Service networks for sustainable business: A dynamic evolution analysis over half a century

Highlights

• Presenting a holistic assessment of service networks for sustainable business.

• “Internationalization and web service” is the biggest research topic.

• Collaborative innovation emerges as the core strength of business networks.

• Multiple directions in service networks and virtual networks are identified.

• Sustainable business represents the general trend of the times.

Abstract

Scientific research on service networks for sustainable business (SN-SB) and its impact on business and economics has been growing in recent years. The first document was published in 1968, and the SN-SB research has lasted over half a century. This paper offers a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the academic literature published between 1968 and 2019 with regards to the SN-SB research in 2,366 publications from Web of Science. By applying different bibliometric analyses, such as performance analysis, cooperation analysis, co-occurrence analysis, burst detection analysis, and timeline view analysis, we have presented the fundamental characteristics of these publications, and identified the most influential countries/regions, institutions, and authors, as well as the evolution of the keywords these years. More discussions including popular issues in current study, challenges and avenues for future research, implications, and limitations are conducted to address the existing gaps in knowledge. This paper helps in understanding the evolution of the SN-SB research from the perspective of the bibliometric and inspires researchers to think from multiple aspects in this field.

Introduction

Service networks for sustainable business (SN-SB) research in the big data era have received more attention in the development of advanced theories and new technologies for adaptation to a dynamic and turbulent business environment (Caputo et al., 2021). At present, the research trend has been spurred by the introduction of new innovations and situations, although service networks are not a new phenomenon. Owing to the state of global enterprises and complex service networks, it is necessary for firms to build the best possible value chain and overcome many challenges and barriers through effective innovation, new customer value creation, business model development, an agile workforce, talent recruitment, customer relationship management, and social networks (Childs and Jin, 2015, Kliestik et al., 2020). On the one hand, the lack of service networks for sustainable business has been one of the great hindrances, because traditional service models may be unsustainable and unprofitable, and mobile money service is an example (David-West, Iheanachor, & Umukoro, 2020). On the other hand, advanced service networks facilitate decision-making and extraction of actionable insights and knowledge from large datasets in the big data environment (Saura, 2021). For example, digitalization is a reality for business and contributes to value creation, and improving service networks, updating social networks, using social networks for corporate purposes, having a high level of training in digital tools, can enhance company performance (Ribeiro-Navarrete et al., 2021). The internet of everything may alter service networks, business models and the ways in which individuals and organizations create value (Langley et al., 2021). Therefore, it has been gradually presented that business networks found in firms have played a vital role in building flexible, resilient, and sustainable organizations in recent years. How SN-SB research develops and what characteristics they present are problems explored in this study. Little attention has been paid to managing sustainable innovations in the current knowledge-intensive context. Thus, there is a compelling need for more research on service networks for sustainable businesses, and studying the evolution of the SN-SB research could help in understanding the development and popular issues in the relevant fields.

To comprehensively consider the present study on SN-SB research, a bibliometric analysis is one of the suitable approaches to show the topics and research directions visually because it can reveal the evolution with the extensive intersection and combination of philology, information science, mathematics, and statistics (He et al., 2017). Bibliometry is a mature and effective way to present the evolution and relationships of items of a subject or a journal by analyzing the relevant literature (Shang et al., 2015). Because of these advantages and characteristics, bibliometrics has rapidly developed and has been widely applied in many fields and journals. Recent studies have used a bibliometric analysis on various subjects, including digitalization and business models (Caputo et al., 2021), the intellectual structure of consumer complaining behavior research (Arora & Chakraborty, 2021), mapping inclusive innovation (Mortazavi et al., 2021), group decision-making (Wang et al., 2021, Wang et al., 2021), and comparative advertising research (del Barrio-Garcia, Munoz-Leiva, & Golden, 2020). On the other hand, several journals have also used this approach to explore the development and features, such as Technological and Economic Development of Economy (Yu, Xu, & Saparauskas, 2019), Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja (Wang, Xu, & Skare, 2020), Accounting and Finance (Linnenluecke, Marrone, & Singh, 2020), and International Journal of Systems Science (Wang et al., 2021, Wang et al., 2021).

The purpose of this article is to explore and provide an informative overview of the existing publications through a bibliometric analysis of SN-SB research, which is a rapidly developing field with progress made within society. This study sets out the following objectives by employing corresponding methods: (1) To reveal the development tendency and distribution of publications in SN-SB research, a performance analysis consisting of a set of accepted bibliometric indicators is conducted. For example, annual indicators, such as the number of publications, number of citations, average number of citations, and H-index, are used to show the development trend, influential years, and publications in terms of different aspects. The most influential publications and distributions, such as categories, types, and countries, are also presented through a performance analysis. (2) To identify the relationships between different items (country/region and institution), and to outline the different keywords perspectives in the SN-SB research that eventually shape invisible clusters, we conducted network and keyword analyses. Specifically, a co-authorship analysis was conducted to show the relationships among the countries/regions and institutions found in the related publications. A co-occurrence analysis, bust detection analysis, and timeline view analysis were conducted to reveal the keywords and features from multiple perspectives. (3) To assess the main characteristics and science mapping of SN-SB research, the highly cited sources/countries/regions/institutions of publications are presented through a citation analysis. In addition, three software programs, VoS Viewer (Van Eck & Waltman, 2010), CiteSpace (Chen, 2006) and Bibliometrix (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017) are used to conduct science mapping analysis related to SN-SB research, which have a visual and high-quality effect on bibliometric studies when considering their evolution and cooperation, such as a dual-map overlay and collaboration network.

In this article, the contributions to the SN-SB research are shown in at least four ways: (1) We present a holistic assessment of the literature related to SN-SB research during the last half century and delineate the fundamental statistical features from the perspectives of annual indicators, categories and types of publications, and highly cited publications. (2) With the identification of the influential countries/regions, institutions, and authors within SN-SB research, we present intertwining networks used to map the connections. (3) We highlight the keyword perspective of SN-SB research, which is relatively important for recognition in the extant literature. Further, we identify the main topics and emerging themes and show the keyword tendencies in different clusters from the past, present, and future. (4) SN-SB research is at a crossroads, and is facing the challenges of maturity. We present an objective view of this field and discuss the perspectives of popular issues, challenges, and avenues for future research, implications, and limitations. The bibliometric review at this stage can rekindle interest in the domain and inspire scholars in this area to think creatively.

The remainder of this paper is organized into four sections. We first discuss the methodology employed in this study, including the data sources, search protocols, and bibliometric methods. Subsequently, we detail the performance analysis; an analysis of the countries/regions, institutions, and authors; and a keyword analysis conducted in this study and present the results. We then discuss the four-pronged interpretation of our substantive findings, its popular issues in the current study, challenges and avenues for future research, implications, and limitations of our approach. Finally, we provide some concluding remarks regarding this research.