Design thinking in business, management and accounting: a bibliometric review and future research directions

Abstract

Purpose

The current study gives a quantitative analysis DT literature over the past ten years in domain of management and business where the field has witnessed a proliferation in studies. The study's primary areas of concentration were analyzing historical trends and identifying prospective future research opportunities in the field. Due of the way, it approaches innovation and problem-solving, design thinking has garnered a lot of interest from both academics and practitioners. Promoters and detractors, however, tend to have quite different perspectives on the program's core qualities, practicality and results.

Design/methodology/approach

The study adopts a bibliometric approach to a systematic literature review, where the analyses and visualizations are carried out using R Studio (Biblioshiny package) and VosViewer software. The study was conducted on 518 documents extracted from the Scopus database. To identify past research trends in the field, performance analysis based on productivity and/or impact of the research constituents was carried out to understand the intellectual structure of the field.

Findings

The study's findings indicated that few areas have received the most attention, which are presented as seven themes. While the emerging themes in the field include areas such as service design, service innovation, customer experience, innovation management, project management and 21st-century skills.

Practical implications

The studies are going deeper by breaking down concepts or processes and analyzing one aspect at a time, codesign and prototyping are such subareas within the realm of service or new product design and development.

Originality/value

This study is the first of its kind where a literature review has been conducted covering design thinking in the area of business management and accounting.

Citation

Fatima, S. and Singh, A.B. (2024), "Design thinking in business, management and accounting: a bibliometric review and future research directions", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 31 No. 8, pp. 2624-2651. https://doi.org/10.1108/BIJ-03-2023-0171