of com-petitive strategies; and Thompson (1967), whointroduces the notions of cooperative and cor-porate strategies and the formation of alliances.In particular, Rumelt (1974) helped businessmanagement to earn its status as a modern, sci-entifically based discipline. Another prominentset of works are those commonly consideredthe seminal studies providing the structure uponwhich the discipline would later be developed:Andrews (1971) and Ansoff (1965).

• A further outcome is the marked influence ofa series of works that have proposed differ-ent approaches to the study of strategy, somewith a more economic focus, such as transac-tion cost economics (Williamson, 1975, 1985),agency theory (Jensen and Meckling, 1976), andstrategic groups (Caves and Porter, 1977); andothers more oriented towards organization, suchas the evolutionary theory (Nelson and Win-ter, 1982), the resource-dependence perspec-tive (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978), organizationalbehavior theory (Cyert and March, 1963), con-tingency theory (Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967),and organizational ecology (Hannan and Free-man, 1977, 1984).

Changes in influence

The next stage in the process was to analyzechanges in citation percentages in order to revealgains or losses in influence over the length ofthe study period and thus obtain a dynamic pic-ture of the transformations that have taken place

within the discipline. Table 2 also shows the per-centage of articles from that period that citedeach work. The three columns of the table showthis total count broken down into the three sub-periods, and Figure 5 records changes in the com-parative citation percentages for the different sub-periods considered. The white band shows the per-centage gain or loss of influence, from the firstsub-period (1980–86) to the second (1987–93),and the shaded band the percentage differencefrom the second sub-period (1987–93) to the third(1994–2000).

All of the works analyzed in the study fitone of a limited number of patterns (White andMcCain, 1998). One of the most common isfor documents to increase their influence fromthe first to the second sub-period and to repeatthe process from the second to the third. This,of course, indicates a trend of increasing influ-ence over the entire study period; examples ofworks exhibiting this pattern are, in order oftheir percentage gain from the first to the sec-ond sub-period: Porter (1985), Nelson and Win-ter (1982), Williamson (1975), Jensen and Meck-ling (1976), Prahalad and Hamel (1990), Lippmanand Rumelt (1982), Hannan and Freeman (1984),Scherer (1980), Penrose (1959), Teece (1982),Tushman and Anderson (1986), Wernerfelt (1984),Rumelt (1984), Dierickx and Cool (1989), Bar-ney (1986), Rumelt (1991), Cohen and Levinthal(1990), Barney (1991), Child (1972), Pfeffer andSalancik (1978), and Peteraf (1993). By the endof the 1990s, the most outstanding gains withinthis group were registered by Nelson and Win-ter (1982), Prahalad and Hamel (1990), Pen-rose (1959), Wernerfelt (1984), Dierickx and Cool(1989), Barney (1991), Rumelt (1991), Cohenand Levinthal (1990), Barney (1991), and Peteraf(1993). As can be appreciated, all of these worksrelate to the resource-based view.

Another discernible pattern is that exhibited byworks with a rising profile between the first andsecond sub-periods but declining towards the endof the period as a whole. This may indicate that thework in question reached and passed its maximumweight of influence during the period in question,and appears to suggest that those with the up–uppattern, mentioned earlier, have not yet reachedsuch a point. Works displaying this second pat-tern are Porter (1980), Williamson (1975), Ham-brick and Mason (1984), Mintzberg (1978), Palepu



-25% -20% -15% -10% -5% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%

Hofer & Schendel (1978)

Buzzell et al. (1975)

Ansoff (1965)

Wrigley (1970)

Schendel & Hofer (1979)

Chandler (1962)

Thompson (1967)

Lawrence & Lorsch (1967)

Cyert & March (1963)

Burns & Stalker (1961)

Mintzberg (1978)

Bower (1970)

Andrews (1971)

Peteraf (1993)

Pfeffer & Salancik (1978)

Child (1972)

March & Simon (1958)

Rumelt (1974)

Barney (1991)

Cohen & Levinthal (1990)

Barney (1986)

Dierickx & Cool (1989)

Rumelt (1991)

Caves & Porter (1977)

Aldrich (1979)

Miles & Snow (1978)

Rumelt (1984)

Wernerfelt (1984)

Weick (1969)

Tushman & Anderson (1986)

Hannan & Freeman (1977)

Teece (1982)

Penrose (1959)

Scherer (1980)

Hannan & Freeman (1984)

Lippman & Rumelt (1982)

Rumelt (1982)

Porter (1987)

Prahalad & Hamel (1990)

Christensen & Montgomery (1981)

Quinn (1980)

Palepu (1985)

Jensen & Meckling (1976)

Mintzberg et al. (1976)

Hambrick & Mason (1984)

Williamson (1985)

Williamson (1975)

Nelson & Winter (1982)

Porter (1985)

Porter (1980)

Compared 1980-1986 to 1987-1993

Compared 1987-1993 to 1994-2000

Figure 5. Changes in influence



(1985), Quinn (1980), Christensen and Mont-gomery (1981), Porter (1987), Rumelt (1982),Hannan and Freeman (1977), Weick (1969), Milesand Snow (1978), Aldrich (1979), Rumelt (1974),and March and Simon (1958).

Theoretically, other possible patterns would befor works to begin by losing influence only to gainit later, though there were no cases of this, andthe lose–lose pattern followed by works whoseinfluence declines in both the second and thirdsub-periods of the 21-year study period. The lat-ter applies to works such as Hofer and Schendel(1978), Buzzell, Gale, and Sultan (1975), Ansoff(1965), Wrigley (1970), Schendel and Hofer(1979), Chandler (1962), Thompson (1967), Law-rence and Lorsch (1967), Cyert and March (1963),Burns and Stalker (1961), Mintzberg (1978),Bower (1970), and Andrews (1971), generally con-sidered to be the founding fathers of the discipline.This trend, taken in combination with the fact thatthese are some of the most influential works of thewhole study period, is even further proof of theirextraordinary contribution to the development ofthe discipline.

Shown below are the results of the co-citationanalysis conducted on the most influential worksthroughout the whole 20-year study period andeach of the 7-year sub-periods considered.

The intellectual structure of strategicmanagement research: 1980–2000

In the maps, the size of the points is proportionalto the frequency of citation, and documents withsimilar co-citation profiles tend to show up in clus-ters. Thus, works that are closely related to otherstend to occupy a central position in the ‘intellectualspace,’ while those that are only loosely relatedtend to appear on the periphery. It is, therefore,easy to see whether schools of thought or otherintellectual groups are central or peripheral (Whiteand McCain, 1998).

Figure 6 shows the pattern that emerges for the50 most influential works from 1980 to 2000.The goodness of fit index, s80–00 = 0.090, can beconsidered good (see Figure 3).

What appears most striking is the central posi-tion occupied by Porter (1980, 1985) and others,such as Scherer (1980), Caves and Porter (1977),Williamson (1975), Rumelt (1974), and Chandler(1962).

The pattern also shows the right-hand side tobe taken up by works dealing with the study ofdiversification strategies and how these relate toperformance. Thus, for example, in his doctoralthesis, Wrigley (1970) proposes a typology fordiversification and corporate structures that wouldsubsequently be taken up by Rumelt (1974) in hisquantitative study of one of the hypotheses postu-lated by Chandler (1962), which stated that differ-ent strategy/structure patterns have different effectson a firm’s performance. Within the same researcharea, Porter (1987), Palepu (1985), Christensen andMontgomery (1981), and Rumelt (1982) conductempirical studies designed to reveal the effects ofdiversification strategies on a firm’s performance.

Alongside these works, and occupying similarpositions, are Williamson (1975, 1985) and Jensenand Meckling (1976) on Transaction Cost Theoryand Agency Theory, respectively. These key workswere written in response to the debate over the ori-gins of the firm and how the limits of this are to bedetermined, and have practical implications whenit comes to analyzing integration, externalization,diversification, and internationalization strategies.Thus Organizational Economics has been a usefulaid to analyzing these kinds of issue (Hoskissonet al., 1999).

In the top left-hand area of the graph thereis a dense cluster formed by a series of worksrelating to the resource-based view of the firm.This series features not only the works of Pen-rose (1959) and Wernerfelt (1984) but also impor-tant contributions such as Teece (1982), Barney(1986, 1991), Dierickx and Cool (1989), Praha-lad and Hamel (1990), Peteraf (1993), Lippmanand Rumelt (1982), Rumelt (1984, 1991), andCohen and Levinthal (1990). Occupying a promi-nent position alongside these is the seminal workby Nelson and Winter (1982) on the evolution-ary approach to the firm. Its presence alongsidea set of works dealing with resources and capa-bilities may be explained bearing in mind thatboth of these approaches converge once organiza-tions are defined as a specific set of attributes andresources, referred to in evolutionary theory as cor-porate routines and in the resource-based view ascompetencies or capabilities.

The left-hand side of the graph features worksthat attribute a decisive role to environmentalconditions in exploring the factors involved inthe long-term success or survival of the firm.



And

rew

s (1

971)

Ans

off

(196

5)

Bar

ney

(198

6)

Bar

ney

(199

1)

Bow

er (

1970

)

Bur

ns &

Sta

lker

(196

1)Buz

zell

et a

l (19

75)

Cav

es &

Por

ter

(197

7)

Coh

en &

Lev

inth

al (

1990

)

Cye

rt &

Mar

ch (

1963

)

Cha

ndle

r (1

962)

Chi

ld (

1972

)

Chr

iste

nsen

& M

ontg

omer

y (1

981)

Die

rick

x &

Coo

l (19

89)

Ham

bric

k &

Mas

on (

1984

)

Han

nan

& F

reem

an (

1977

)

Han

nan

& F

reem

an (

1984

)

Hof

er &

Sch

ende

l (19

78)

Jens

en &

Mec

klin

g (1

976)

Law

renc

e &

Lor

sch

(196

7)

Lip

pman

& R

umel

t (19

82)

Mar

ch &

Sim

on (

1958

)

Mile

s &

Sno

w (

1978

)

Min

tzbe

rg (1

978)

Min

tzbe

rg e

t al (

1976

)

Nel

son

& W

inte

r (1

982)

Pale

pu (

1985

)

Penr

ose

(195

9)

Pete

raf

(199

3)

Pfef

fer

& S

alan

cick

(19

78)

Port

er (1

980)

Port

er (1

985)

Port

er (1

987)

Prah

alad

& H

amel

(19

90)

Qui

nn (

1980

)

Rum

elt (

1974

)

Rum

elt (

1982

)

Rum

elt (

1984

)

Rum

elt (

1991

)

Sche

ndel

& H

ofer

(197

9)

Sche

rer

(198

0)Teec

e (1

982)

Tho

mps

on (

1967

)

Tus

hman

& A

nder

son

(198

6)

Wei

ck (

1969

)

Wer

nerf

elt (

1984

)

Will

iam

son

(197

5)

Will

iam

son

(198

5)

Wri

gley

(197

0)

Ald

rich

(19

79)

Figu

re6.

Inte

llect

ualst

ruct

ure

ofst

rate

gic

man

agem

entre

sear

ch:19

80–20

00(s

=0.

0971

)



These authors see firms as operating in a com-petitive world that might be described as Darwin-ist, since it is environmental factors that decidewhich firms will succeed or survive and whichwill fail. Thus, Hannan and Freeman (1977) pro-vide the basis for population ecology theory, whileHannan and Freeman (1984) develop the struc-tural inertia model, which establishes that firmsincur great risks in trying to adapt to their envi-ronment, and therefore that the survivors will bethe ones that include inertia in their strategy andstructure, because this makes them more reliable.Another work that emerges in relation to theseis Tushman and Anderson (1986), which explorespatterns of technological change and the impactof major technological breakthroughs on environ-mental conditions (uncertainty, munificence andcorporate growth rate).

The lower area of the graph is taken up byworks such as Chandler (1962), Ansoff (1965),and Andrews (1971) where, as Rumelt, Schendel,and Teece (1994) report, the basic elements of thefield of strategic management are to be found: theyhelp to define various concepts and proposals, suchas how strategy affects performance, the impor-tance of external opportunities and internal com-petencies, the notion of strategy-based structure,the practical differences between formulation andimplementation, and the active role of the membersof the management team in strategic management.

Another work that occupies a central position onthe graph is Thompson (1967). In their review ofthe field of strategic management, Hoskisson et al.(1999) actually condemn Rumelt et al. (1994) fortheir failure to take this contribution into consid-eration and acclaim Thompson (1967) as the firstto introduce the notions of competitive and coop-erative strategies and the formation of alliances,the forerunners of strategic networks and alliances.Their work also helped to provide better under-standing of the implications of corporate strategyby introducing the notion of divisional interdepen-dence.

Contemporary with the works just mentioned isthat of Buzzell et al. (1975) published in the Har-vard Business Review. This article reported on theclose correlation between market share and prof-itability that had emerged from a statistical surveyof a large sample of firms (PIMS Programme).

Other influential works to be found in the lowerarea of the graph are, for example, Cyert andMarch (1963), which retrieves the idea of the firm

as a collective of groups with different and vary-ing interests, able to adapt to the uncertainties oftheir environment by following the principles ofsatisficing behavior in problem solving (Cuervoand Fernandez, 1999); and Pfeffer and Salancik(1978), which highlights the importance of thepower struggle/power-sharing in the environmentand therefore of mutual dependence between orga-nizations, thus developing what has come to beknown as the resource-dependence theory.

Another two high-profile titles are those ofMintzberg (1978) and Miles and Snow (1978).These authors make two significant contributionsto the area of corporate patterns: the former intro-duced the idea of structural patterns, while Milesand Snow are responsible for the notions of defen-sive, prospective, analytical, and reactive strategicpatterns.

This cluster of works situated in the lower areaof the graph reveals the overall predominance ofthe influence of Organizational Theory, which hasan articulating effect on the study of strategy andleads to a change of outlook that proposes strategyas a mode of action, more process- than content-oriented and concerned with distinguishing delib-erate action from spontaneous action and learning.The majority of these authors see the firm pri-marily as an organization made up of numerousindividuals interacting with one another. They arecritical, therefore, of the literature emerging fromthe field of economics, industrial organization andthe resource-based view of the firm, where strat-egy is viewed as a single rational mind decidingthe firm’s future on an individual basis (Cuervoand Fernandez, 1999).

Figure 6 reveals the contributions that havegrown from the three roots of strategic man-agement (Baum and Rao, 1998): (1) economics,which takes up the central, top and right handareas of the graph, and represents the contribu-tions made by microeconomics with transactioncost theory (Williamson, 1975, 1985), agency the-ory (Jensen and Meckling, 1976), evolutionaryeconomics (Nelson and Winter, 1982) and theresource-based view of the firm (Wernerfelt, 1984;Barney, 1991), and the contribution of industrialeconomics, with the structure–conduct–perfor-mance paradigm (Porter, 1980; Scherer, 1980) andthe study of strategic groups (Caves and Porter,1977); (2) sociology, found in the lower areas ofthe graph, with contributions from contingency



theory (Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967), resource-dependence theory (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978),and organizational ecology (Hannan and Freeman,1977, 1984); and (3) psychology, also in the lowerpart of the graph, with contributions such as Cyertand March (1963), Mintzberg (1978), and Quinn(1980).

Changes in the intellectual structure ofstrategic management

In order to observe changes in relationships, wemapped the sub-periods using the 20 works mostfrequently cited in the articles published in eachperiod. Table 3 summarizes the references used inthe mapping process.

A number of important observations can bemade from a preliminary analysis of these data.References that appear in italics refer to worksincluded among the top 20 in each of the sub-periods considered. Some authors, such as Whiteand McCain (1998), go so far as to refer to themas the ‘canonical literature.’ They include: Porter(1980), Rumelt (1974), Chandler (1962), Cyert andMarch (1963), Pfeffer and Salancik (1978), andWilliamson (1975).

As we turn from the first to the second period,however, several works disappear from among the20 most influential; some examples are Buzzellet al. (1975), Wrigley (1970), Schoeffler, Buzzell,and Heany (1974), Schendel and Hofer (1979),Mintzberg, Raisinghani, and Theoret (1976), Burnsand Stalker (1961), Bower (1970), and Ackoff(1970); while others, such as Porter (1985), Nel-son and Winter (1982), Quinn (1980), Mintzberg(1978), Williamson (1985), Christensen and Mont-gomery (1981), Rumelt (1982), and Scherer(1980), enter to form part of the group.

By the time of the second transition, that is,towards the latter half of the 1990s, works fallingfrom the top 20 are, for example, Miles and Snow(1978), Hofer and Schendel (1978), Thompson(1967), Quinn (1980), Mintzberg (1978), Lawrenceand Lorsch (1967), Andrews (1971), Ansoff(1965), Christensen and Montgomery (1981), andRumelt (1982); these foremost positions are takenup meanwhile by works such as Barney (1991),Wernerfelt (1984), Dierickx and Cool (1989), Pen-rose (1959), Prahalad and Hamel (1990), Bar-ney (1986), Peteraf (1993), Cohen and Levinthal(1990), Jensen and Meckling (1976), and Rumelt(1991).

The intellectual structure of strategic managementresearch in the early 1980s

Figure 7 shows the configuration of the 20 worksmost frequently cited in the articles publishedin the SMJ from 1980 to 1986, a period whenthe discipline was still considered to be in itsdeveloping stage. The pattern reveals the funda-mental role of the works of Chandler (1962),Ansoff (1965), Lawrence and Lorsch (1967), Milesand Snow (1978), Hofer and Schendel (1978),Andrews (1971), Cyert and March (1963), andThompson (1967), who introduced what wouldprove to be the key concepts and ideas of the dis-cipline as it was to develop.

Together with the group just mentioned, twoworks appeared that played a decisive role in thesubsequent development of strategic managementresearch: (1) Porter (1980), where the five compet-itive forces model was first introduced, is the workwith the highest citation frequency of the period;considering the year of publication of this work,this is an eloquent indication of its impact and dis-semination among the academic community; and(2), the work of Rumelt (1974), who used quanti-tative techniques on a sizeable sample to examinehow strategy type and corporate structure relate toperformance. Hoskisson et al. (1999) describe thiswork as having paved the way for the use of quan-titative methodology in subsequent studies withinthe discipline.

Intellectual structure in the period leading up tothe 1990s (Figure 8)

This map shows how the central position in theintellectual structure was held by two works ofPorter (1980, 1985), where such key conceptsof the discipline as the five competitive forcesmodel and the value chain were first introduced.Chandler (1962), in which the concepts of strategyand structure were presented, retained its centralposition at the forefront.

The lower part of the map continues to be occu-pied by Cyert and March (1963), Andrews (1971),Mintzberg (1978), and Quinn (1980), who placethe emphasis on decision-making as central tothe role of management. Positioned more towardsthe periphery, and therefore in a complementarycapacity, we find the works of Williamson (1975,1985) on transaction cost economics and Nelsonand Winter (1982) who develop the evolution-ary theory. Another important group is formed by



Tabl

e3.

The

20do

cum

ents

sele

cted

for

map

ping

inev

ery

subp

erio

d

1980

–86

(n=

165)

1987

–93

(n=

324)

1994

–20

00(n

=38

1)

Cc

Cite

dre

fere

nce

Cc

Cite

dre

fere

nce

Cc

Cite

dre

fere

nce

4124

.4%

Por

ter

(198

0)12

137

.5%

Por

ter

(198

0)10

427

.3%

Por

ter

(198

0)40

24.2

%Rum

elt(1

974)

8325

.6%

Rum

elt(1

974)

8321

.8%

Bar

ney

(199

1)39

23.6

%H

ofer

and

Sche

ndel

(197

8)62

19.1

%W

illiam

son

(197

5)79

20.7

%W

erne

rfel

t(1

984)

3521

.2%

Cha

ndle

r(1

962)

6018

.5%

Porter

(198

5)75

19.7

%Po

rter

(198

5)28

17.0

%A

nsof

f(1

965)

5617

.3%

Cha

ndle

r(1

962)

7419

.4%

Nel

son

&W

inse

r(1

982)

2716

.4%

Tho

mps

on(1

967)

5216

.0%

Mile

san

dSn

ow(1

978)

5614

.7%

Die

rick

xan

dC

ool(1

989)

2515

.2%

Cye

rtan

dM

arch

(196

3)44

13.6

%H

ofer

and

Sche

ndel

(197

8)56

14.7

%W

illiam

son

(197

5)23

13.9

%B

uzze

llet

al.(1

975)

4313

.3%

Tho

mps

on(1

967)

5113

.4%

Penr

ose

(195

9)22

13.3

%Law

renc

ean

dLor

sch

(196

7)41

12.7

%C

yert

and

Mar

ch(1

963)

5013

.1%

Pfe

ffer

and

Sala

ncik

(197

8)20

12.1

%M

iles

and

Snow

(197

8)40

12.3

%N

elso

nan

dW

inte

r(1

982)

4511

.8%

Prah

alad

and

Ham

el(1

990)

1911

.5%

Wrigl

ey(1

970)

4012

.3%

Qui

nn(1

980)

4411

.5%

Will

iam

son

(198

5)19

11.5

%Pfe

ffer

and

Sala

ncik

(197

8)39

12.0

%M

intz

berg

(197

8)43

11.3

%Rum

elt(1

974)

1810

.9%

And

rew

s(1

971)

3811

.7%

Pfe

ffer

and

Sala

ncik

(197

8)42

11.0

%B

arne

y(1

986)

1710

.3%

Scho

effie

ret

al.(1

974)

3510

.8%

Law

renc

ean

dLor

sch

(196

7)40

10.5

%C

hand

ler

(196

2)16

9.7%

Shen

delan

dH

ofer

(197

9)34

10.5

%A

ndre

ws

(197

1)39

10.2

%Pe

tera

f(1

993)

148.

5%M

intz

berg

etal

.(1

976)

309.

3%A

nsof

f(1

965)

3910

.2%

Coh

enan

dLev

inth

al(1

990)

148.

5%B

urns

and

Stal

ker

(196

1)28

8.6%

Will

iam

son

(198

5)37

9.7%

Cye

rtan

dM

arch

(196

3)13

7.9%

William

son

(197

5)28

8.6%

Chr

iste

nsen

and

Mon

tgom

ery

(198

1)35

9.2%

Sche

rer

(198

0)13

7.9%

Bow

er(1

970)

288.

6%R

umel

t(1

982)

359.

2%Je

nsen

and

Mec

klin

g(1

976)

127.

3%A

ckof

f(1

970)

278.

3%Sc

here

r(1

980)

348.

9%R

umel

t(1

991)

N,ar

ticle

spu

blis

hed;

C;ab

solu

tefr

eque

ncy;

c;re

lativ

efr

eque

ncy.



Ack

off

(197

0)

And

rew

s (1

971)

Ans

off

(196

5)

Bow

er (

1970

)

Bur

ns &

Sta

lker

(19

61)

Buz

zell

et a

l. (1

975)

Cye

rt &

Mar

ch (

1963

)

Cha

ndle

r (1

962)

Hof

er &

Sch

ende

l (19

78)

Law

renc

e &

Lor

sch

(196

7)M

iles

& S

now

(19

78)

Min

tzbe

rg e

t al (

1976

)

Pfef

fer

& S

alan

cik

(197

8)

Port

er (

1980

)

Rum

elt (

1974

)

Shen

del &

Hof

er (

1979

)

Scho

effl

er e

t al.

(197

4)

Tho

mps

on (

1967

)

Will

iam

son

(197

5)W

rigl

ey (

1970

)

Figu

re7.

Inte

llect

ualst

ruct

ure

ofst

rate

gic

man

agem

entre

sear

ch:19

80–86

(s=

0.09

82)



And

rew

s (1

971)

Ans

off

(196

5)

Cye

rt &

Mar

ch (

1963

)

Cha

ndle

r (1

962)

Chr

iste

nsen

& M

ontg

omer

y (1

981)

Hof

er &

Sch

ende

l (19

78)

Law

renc

e &

Lor

sch

(196

7)

Mile

s &

Sno

w (

1978

)

Min

tzbe

rg (

1978

)

Nel

son

& W

inte

r (1

982)

Pfef

fer

& S

alan

cik

(197

8)

Port

er (

1980

)Port

er (

1985

)

Qui

nn (

1980

)

Rum

elt (

1974

)

Rum

elt (

1982

) Sche

rer

(198

0)

Tho

mps

on (

1967

)

Will

iam

son

(197

5)W

illia

mso

n (1

985)

Figu

re8.

Inte

llect

ualst

ruct

ure

ofst

rate

gic

man

agem

entre

sear

ch:19

87–93

(s=

0.09

02)



Thompson (1967), Lawrence and Lorsch (1967),Miles and Snow (1978), and Pfeffer and Salancik(1978), which all feature the importance of envi-ronment on strategy.

Finally, the top part of the graph is occu-pied by Rumelt (1974), Christensen and Mont-gomery (1981), and Rumelt (1982). All of thesecontributed empirical studies aimed at exploringthe relationship between diversification strategyand performance. Christensen and Montgomery(1981), in particular, updates the sample of 128firms taken by Rumelt (1974) and uses it to explorethe economic performance of the firm in relationto two variables: diversification strategy and mar-ket structure. Finally, by updating and adding tothe information contained in his previous study,Rumelt (1982) demonstrates that the diversifica-tion strategy–performance relationship continueseven after the effects of variations in profitabilitywithin the sector have disappeared, thus revealingthe further possibility of distinguishing betweensector-related effects on performance and thosederived from a diversification strategy.

Intellectual structure towards the end of the1990s: the resource-based view

As in the preceding maps, a feature of Figure 9is the central position held by the works of Porter(1980, 1985) and Williamson (1975, 1985), but thisgraph also clearly shows a set of works that havedeveloped the resource-based view of strategy.Clustered around the influential work of Wernerfelt(1984) we find studies that provided the basis forthis approach, Penrose (1959), Nelson and Winter(1982) and later works in which different aspectsof this view were developed, such as Barney (1986,1991), Prahalad and Hamel (1990), Peteraf (1993)and Dierickx and Cool (1989).

CONCLUSIONS

The intellectual basis upon which a disciplinedevelops is largely revealed in the citations thatresearchers make in their writings. The citationsincluded in the articles published over a givenperiod of time and in a given area of researchmake up what is known as the literature in activecirculation (Saez et al., 1999). This is the termused to refer to the literature containing the livedata in use at a particular time and reveals the

intellectual structure from which the discipline isevolving. A study of the references that appear instrategic management research articles is a key toexploring and understanding the origins of scien-tific data accepted and utilized by the communityof specialists in the discipline.

Though numerous studies have described thestate and evolution of strategic management andhave identified different schools of thought, thereare no bibliometric studies that attempt to quantifyand address the intellectual structure of researchin this field. This paper, therefore, identifies themost influential published sources and explores thechanges that have come about in the intellectualstructure of strategic management research usingthe bibliographic references cited by a significantgroup of authors active in the discipline. This anal-ysis is conducted under the bibliometric hypothesisthat these references will be a reliable indicationof the influence of certain sources of data in theworks of these authors.

The findings presented and discussed in theprevious section lead to the following conclusions:

• The compilation of citations appearing in arti-cles published in the SMJ from its first issue upto and including December 2000 reveals workswritten in book form as exerting the strongestinfluence: of the 20 most frequently cited works,18 are books and two are articles published injournals. This is a tendency that appears to bechanging, judging from the citation tables formore recent periods: these reveal a growing useof articles from journals.

• Other exploratory studies of the field closelycoincide in naming works by Chandler (1962),Ansoff (1965), and Andrews (1971) as the writ-ings constituting the basis of the discipline.While this view is supported by the findingsof the present study, evidence also emerges ofthe importance and influence of other contem-porary works that have contributed to its for-mation from other perspectives, such as Pen-rose (1959), Cyert and March (1963), Thomp-son (1967), Lawrence and Lorsch (1967), andRumelt (1974).

• Analysis of the changes in the intellectual basisunderlying this discipline reveals a relativereduction in the number of citations of theabove-mentioned works, which are looked uponas classics. This indication of their decliningrecognition in print could be interpreted as a



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sign of the universal acceptance and integrationof the concepts they introduced and thereby oftheir contribution to the coming of age of thisdiscipline.

• Porter’s works (1980, 1985) confirm him as theauthor with the most influence in the develop-ment of the discipline, in spite of the fact thatour analysis of the dynamics of citation revealsthat his five competitive forces model, togetherwith the positioning-based view of strategy,in other words, the structure–conduct–perfor-mance paradigm associated with industrial orga-nization, has now been supplanted.

• Recently, the most important contribution tothe discipline proves to be the resource-basedview of the firm. Despite the fact that this viewdates back to the time of the publication of thearticle by Wernerfelt (1984), i.e. only 4 yearsafter Porter (1980), it was not until well into the1990s that it actually secured wide recognitionamong researchers in the field. This renewedinterest may have been the result of the boostit received from Barney (1991) and by the factthat in 1994, 10 years after it had first appeared,Wernerfelt’s article was awarded the SMJ ’s firstBest Paper Prize.

This study inevitably has its limitations, someresulting from the research design and others as adirect consequence of the bibliometric techniquesthat were employed. Among the main drawbackswith the research design were the selection of asingle journal and the division of the study periodinto three sub-periods. By selecting one journalonly and thereby conditioning the time period tobe studied, we inevitably place a limit on thepotential scope of our results, since the documentsthat were analyzed were a mere fraction of allstrategic management research works. It is possiblethat significant changes in these rankings couldappear if strategic management articles from awider range of journals were included. However,we are reasonably confident that the literatureanalyzed here represents the major research effortsmade in this discipline. The fact that the studyperiod was divided into three equal sub-periodsconditioned the evolution that was identified, butno more so than if any other number of sub-divisions had been made. Therefore, given thatthe purpose of this study was not to identifythe real periods of development of the discipline,an effort has been made to interpret the results

in broad, generic terms, to bear in mind thatthe boundaries separating the different periods areinevitably blurred and to resist the temptation todraw a time limit around the period of influenceof any particular approach during the course of thedevelopment of this area of research.

Moreover, this study is also subject to the limi-tations that are inherent in bibliometric techniques.Thus, for example, when compiling citations, it isimpossible to distinguish the motives for whichthey were made: whether the author’s intentionwas to refer to previous works and build up a the-oretical framework, or to criticize the document,display the author’s knowledge, adorn the text or,simply, to mention one of his/her own works. Incontrast to this, missing references to certain worksmay be a result of obliteration, in other words, theomission of references to works that have becometaken for granted to such a degree by the scien-tific community that they are no longer expresslycited, or, worse still, are for some obscure reasondeliberately omitted. These limitations are com-pensated to some degree by the strict review pro-cess to which the journal in question subjects arti-cles before their publication.

Furthermore, since the citations used for thepurposes of this study are taken from a givenperiod, works published towards the end of thisperiod have not been exposed to the scientificcommunity for as long as those published earlierand are therefore less likely to have been cited.This is an undeniable fact but, since we considerthe number of citations not so much as a signof quality but rather of influence, we feel it fairto acknowledge the fact that more recent worksmay not have had sufficient time to influence theliterature in this discipline.

Co-citation analysis also has its drawbacks. Thistechnique permits the classification of only a verysmall fraction of the documents cited and interpre-tation of the resulting maps is inevitably subjec-tive. However, though some documents are omit-ted, the clusters that emerge indirectly reveal theexistence of a group of researchers who share thesame interests and coincide in citing the same ref-erences (Callon et al., 1993).

Some of the limitations we have mentionedhave no solution; these, however, are not exclu-sive to bibliometrics but are present in any non-experimental discipline and in management in par-ticular. Others, however, can be addressed and



should provide the incentive to improve the tech-niques used in this study. In this respect, we intend,in future research, to enlarge the sample to includeother journals and thereby extend the study periodand increase the number of documents featured onthe maps; we want to enhance the interpretation ofthe maps in particular by applying social networkanalysis, in order to identify clusters and measuretheir density and centrality within the network ofco-citations within which they are embedded.

In any event, this study demonstrates the use of atool that has great potential for use in managementresearch. This type of analysis is possible in awide range of topics, especially newly developedareas such as the knowledge-based perspective ofthe firm and strategic networks, where bibliometricstudies have not yet been conducted.

It could also usefully be applied to other formsof scientific and technical writing, such as congressproceedings, doctoral theses and, in particular,patents. In this last area there are some recentstudies that use bibliometrics to analyze patentfiles in order to assess intangible assets and toexplore knowledge-related issues, in journals ofrecognized prestige. Examples of this type of studyare Almeida (1996), Stuart and Podolny (1996),Mowery, Oxley, and Silverman (1996), Coul-ter, Monarch, and Konda (1998), DeCarolis andDeeds (1999), Noyons, Moed, and Luwel (1999),McMillan and Hamilton (2000), Frost (2001), andRosenkopf and Nerkar (2001).

To sum up, studies such as this provide a quan-titative analysis of the state of the art as a comple-ment to, but never a substitute for, traditional qual-itative methods of reviewing the literature. Theycan be used as a tool to identify the authors, doc-uments, and journals most widely read among theresearchers in a given discipline and also to detectrelational links between them. The researcher cantherefore use these methods to identify the relevantliterature in any area of research, map its intellec-tual structure, and thus obtain a view of the fieldreflected in the behavior of its actors themselves.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Jose Aurelio Medina Gar-rido, Jose Daniel Lorenzo Gomez, Ramiro Mon-tealegre, Karel Cool (Associate Editor SMJ atINSEAD), and two anonymous reviewers at the

Strategic Management Journal for helpful com-ments on earlier versions of this paper.

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