Abstract:

By means of the relevant literature MBA research Citespace V visualization software, this paper conducts a quantitative analysis of texts of three decades(1988-2017) from Web of Science database, and clearly displays the evolution of research focus in international MBA field in the way of visual knowledge map. The result shows that the total amount of research papers in MBA field has been increasing since 1988 and gained a breakthrough increase during 2008-2014; the number of issued papers on MBA varies in different countries, with the U.S. and the U.K. ranking the first and the second and the U.S. contributing more than a half of the total amount while the text centrality of papers in the U.S. only reaching half of that in the U.K.; the institutions that issued most amount of papers are mainly research universities in the U.S. and the U.K., especially state universities in the U.S.; the academic works of authors are related, among which scholars such as Pfeffer J in the U.S. have great influence; the key high-frequency hotspot words in different periods have different characteristics, which is related to the development of social economy. Meanwhile, the co-citation map of cluster analysis reveals the frontier research of MBA field and shows 9 high-frequency words in MBA research field for the past 30 years and the current frontier themes are MBA course reform and online MBA course. The research of MBA field in China started late and its impact is relatively limited. The real national situation of China, present status of enterprises and temporary management theories should be combined in order to promote the deep research of this field.

Key words: MBA, MBA research, knowledge map, Citespace V, cluster analysis, time linear scheme, commonly shared keywords, co-cited texts