Global research on community-based enterprise: a bibliometric portrait

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of scholarly literature on community-based enterprise (CBE) through a bibliometric analysis and to comprehend the qualitative dimensions of research in this specific field. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on scholarly papers indexed in Scopus from 1990 to 2021. The bibliometric analysis focuses on journals, documents, writers, organizations and countries. VOSviewer is used for network visualization mapping of citation, co-citation, bibliographic coupling and co-occurrence of keywords. Findings The analysis of the bibliometric aspects of CBE literature reveals an upward trend in publication of CBE documents, with a significant increase of research productivity in the past few years. This behaviour shows that CBE is becoming increasingly popular among academics and practitioners. The document “Toward a theory of community based enterprise” by Ana Maria Peredo is the most cited document. USA has so far published the maximum number of documents in this field. Practical implications This study provides an overview of the current state of research in the subject as well as the primary themes explored in this burgeoning discipline, with the potential to help the researchers identify new topics and gaps that need to be investigated further. Originality/value This work contributes to the literature by conducting a bibliometric analysis that has not yet been explored. It gives an overview of the field’s organization as well as specifics on the major issues explored in this discipline.