Trends in Performance Research in Relation to Business Strategy: Bibliometric Analysis and Text Mining

Abstract

This literature review aims to assess the evolution of performance monitoring articles in relation to the business strategy based on an overview of articles indexed in the WoS and Scopus databases. The initial dataset of articles was obtained based on carefully developed keywords. In the second phase, we restricted the selection to business and management journal articles and reviews written in English before 2019. The authors simultaneously reviewed the abstracts of all 571 articles in the third phase of the study. These were subsequently re-read and limited; thus, the final dataset for further analysis includes 157 articles published between 1983 and 2019. The most important result is that the field of business strategy and performance is not subject to trends. While in the field of business strategy the literature is still dominated by generic strategies according to Porter and the strategy typology according to Miles and Snow, in the field of performance measurement we identified the market position (sales volume, growth in sales volume, etc.) and profitability (profit margin, return on assets, etc.) as the dominant method.Implications for Central European audience: Despite a considerable amount of work focusing on bibliographic analysis, there remains a lack of literature on the link between strategy and performance. The paper brings potential value for the Central European audience by drawing attention to the systematisation of knowledge in the field of performance articles and its trends in relation to the field of business strategy. The overview of the theoretical frameworks contributes to a better orientation of the current state of the art and creates opportunities for future research.