Is Management and Organizational Studies divided into (micro-)tribes?

Abstract

Many claims have been made in the past that Management and Organization Studies (MOS) is becoming increasingly fragmented, and that this fragmentation is causing it to drift into self-reference and irrelevance. Despite the weight of this claim, it has not yet been subjected to a systematic empirical test. This paper addresses this research gap using the tribalization approach and diachronic co-citation analyses. Based on 22,430 papers published in 14 MOS journals between 1980 and 2019, we calculate local and global centrality measures and the flow of cited articles between co-citation communities over time. In addition, we use a node-removal strategy to test whether only ritualized citations ensure MOS cohesion. Rather than tribalization, our results suggest a center–periphery structure. Furthermore, more peripheral papers are integrated into the central co-citation communities, but the lion's share of the flow of cited papers occurs over time to only a small number of large clusters. An increase of fragmentation and crowding-out of smaller clusters in MOS in seen in the polycentrically organized core 2014–2019.