Collaboration architecture and thematic structure in cognitive-bias entrepreneurship research: An integrated bibliometric and social network analysis

PURPOSE: Entrepreneurial decision-making unfolds under conditions of uncertainty and bounded rationality, making cognitive biases central to explaining opportunity evaluation, risk perception, and venture outcomes. While prior reviews have cataloged which bias constructs dominate the literature, they provide limited insight into how the scholarly community is socially organized and how collaboration architecture relates to thematic development. This study maps the collaborative and thematic structure of cognitive-bias research in entrepreneurship to identify hubs, brokers, and underdeveloped yet conceptually central research domains. METHODOLOGY: A PRISMA-aligned systematic search of the Web of Science Core Collection covering 1970 to 2025 yielded 3,244 records after deduplication and substantive screening. Weighted co-authorship networks were constructed at the author, institutional, and country levels. Keyword co-occurrence networks enabled strategic thematic mapping using Callon centrality and density metrics. Degree, betweenness, closeness, and eigenvector centralities alongside Louvain community detection were computed in Gephi, with robustness checks applied across alternative counting rules and thresholds. FINDINGS: The author network exhibits a sparse, modular structure with a density of 0.00038 and a modularity of 0.847, in which a small set of hubs and brokers sustain cross-community connectivity. Institutional and country networks show denser collaboration with regionally clustered blocs and limited cross-bloc bridging ties. Thematic mapping reveals that overconfidence and heuristics function as motor themes; risk perception and venture financing are foundational but less internally consolidated; and digital transformation and crowdfunding form cohesive niche themes, weakly integrated with core bias discourse. IMPLICATIONS: Theoretically, the study demonstrates that thematic consolidation in entrepreneurship cognition research is conditioned by the relational architecture of collaboration networks, advancing understanding of how social structure shapes knowledge production. Practically, collaboration maps enable scholars to identify strategic partners bridging thematic or geographic divides, while thematic maps highlight underdeveloped domains where theory-building investments may yield disproportionate returns. ORIGINALITY & VALUE: This study integrates bibliometric mapping with Social Network Analysis to reveal how collaboration structures coexist with and potentially condition thematic organization. By focusing exclusively on co-authorship and keyword co-occurrence relations, the analysis provides transparent, reproducible evidence on the relational architecture of cognitive-bias entrepreneurship research, offering actionable guidance for strategic collaboration and agenda setting that complements topic-focused syntheses.