Management Review ›› 2024, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (4): 221-232.

• Organization and Strategic Management • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Development and Evolution of Researches on Business Groups in China

Sun Wei1, Chen Zhijun1, Zheng Li2, Liu Xilu1   

  1. 1. School of Management, Shandong University, Jinan 250100;
    2. Business School, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266061
  • Received:2022-02-11 Online:2024-04-28 Published:2024-05-21

Abstract: Business groups play a great role in promoting China’s economic development. Through literature review and theoretical analysis, this paper summarizes the mainstream theories of business groups. Taking the research papers on business groups in the Chinese context published at home and abroad from 1985 to 2022 as the research samples, this paper uses bibliometric analysis for statistical analysis, and analyzes the research characteristics of business groups in different periods according to the frequency of keywords and co-occurrence analysis, and reveals the hotspots and evolution process of researches on business groups. Based on this, this study adopts the strategy map and coding method to predict the research trend, and finally proposes four directions for the future research: internal market, business group governance, innovation and international development. Overall, this paper uses the bibliometric method to review the literature, and puts forward the evolution direction of the future business group researches, which provides a support for both academic research and management practice.

Key words: business group, literature review, Chinese context, bibliometric analysis, CiteSpace