Business portfolio restructuring: a comprehensive bibliometric review

Business portfolio restructuring (BPR) has received considerable attention in the fields of management and finance. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are no studies applying extensive qualitative and quantitative methods to BPR research. The aim of the present paper is to fill this gap by presenting the first complete bibliometric review of BPR research. In this work, for the first time, not only the extant literature published between 1993 and 2012 is analysed but also the most cited bibliographic references using bibliometric techniques. In this way, past and present academic contributions are reviewed. Four main results are forthcoming: first, a certain parallelism is found with bibliometric studies in strategic management. Second, the intellectual grounding for this field involves the subjects of economics, management and finance as its principal contributors. Third, the theoretical basis for the study of BPR mainly involves agency theory, transaction cost theory, and the resource-based view. Fourth, the financial crisis of 2008 explains an important part of current research priorities and trends among BPR scholars.