Relational Characteristics of the Business Literature: An Interpretive Procedure

A recent article in this journal introduces its readers to the concept of how systematic study of the scholarly literature of business can yield important insights into the development of the field as a research-oriented discipline. Henry and Burch examined the institutional affiliations of authors of articles in one interdisciplinary and 15 functional/specialized business journals for two time periods, 1961-65 and 1966-7 1.1 By dividing the weighted number of pages won by each school by the total number of pages published in each time period, they derived a listing of the top 20 collegiate schools of business in terms of research output. College and university schools of business administration are multiproduct organizations serving diverse local, regional, and international clienteles. Therefore, it is not possible to accept uncritically article production as the sole measure of institutional quality or prestige.2 It remains a fact, however, that the scholarly literature of business-or any discipline, for that matter-performs a central function of rapidly communicating information that is new, important, and interesting to the wider professional community. Therefore, systematic analysis of subject-matter content, authorship, and relational characteristics of a research journal (or a set of research journals) can reveal important clues about the development of the field as a research discipline. This article will (1) review the use of citation analysis as a tool for illuminating critical issues within the research enterprise and (2) examine how the technique of multidimensional scaling can provide a framework for improving our understanding of subject matter interrelationships within the literature of the subfields of business administration.