A citation and co-citation analysis of 10 years of KM theory and practices

Abstract

In a previous issue of Knowledge Management Research & Practice (KMRP), we analysed the content and keywords of all articles published in the first decade of KMRP. With this article, we extend our preliminary analysis to the citation and co-citations made by these articles. The study covers all the 256 articles published. The most cited article was A dynamic theory of organisational knowledge creation by Nonaka. The most cited KMRP article was by Nonaka and Toyama: The knowledge-creating theory revisited: knowledge creation as a synthesizing process. The co-citation analysis of the 100 most cited articles in KMRP publications showed that four groups of topics emerged, one around communities and situated learning, the second group around networks, knowledge transfer and research methods, a third group around the foundations of knowledge management and a fourth group around intellectual capital.

Full text

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A Citation and Co- Citation Analysis of 10 Years of KM Theory and Practices
Christian Walter
IKI-SEA – Bangkok University
Rama 4 Road, Klong-Toey
10110 Bangkok - Thailand
Christian.w@bulive.net
Vincent Ribiere
IKI-SEA – Bangkok University
Rama 4 Road, Klong-Toey
10110 Bangkok - Thailand
vince@vincentribiere.com
Abstract
In the previous issue of Knowledge Management Research & Practice (KMRP) we analyzed the content and
keywords of all articles published in the first decade of KMRP. With this article we extend our preliminary analysis
to the citation and co-citations made by these articles. The study covers all the 256 articles published and analyzes
the citations and co-citations. The most cited article was A dynamic theory of organisational knowledge creation by
Nonaka (1994).The most cited KMRP article was Nonaka’s and Toyama (2003) The knowledge-creating theory
revisited: knowledge creation as a synthesizing process. The co-citation analysis of the 100 most cited articles in
KMRP publications showed that four groups of topics emerged, one around communities and situated learning, the
second group evolved around networks, knowledge transfer and research methods, a third group around the
foundations of knowledge management and a fourth group around intellectual capital.
Keywords: Co-Citation Analysis, Citation Analysis, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Management Research
and Practice
Introduction
In the first part of this article series (Ribiere & Walter, 2013), we explored the keywords and content of the first
decade of articles published in KMRP. In this article we complete the initial analysis of the KMRP articles by
performing a citation and co-citation analysis of the same articles. While a content and keyword analysis explores
the “what”, a citation and co-citation analysis explores the “who” and “how” of a scientific field. More specifically,
a citation analysis of the KMRP articles that focuses on who is cited most often, which can be seen as an indicator
for the impact of a publication. A co-citation analysis asks additionally, how a field evolved and who the most
prominent figures are. It also provides a means of tracking what concepts are related.
The article sets out to provide a comprehensive overview of the field of knowledge management, represented by the
citations of KMRP articles and citations within KMRP articles. KMRP was the first journal in the field of
Knowledge Management to receive an impact factor by Thomson Reuters and is therefore an appropriate choice to
conduct a co-citation analysis. While KMRP is itself a relatively young journal, the citations in the articles published
in KMRP allow nevertheless tracking the evolution of the knowledge management (KM) field since those articles
cite literature available before the time of publication.

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The article will provide a concise explanation co-citation analysis before providing insights about the data collection
and methodology. These chapters will be followed by the analysis of the results, as well as an analysis that takes the
findings of the first article of this short series into account. The article will conclude with an outlook of possible
future research avenues in the field of KM.
Co-Citation Analysis Concept
A co-citation analysis is a bibliometric concept that allows to analyze what is regarded as the consensus of what the
collective research agenda in a certain research field or journal is. A co-citation occurs when two articles share the
same reference (Lazer, Mergel, & Friedman, 2009). Every co-citation can be interpreted as a link between the
authors of those cited publications, where the article that cites these authors is the link between them. A co-citation
analysis allows different analysis. It can be used to explore relationships between authors that are not actively
collaborating, by looking at the similarity of citations. It also allows identifying emerging trends over time. The
main purpose of a co-citation analysis is however, to identify the major topics and themes that have been discussed
in the past. Co-citation analysis is also able to show how the combination of different perspectives develops research
areas or how different areas are conceptually linked. Co-citation has been used to investigates various research
areas, such as sociology and social network analysis (Lazer et al., 2009), the area of management research (Maanen,
2010), and information science (White & McCain, 1998; Zhao & Strotmann, 2008).
Research Methodology
This study took into account all the 256 Knowledge Management Research & Practice (KMRP) publications from
volume 1 issue 1 July 2003 to volume 10 issue 4 in September 2012. The ISI Web of Science (WoS) database
contains only data from the first issue in 2008. Scopus indexed KMRP from the first issue in 2006 to the most recent
issue. Therefore the information for all articles of KMRP was collected from Scopus. The citations for the missing
years were extracted from the actual articles by copying them into an excel spreadsheet. Every article and every
unique citation within the articles were given a specific ID. There are 8428 unique citations across all 256 KMRP
articles. The top 100 most cited articles (Top 20 in Table 2) within all KMRP issues were selected to then conduct a
co-citation analysis. A co-citation matrix was created and imported into Gephi. Gephi is an open-source network
visualization and analysis software (Gephi NGO, 2012).
The citation analysis of KMRP articles was done by extracting the data for citation from the ISI database, Scopus,
Google Scholar and Mendeley. Only Google Scholar (GS) and Mendeley provide data for all years of KMRP
publications. Mendeley is an online community for scientific research and reference manager. While GS, WoS and
Scopus provide citation counts, Mendeley provides a count called “reads”. This means the articles are not
necessarily cited by the user but are in a community member’s online library. The citations were collected during
November 2012.

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Data analysis and results
Table 1 reports the citation counts for the KMRP articles. Counts were taken from Google Scholar, Web of Science,
and Scopus, while reads were taken from Mendeley. The table shows a ranking in accordance with the GS citation
ranking. Interestingly, apart from the article “Stuff or love? How metaphors direct our efforts to manage knowledge
in organisations” by Andriessen G. (2008) none of the articles is referenced in WoS and Scopus at the same time.
One reason for this is obviously that neither Web of Science (WoS) nor Scopus index KMRP before 2008 and 2006
respectively but it also shows how long articles need to get traction in a scientific area and how difficult it is to write
scholarly articles that are noticed by the scientific community. The majority of articles in this ranking are published
in the first three years of the existence of KMRP. Interesting is the huge difference between the number of citations
indexed among all three citation counts. For the Andriessen (2008) article, GS counts 64 citations, WoS counts 24,
and Scopus counts only 17 citations. When the GS ranking is compared to the Mendeley ranking one can see that a
high count in citation not necessarily translate into being read or being part of a library. This is especially evident
with “Employee relationship and knowledge sharing: a case study of a Taiwanese finance and securities firm” by
Liao, S., Chang, J., Cheng, S., & Kuo, C. (2004), which ranks sixth in the GS ranking but would be ranked 111 in
the Mendeley reads ranking. Of course, the Mendeley ranking is does only cover a comparatively small part of the
scientific community, but it might give an idea how important an article is in terms of building an understanding of
the field. Not included in our analysis were any editorials, including the editorial paper Knowledge management
research & practice: visions and directions by Edwards, Handzic, Carlsson and Nissen (2003). However, it is worth
noting that the paper has a citation count of 91 in Google Scholar and a Mendeley read count of 12. This would
place the paper on the 5th place in the Google Scholar ranking and on the 15th place in the Mendeley ranking. Table
2 presents the ranking of the 22 most cited references in KMRP articles. This is, at the same time, a table of the most
central articles and books in the citation network and we can consider that they constitute a portion of the core body
of knowledge in the field of knowledge management. These articles are also among the 97 references used for the
co-citation analysis. The references were cut off at 97 with a count of 8 citations. There are an additional 20
references with 7 citations which would have exhausted a top 100 list. The 97 references are composed of 64 journal
articles, 32 books and 1 Ph.D. dissertation (Orr, 1990).
The top three citations are three well known books; The Knowledge Creating Company (Ikujiro Nonaka &
Takeuchi, 1995), Working Knowledge (T. Davenport & Prusak, 1998), and The Tacit Dimension (Polanyi, 1966). It
was surprising to find among the top 97 citations, 32 books and 3 of them ranked as the top 3 most cited references.
The most influential and earliest published references in the field of KM seem to have come from books and not
directly from research publications. Nonaka’s and Takeuchi’s Knowledge Creating Company (1995) is regarded as
one of the classics in the Knowledge Management literature and the SECI Model and the Concept of Ba are highly
influential, which is reconfirmed by the fact that Nonaka is the only author with three publications in the Top 22
ranking. Working Knowledge (1998) by Davenport and Prusak is another classic in the KM literature and provides a
concise overview and introduction into the topic of knowledge management. Davenport is himself mentioned a
second time in the ranking, with his joint publication with De Long, D. and Beers, M. on Building Successful
knowledge management projects (1997).

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Table 1 Top-cited KMRP Articles ranked by Google Scholar Citation Counts 2003-2012
Author
Title
Publi.
year
Google
Scholar
cites
Google
Scholar
rank
Web of
Science
cites
Web of
Science
Rank
Scopus
cites
Scopus
Rank
Mendeley
reads
Mendeley
rank
Nonaka, I., &
Toyama, R.
The knowledge-creating theory
revisited: knowledge creation as a
synthesizing process
(2003)
471
1
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
133
1
Ford, D. P., & Chan,
Y. E.
Knowledge sharing in a multi-cultural
setting: a case study
(2003)
119
2
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
10
38
Baskerville R.,
Dulipovici A.
The theoretical foundations of
knowledge management
(2006)
106
3
n/a
n/a
45
1
64
2
Ribière, V. M., &
Sitar, A.
Critical role of leadership in nurturing
a knowledge-supporting culture
(2003)
93
4
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
11
31
Andriessen G.
Stuff or love? how metaphors direct
our efforts to manage knowledge in
organisations
(2008)
64
5
24
1
17
5
17
14
Gourlay S.
Towards conceptual clarity for 'tacit
knowledge': A review of empirical
studies
(2006)
60
6
n/a
n/a
18
4
19
11
Liao, S., Chang, J.,
Cheng, S., Kuo, C.
Employee relationship and knowledge
sharing: a case study of a Taiwanese
finance and securities firm
(2004)
60
6
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
4
111
Usoro A., Sharratt
M.W., Tsui E.,
Shekhar S.
Trust as an antecedent to knowledge
sharing in virtual communities of
practice
(2007)
53
8
n/a
n/a
19
2
29
5
Wright, K.
Personal knowledge management:
supporting individual knowledge
worker performance
(2005)
52
9
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
15
16
Zhu, Z.
Knowledge management: towards a
universal concept or cross-cultural
contexts?
(2004)
49
10
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
15
17

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Finally, Polanyi is completing the top 3 with his defining book on the tacit knowledge dimension and his famous
quote “We know more than we can tell”. Grant, with his popular theory of the knowledge-based theory of the firm
(1996)and Alavi’s and Leidner’s (2001) comprehensive review of the field of knowledge management are among
the top cited articles, and so is the concept of communities of practice represented by Brown and Duguid (1991), and
Lave and Wenger (1991) with their earlier publication on situated learning. Interestingly, the latest/newest
publications among the references are from 2001, the already mentioned review of knowledge management by Alavi
and Leidner (2001) and Nonaka, Toyama and Kono (2000) on SECI, ba and leadership: a unified model of dynamic
knowledge creation . Given that 12 years have passed since these two publications, one might ask where among the
more recent publications one might be that will elevate knowledge management to the next level. It might also be
worth revisiting Alavi’s and Leidner’s (2001) article to see if the research issues mentioned have been
comprehensively addressed by more recent publications.
Rank
Times
Cited
%
overall
Author(s)
Year
Title
Type
1
91
36%
Nonaka, I., Takeuchi, H.,
(1995)
The Knowledge-Creating Company: How
Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of
Innovation.
Book
2
70
27%
Davenport, T., Prusak, L.
(1998)
Working knowledge: How organizations
manage what they know.
Book
3
51
20%
Polanyi, M.
(1966)
The Tacit Dimension.
Book
4
49
19%
Nonaka, I.
(1994)
A dynamic theory of organisational knowledge
creation.
Article
5
40
16%
Hansen, M.T., Nohria, N.T.,
Tierney, T.
(1999)
What's your strategy for managing knowledge?
Article
6
37
14%
Grant, R.
(1996)
Towards a knowledge-based theory of the firm.
Article
7
35
14%
Alavi, M.,
Leidner, D.,
(2001)
Review: Knowledge management and
knowledge management systems: conceptual
foundations and research issues.
Article
8
32
13%
Yin, R.K.,
(1989)
Case Study Research: Design and Methods.
Book
9
29
11%
Kogut, B.,
Zander, U.
(1992)
Knowledge of the firm, combinative
capabilities, and the replication of technology.
Article
10
26
10%
Szulanski, G.
(1996)
Exploring internal stickiness: impediments to
the transfer of best practice within the firm.
Article
11
25
10%
Cohen, WM.,
Levinthal, DA.
(1990)
Absorptive capacity, a new perspective on
learning and innovation.
Article
11
25
10%
Lave, J.
Wenger, E.
(1991)
Situated Learning Legitimate Peripheral
Participation.
Book
13
24
9%
Teece, D.J.,
Pisano, G.,
Shuen, A. (1997)
(1997)
Dynamic capabilities and strategic
management.
Article
14
23
9%
Brown, J.S., Duguid, P.,
(1991)
Organizational learning and communities- of-
practice: Toward a unified view of working,
learning and innovation.
Article
14
23
9%
Davenport T.,
De Long, D.,
Beers, M.
(1997)
Building Successful knowledge management
projects.
Article
16
22
9%
Nonaka I,
Toyama, R.,
Konno, N.
(2000)
SECI, ba and leadership: a unified model of
dynamic knowledge creation.
Article
16
22
9%
Barney, J.
(1991)
Firm resources and sustained competitive
advantage.
Article

6
16
22
9%
Spender, J.C.,
(1996)
Making knowledge the basis of a dynamic
theory of the firm.
Article
19
21
8%
Cook, S.
Brown J
(1999)
Bridging epistemologies: the generative dance
between organizational knowledge and
organizational knowing.
Article
19
21
8%
Nahapiet, J., Ghoshal, S.,
(1998)
Social capital, intellectual capital and the
organizational advantage.
Article
19
21
8%
Nonaka, I.
Konno, N.
(1998)
The concept of ‘Ba’: building a foundation for
knowledge creation.
Article
19
21
8%
Nonaka, I.
(1991)
The knowledge creating company
Book
Table 2 Top 22 Most Cited References in KMRP
Figure 1 presents the year of publications of the top 97 references (Publications and Books). We can notice that most
of the references (63%) were published during the period of 1995 to 2003 when KM became popular.
Figure 1 Time repartition of top 97 most cited references (in order to keep the graph readable, 5 book references
were not listed (1949, 1958, 1959, 1966, and 1967)
Lambe (2011) looked at the citation memory in 9 mainstream KM journals from 1994-2007 and found out that the
average citation median memory years was 5 years. For the KMRP journal, he reported that the average citation
memory was 7 years (one of the highest average value compared to the other KM journals studied), demonstrating a
larger year spread of past references. Lambe’s study only considered and sampled one year of publications and
references for each journal. Our study is much more complete since it covers 10 years of publications and it
acknowledges a larger reference to past articles and theories that emerged before the KM boom (mid nineties).
1
2
1 1 1 1
2
1 1 1
4
1
4
3
2
1 11 1 1
2
6
1
2
1 1
7
2
8
5
9
6
3
5
2
1 1 1
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Books Articles

7
Figure 2 Citation Memory 2003 to 2012 KMRP
Lambe’s (2011) makes a good point that in general KM journal citations have a tendency to reference recent
publications not putting enough attention to older research findings and theories, which are often still relevant and
that could strongly benefit the discipline. KM is about not re-inventing the wheel but unfortunately it looks like this
is what it is happening in some KM publications.
Based on our analysis of the KMRP citations, it looks like older theories and publications are well addressed and
referenced, but more recent ones are not as well included as we would have expected. As can be seen on Figure 1,
for the top 100 most cited publications, references after 2001 are inexistent for journal references. This is a period of
12 years from now! Hasn’t any good KM theory been published since then? Lambe’s paper (2011) starts to touch on
these issues that we believe are important to address and to understand to strengthen the KM academic discipline.
Figure 3 shows the network of citations in KMRP. The large nodes in the middle of the network represent the most
cited articles, listed in Table 2. The smaller hubs, that are especially visible around the dense center, represent
KMRP articles in their center and the citations that have not been co-cited, around them.
4
67 7
910 910 9 9
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Citation Memory in
Years (Median)
Year

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Figure 3 KMRP Citation Network created with Gephi
Table 3 shows how often an article was cited internally, or at least three times. Internal citations make only 2.8% of
all citations in KMRP. The network is of course less dense and looks much more fragmented (see Table 4 for
network statistics).
The pattern to cite Nonaka’s publications continues to show in the internal citation network. In fact, Nonaka and
Toyama’s article (2003) The knowledge-creating theory revisited: Knowledge creation as a synthesizing process is
by far the most internally cited article. However, the paper has been published in the first KMRP issue, wherefore it
had the most opportunities to be cited in later publications. Table 3 is not entirely mimicking Table 1, as one might
have expected. Apart from Nonaka and Toyama, only Baskerville and Dulipovici (2006) The theoretical foundations
of knowledge management, Zhu (2004) Knowledge management: Towards a universal concept or cross-cultural
contexts?, Liao, Chang, Cheng, and Kuo (2004) Employee relationship and knowledge sharing: A case study of a
Taiwanese finance and securities firm, as well Gory (2008)Sharing knowledge in the public sector: Two case
studies, and Wright (2005)Personal knowledge management: Supporting individual knowledge worker performance
are present.

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Patriotta (2004) On studying organizational knowledge who is ranked second among internal citation, is for example
missing in the most cited articles ranking.
Author
Title
Year
Volume
Issue
Number
of Cites
Nonaka, I.,
Toyama, R.
The knowledge-creating theory revisited: Knowledge
creation as a synthesizing process
(2003)
1
1
17
Patriotta, G.,
On studying organizational knowledge
(2004)
2
1
6
Baskerville,
R., Dulipovici,
A.
The theoretical foundations of knowledge management
(2006)
4
2
5
Liao, S.H.,
Chang, J.C.,
Cheng, S.C.,
Kuo, C.M.,
Employee relationship and knowledge sharing: A case
study of a Taiwanese finance and securities firm
(2004)
2
1
5
Holsapple,
C.W., Wu, J.
Search of a missing link
(2008)
6
1
5
Zhu, Z.,
Knowledge management: Towards a universal concept or
cross-cultural contexts?
(2004)
2
2
5
Peltokorpi, V.,
Tsuyuki, E.
Knowledge governance in a Japanese project-based
organization
(2006)
4
1
4
Mingers, J.
Management knowledge and knowledge management:
Realism and forms of truth
(2008)
6
1
4
Gorry, G.A.
Sharing knowledge in the public sector: Two case studies
(2008)
6
2
4
Ford, D.P.,
Staples, S.D.
Perceived value of knowledge: The potential informer's
perception
(2006)
4
1
3
Apostolou, D.,
Abecker, A.,
Andmentzas,
G.
Harmonising codification and socialisation in knowledge
management
(2007)
5
4
3
Lloria, M.B.
A review of the main approaches to knowledge
management
(2008)
6
1
3
Nold, H.A.
Making knowledge management work: Tactical to
practical
(2011)
9
2
3
Rosendaal, B.
Sharing knowledge, being different and working as a team
(2009)
7
1
3
Wright, K.
Personal knowledge management: Supporting individual
knowledge worker performance
(2005)
3
3
3
Table 3 KMRP articles cited three or more times in other KMRP articles
Co-Citations
The co-citation network consists of the 97 most cited articles in KMRP issues. These articles should show the body
of knowledge on which later articles are build. Table 2 shows the top 22 articles cited in KMRP articles. From this
ranking alone, it can be expected that the network will be rather dense. For example The Knowledge Creating
Company has been cited 91 times in KMRP articles, which means that 35.54% of all KMRP articles have cited
Nonaka’s publication. Table 4 shows the relevant network measures for all three explored networks.
The density for the citation network equals zero because the majority of articles has not been co-cited. This is also
the reason why the network diameter, or the shortest path between the nodes that are furthest away from each other
in the network, is highest. The clustering co-efficient is lowest for the same reason.

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The internal citation network shows a very high value for connected components, or parts that are not connected.
The reason is that several articles have not been referred to internally, which results in network isolations and
therefore in a low network density. The diameter provided by Gephi is therefore only true for the larger connected
component and not for the whole network. The Co-citation network shows a high density, a low network diameter
and a high clustering coefficient.
Network Measures
Citation
Network
Internal Citation
Network
Co-Citation
Network
Density
0
0.003
0.542
Network Diameter
5
4
3
Clustering
Coefficient
0.006
0.022
0.753
Connected
Components
3
98
1
Table 4 Network Measures
The popularity of the top articles in regard to the relatively few KMRP publications makes it very likely that most of
the articles are connected in the co-citation network. The network confirms this assumption. The network is one
large, dense component. Using modularity to group or cluster articles resulted in only four different groups. The
method groups together densely connected nodes. Figure 4 presents the four groups that are produced by using
Louvain method in Gephi (Blondel, Guillaume, & Lefebvre, 2008).
Group “Communities and Learning” is the most important one, as its visual size indicates. The group contains most
of the most referenced articles and the largest amount of articles. The group content is strongly related to
communities of practice, organizational learning, and information spaces. Publications include Lave and Wenger
(1991)Situated Learning, Orr (1990) Sharing knowledge, celebrating identity: war stories and community memory
in a service culture, Wenger (1999)Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Argyris and
Schon(1978) Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective, Nonaka and Konno (1998) The concept of
‘Ba’: building a foundation for knowledge creation, among other closely related articles.

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Figure 4 Modularity Co-Citation Graph
The strongest link between two groups is however between the group on the bottom, “Foundations of Knowledge
Management”, and the left, “Research Methodology and Networks”, highlighted by the slightly thicker edge
connecting them. The group on the left deals dominantly methods, especially case studies (e.g. (Yin, 1989)), and
network analysis related topics, such as structural holes (Burt, 1992), social capital (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998) and
weak ties (Granovetter, 1973). These topics are coupled with knowledge transfer (e.g. (Tsai, 2001).
“Foundations of Knowledge Management” includes the majority of books and papers that have had the most impact
on knowledge management. Among them are of course Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) The Knowledge Creating
Company, Working Knowledge by Davenport and Prusak (1998) and Polany’s (1966) Tacit Dimension, and Alavi
and Leidners (2001) Knowledge management and Knowledge Management Systems: Conceptual foundation and
research issues.
The group on the top evolved around intellectual capital and how to develop strategies in a knowledge-based
economy and was therefore called “Intellectual Capital and Strategies in a Knowledge-based Economy”. The group
includes publications such as Edvinsson’s (1995) Developing intellectual capital at Skandia, Stewart’s (1997)
Intellectual Capital or Teece’s (2000) Strategies for managing knowledge assets: The role of firm structure and
industrial context.
We also looked at the journals in which the top 100 citations came from. Table 5 presents the top 12 journals where
these publications were issued from. As can be seen, these journals are top ranked journals in the management
discipline. Different aspects of management are represented, Strategic management, Organzation science,

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Organizational behavior, Management of information systems, etc. Only 1 KM journal per se makes the top 12 list,
the Journal of Knowledge Management. The field of KM being multidisciplinary, we will have expected a larger
number of disciplines to be represented, like education, psychology, cognitive sciences, etc. but unfortunately it
looks like integration of disciplines remains a challenge, even though the field of KM will benefit so much from it.
Ranking
Journal
Count
% of overall
1
Strategic Management Journal
10
15%
2
Organisation Science
9
14%
3
Academy of Management Review
6
9%
3
California Management Review
6
9%
5
Harvard Business Review
4
6%
5
Journal of Management Information System
4
6%
7
Administrative Science Quarterly
3
5%
7
Long Range Planning
3
5%
9
Academy of Management Journal
2
3%
9
Organisation Studies
2
3%
9
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
2
3%
9
Journal of Knowledge Management
2
3%
Table 5 Top 12 Journals where top 100 citations were published in
Combining the finding of the keyword analysis (Ribiere & Walter, 2013) with the findings of this study.
Looking at both research papers provides a comprehensive picture of the evolution of the knowledge management
field in general and in KMRP in particular. The first part of this series featured a keyword analysis that showed a
focus on knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer, knowledge creation, intellectual property, organizational
learning and knowledge management practices, such as communities. In line with the keyword findings, were the
conceptual findings regarding organizational knowledge, strategic knowledge management, and operational
knowledge.
In this second part the citations and co-citations uncovered the intellectual body of knowledge management (Top
cited articles in Table 2) by examining the citations in all KMRP articles. Further identified was how these citations
are related to each other (co-citations) and if there are any groups among these co-citations that relate more to each

13
other. Additionally it was looked at the most cited KMRP articles, by external sources, and the amount of internal
citations.
In the first part it was found that the Keyword analysis and the Leximancer analysis showed a focus on case/ case
study, communities/ communities of practice, culture, decision support, innovation, knowledge management,
learning networks, organizational learning, organizational culture and performance. These results are also partly
reflected in the results of this paper. Indeed, the community and community learning concept was identified as the
most dominant group of papers within the co-citation network. Case studies and learning networks are also grouped
together, and knowledge management foundations are found in a third group.
In terms of analyzing the citations the most interesting finding is most likely that the latest article in the top 20 are
from 2001, Alavi’s and Leidner’s Knowledge management and knowledge management systems: conceptual
foundations and research issues and Nonaka’s, Toyama’s, and Konno’s SECI, ba and leadership: a unified model of
dynamic knowledge creation. Of course, the more time passes the more chances there are to be cited in a later
article, but 12 years is a fairly long time to gain traction in a field. This leads directly to the question if the issues and
suggestions in Alavi and Leidner’s article are still prevailing and if it would be worth revisiting them.
A second interesting find is certainly the dominance of Nonaka among citations. Of course, The Knowledge
Creating Company book and the earlier article in the Harvard Business Review are among the most cited
publications, but Nonaka’s articles are three times mentioned in the top 22 most cited articles table, and the most
cited KMRP articles is by Nonaka as well. Nonaka’s KMRP article is also, by a wide margin, the most cited article
of all KMRP papers. In all 256 KMRP publications we covered, Nonaka’s first author articles are cited a total of 286
times.
Quite similar to the first part of this paper series the groups that were discovered in the co-citation analysis deal with
communities and learning, intellectual capital and strategies in a knowledge based economy, and knowledge
transfer, networks and research methods.
Finally, the findings of this study can also be used by academic institutions which offer programs in the field of KM
to make sure that students have read what could be considered as the core articles, books and theories in the field of
KM. It is important to keep in mind that more recent publications might also be of some high value but they may not
appear in our rankings since they have not yet been referenced enough to get a journal citation recognition. We will
be curious to see what the same analysis will look like in 10 years from now. Will Nonaka remain the KM guru!
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank the KMRP Editor John S. Edwards as well as the Web team of Palgrave for their
help and support during this research.
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