A scientometric analysis of fourth-generation KM challenges: A systematic network analysis of last decade (2009-2019)

Due to the important role of knowledge in the sustainable development of organizations, this topic still attracts several practitioners and researches. Therefore, knowledge management research area is considered as a young discipline that needs further exploration. The purpose of this study is to map the challenges in knowledge management by investigating the key themes and their relationship for the period 2009-2019. The study updates the previous study of Gaviria-Marin et al. et al. (2019) by specifically investigating the challenges in knowledge management to identify current research gaps and future research directions. This study utilizes the bibliometric analysis technique to identify the challenges in knowledge management. The dataset for this study was retrieved from the Scopus database. In total, 915 articles published between 2009 and 2019 were retrieved. These articles cover 2215 authors, 277 journals and 5400 keywords. The bibliometric analysis was conducted through the VOSviewer software. The study included activities like co-author and co-word analysis by mapping it to the theoretical foundations. The co-word analysis identified three broad themes of challenges in knowledge management: Organizational learning, knowledge development and sharing; optimization through knowledge management; knowledge sourcing and planning. This study helps researchers to understand the challenges in knowledge management studies in last decade and the direction that challenges research is taking in order to identify available avenues for future research.