Assessing the Origins, Evolution, and Prospects of the Literature on Knowledge Management: A Bibliometric Analysis

The current moment, from a multidimensional point of view (political, economic, social, organizational, etc.), is characterized by the wide extension and intensity of phenomena that are projected as scenarios of uncertainty while at the same time imposing the need to adopt strategies and practices of adaptation to these same scenarios. Among these adaptive strategies and practices, companies have developed different models of labor innovation, but those in which “knowledge management” appears as a significant element are particularly relevant, as it is seen as a resource with a first-rate capacity for mediation with the environment. Moreover, the models based on this component have allowed a clearer understanding of how issues such as the configuration of the company’s human capital (condensed into the different skills, knowledge, and abilities of the workforce) are articulated with the achievement of the company’s different objectives. Likewise, it is possible to clearly identify how innovation and knowledge management are a factor in the development of human capital that ends up redounding in the achievements of the organization to which they are linked. The purpose of this study is to provide a corpus that, by way of a cartography of the scientific production on the subject, allows the academic community to orient itself in this object of study. In relation to this purpose, the main objective of this paper is to carry out a systematic review of the literature in order to articulate the theoretical discussion with an inductive approach to the limits of the conceptual structure of knowledge management. To this end, this chapter presents as a strategy a bibliometric analysis of the object of study, making use of the Web of Science database to carry it out. This analysis is based on the following analytical components: (i) a quantitative analysis of the scientific production in the subject from a diachronic perspective as well as the impact of this production (based on a citation criterion); (ii) a cartographic delimitation of the areas of production in this subject based on quantitative criteria; (iii) the identification of production poles in this field based on the visibility of reference authors as well as (iv) the most productive journals on Knowledge Management and recent studies on this subject; (v) a characterization of the semantic field related to the object of study; (vi) a discussion of the evaluation of studies citing Knowledge Management; and finally, (vii) the delimitation of trends in this field. This bibliometric analysis was carried out on the basis of 12,512 studies published in Web of Science (WoS), from 1974 to 2022. To do this, we used the Biblioshiny package of RStudio tools and the VOSviewer program to explore the major research topics and the past in this field using evaluative, relational, and econometric literature data visualization techniques. This result reflects that knowledge management has reached an advanced level of complexity. This is reflected in the current polyhedron content, which acts as a conceptual umbrella. In addition, we demonstrate that econometric literature analysis is a relevant and useful method for scholars and practitioners involved in scholarly debates over knowledge in this field. The findings are both important and timely given the current global economic, political, and social climate. Through a comprehensive review of the literature, this study highlights the need for further research and development in this area. We also identified certain gaps in the literature that could be addressed in future studies.