Trends in International Strategic Management Research From 2000 to 2013: Text Mining and Bibliometric Analyses

This study provides an overview of the international strategic management literature from 2000 through 2013. By drawing from a sample of 736 articles, we employ bibliometric and text mining analyses in identifying 10 distinct subfields of international strategic management research. Our study serves as a resource for future research by shedding light on how trends in international strategic management research have evolved over time. The results of our analysis reveal a substantial increase in the volume of international strategic management articles published in high quality journals over this period of time. Specifically, our results demonstrate that certain subfields of international strategic management research, such as business strategy formulation, internal coordination, decision-making, corporate strategy implementation, international diversification, and national culture, are increasing in scholarly interest. However, other subfields of international strategic management research, such as political risk, corporate strategy formulation, business strategy implementation, and strategic alliances, have either stabilized or recently declined in scholarly interest. We also identify and report the most prominent theories employed within each subfield. We find that institutional theory, the resource-based view, organizational learning theory, social network theory, and the knowledge-based view have been the most frequently employed theories in the international strategic management literature.