The article, “Knowledge Combination: A Cocitation Analysis,” authored by Wenpin Tsai and Chia-hung Wu and published in The Academy of Management Journal in June 2010, delves into the fundamental question of how new knowledge is created within research communities. The authors begin by emphasizing that many scholars view combining existing knowledge as the key process for new knowledge creation, whether through incremental adjustments, discovering new applications, or inventing novel combinations. In the academic sphere, this link between knowledge combination and creation is evident in how researchers draw upon diverse previous studies to build the foundation for new articles.
Tsai and Wu propose that by examining how different prior studies are “cocited”—meaning they appear together in the reference list of a later article—one can gain a comprehensive picture of knowledge combinations and better understand the development and progress of a research field. Cocitation analysis, a bibliometric technique, thus serves as a tool to identify the connections among articles, suggesting that a later article combining two earlier ones indicates a linkage of knowledge from those sources.
The authors specifically apply this methodology to the management field to explore whether a single, interconnected knowledge base exists among dispersed management scholars or if there are multiple distinct, largely unconnected bodies of knowledge. They also acknowledge the ongoing philosophical debate within the field regarding the desired degree of consensus among researchers.
Methodology: To conduct their analysis, Tsai and Wu selected the Academy of Management Journal (AMJ) and three other prominent management journals for comparison: Administrative Science Quarterly (ASQ), Journal of Management (JM), and Organization Science (OS). These journals were chosen for their broad coverage of empirical work across various management content areas. The study focused on high-impact articles, specifically the 100 most influential articles published in each journal, identified using SSCI citation counts, from 1981 to 2008. The reference data from articles published in these journals during this period were then used to examine the cocitation patterns of these influential works. The authors constructed cocitation networks for each journal, where nodes represent articles and connections indicate cocitation relationships, to understand the overall structure of knowledge combination. They also employed clique analysis to identify densely connected subgroups of articles, representing distinct areas of knowledge combination within each journal.
Key Findings: The analysis yielded several significant insights:
- While each journal showed some overlap with others, each also maintained a “somewhat distinctive knowledge combination profile”.
- AMJ generated the highest number of cocitation pairs (1,366) and exhibited the highest cocitation network density and centralization among the journals studied, suggesting its network is dominated by a few frequently cocited articles.
- There were substantial nonoverlapping cocitation pairs between journals; for instance, 67% of AMJ‘s cocitation pairs were not found in any ASQ articles, highlighting distinct knowledge combination patterns.
- Distinctive “cliques” (densely connected subgroups) were identified in the journals. For example, AMJ displayed a unique clique of six articles primarily related to strategic human resource management (SHRM), which was entirely absent from ASQ‘s cocitation network. Conversely, ASQ had a distinctive clique of five articles combining sensemaking and innovation (particularly a routine-disruption view of innovation) that was not present in AMJ‘s network. These distinctive cliques represent specific research areas with foundational works intensively linked within a particular journal.
Implications: The authors conclude that these distinctive areas of knowledge combination between journals present “learning opportunities”. Journals can learn from others by examining how knowledge is combined differently, potentially leading to the identification of special issue opportunities to cover currently neglected research areas. For scholars, cocitation analysis can inform publication strategies, helping them understand how to strategically draw from prior research and position their papers for specific journals. For editors and reviewers, it can serve as a benchmark to assess their journal’s distinctive research areas and identify potential biases in the review process.
Despite its focus on only four journals and the top 100 most-cited papers, the study provides an initial framework for understanding how existing knowledge is combined in academic research, stimulating further exploration into how knowledge is socially constructed in the field.
Reference: Tsai, W., & Wu, C.-H. (2010). Knowledge combination: A cocitation analysis. The Academy of Management Journal, 53(3), 441–450. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25684331