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The purpose of this paper is to find out the different types of business networks formed by firms with the stakeholders present in a cluster, i.e. how firms in a cluster interact with the cluster stakeholders?

To answer the research question, this study uses an exploratory research design, which is carried out in two stages, Stage 1 involves use of primary data, which was collected through semi-structured personal face-to-face interview mode and Stage 2 involves survey research method where data was collected through a survey questionnaire. Data for interviews and questionnaires were collected from managers and owners of firms operating in the cluster at their offices.

The study has identified four types of business networks between a firm and its buyers, only one type of business network with the suppliers and educational institutes, finally two types of business networks with government agencies and local associations. However, with respect to network with other stakeholders such as research institutes and competitors, the study shows that the interaction between a firm and these stakeholders is not strong i.e. the linkages between them remain largely unfilled.

The study has been limited to only one cluster thus it might not be appropriate to generalise the findings. Further research in this area needs to be done by taking other clusters to generalise the findings.

The study has tried to answer the research gap of lack of literature on types of business networks formed by firms with the stakeholders present in an industrial cluster, and thus, contributed to the existing literature of business networks. The identified business networks provide a much deeper understanding of how firms connect with its buyers, its suppliers, government agencies and educational institutes operating in an auto-component cluster.

The purpose of this paper is to provide methodological guidelines and examples of how social network analysis (SNA) can be used in public management network research. SNA describes network structures formed by the patterns of relationships between different actors. Exchange relationships between government, market and society, which conceptualize public sector policies and goals, can be analyzed as a means to highlight underlying governance structures, coordination and management mechanisms, organizational capabilities and strategies of government activities.

Drawing from key aspects and concepts of network management, structuring, and modes of governance, research strategies are presented for the analysis of public networks through an illustrative study of relational patterns between providers and receivers of training in the public sector.

SNA highlights prevalent modes of organizing – bureaucratic, market or collaborative (networked) – key actors, roles and strategies that influence network structure, and collective and individual results. Network data can provide information on the relationship between context, organizations' roles and characteristics, and the effectiveness of public policies.

Information regarding patterns of exchange relationships such as services, resources, influence, knowledge and personnel, are relevant for policymaking processes and may subsidize new approaches and policy instruments that seek to optimize, develop and prescribe structural arrangements for better coordination and effective provision of public services.

The paper advances current literature by presenting a general methodological approach to large interorganizational networks, useful for the consistent theoretical development of governance network theory in the public administration field.

The findings of this paper throw light on the focal research areas within RFID in the supply chain, which serves as an effective guideline for future research in this area. This research, therefore, contributes to filling the gap by carrying out an SLR of contemporary research studies in the area of RFID applications in supply chains. To date, SLR augmented with BA has not been used to study the developments in RFID applications in supply chains.

We analyze 556 articles from years 2001 to date using Systematic Literature Review (SLR). Contemporary bibliometric analysis (BA) tools are utilized. First, an exploratory analysis is carried, out revealing influential authors, sources, regions, among other key aspects. Second, a co-citation work analysis is utilized to understand the conceptual structure of the literature, followed by a dynamic co-citation network to reveal the evolution of the field. This is followed by a multivariate analysis is performed on top-100 cited papers, and k-means clustering is carried out to find optimal groups and identify research themes. The influential themes are then pointed out using factor analysis.

An exploratory analysis is carried out using BA tools to provide insights into factors such as influential authors, production countries, top-cited papers and frequent keywords. Visualization of bibliographical data using co-citation network analysis and keyword co-occurrence analysis assisted in understanding the groups (communities) of research themes. We employed k-means clustering and factor analysis methods to further develop these insights. A historiographical direct citation analysis also unveils potential research directions. We observe that RFID applications in the supply chain are likely to benefit from the Internet of Things and blockchain Technology along with the other machine learning and visualization approaches.

Although several researchers have researched RFID literature in relation to supply chains, these reviews are often conducted in the traditional manner where the author(s) select paper based on their area of expertise, interest and experience. Limitation of such reviews includes authors’ selection bias of studies to be included and limited or no use of advanced BA tools for analysis. This study fills this research gap by conducting an SLR of RFID in supply chains to identify important research trends in this field through the use of advanced BA tools.

The findings of this study have lightened the focal research areas in maintenance planning and scheduling. These also served as effective guidelines for future studies in this area. This research, therefore, contributes in fulfilling the gap by carrying out an SLR of contemporary research studies in the area of models for maintenance planning and scheduling. At present, SLR rooted in BA has not been carried focusing on a survey over models for maintenance planning and scheduling. SLR uses advanced scientific methodologies from BA tools to unveil thematic structures.

We have systematically reviewed over 1,021 peer-reviewed journal articles. Advanced contemporary tools from Bibliometric Analysis (BA) are used to perform a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). First, exploratory analysis is presented, highlighting the influential authors, sources and region amongst other key indices. Second, the large bibliographical data is visualized using co-citation network analyses, and research clusters (themes) are identified. The co-citation network is extended into a dynamic co-citation network and unveils the evolution of the research clusters. Last, cluster-based content analysis and historiographical analysis is carried out to predict the prospect of future research studies.

BA tools first outlined an exploratory analysis that noted influential authors, production countries, top-cited papers and frequent keywords. Later, the bibliometric data of over 1,021 documents is visualized using co-citation network analyses. Later, a dynamic co-citation analysis identified the evolution of research clusters over time. A historiographical direct citation analysis also unveils potential research directions. We have clearly observed that there are two main streams of maintenance planning and scheduling applications. The first has focused on joint maintenance and operations on machines. The second focused on integrated production and maintenance models in an echelon setting for unrealizable production facilities.

There are many literature review-based research studies that have contributed to maintenance scheduling research surveys. However, most studies have adopted traditional approaches, which often fall short in handling large bibliometric data and therefore suffer from selection biases from the authors. As a result, in this area, the existing reviews could be non-comprehensive. This study bridges the research gap by conducting an SLR of maintenance models, which to the best of our knowledge, has not been carried out before this study.

This study aims to find technologically important patent identification methods and indicators early and efficiently to grasp the technical qualitative level of patents, which are output indicators of research and development (R&D) results.

This paper reports on two methods for distinguishing important patents and the indicators obtained from those methods. One of the discrimination methods is Heckman's two-step estimation procedure. The second method is to find the centrality of each patent by network analysis of the citation relationship between publications and to find the importance from the magnitude of the centrality value.

In Heckman's analysis, the number of citations within three years after publication and the applicant's right acquisition/maintenance motivation index had positive effects on patent importance. The discriminative indicators of important patents by network analysis were degree centrality, mediation centrality, proximity centrality and transit values in the aggregated subnetworks. These two analytical methods are in a relationship that can complement each other's shortcomings. To efficiently evaluate the qualitative importance of patents, it is recommended to use these two methods together.

The indicators of important technical patents might change depending on the technical field. Future studies can apply this research to multiple technical fields to improve robustness and to construct an algorithm that can efficiently evaluate the quality of patents.

This study's results can be useful for grasping the patent position of the company or competitors numerically and for quantitatively evaluating the quality of R&D activities. Furthermore, it is possible to streamline the routine for an exploratory search of a huge number of patents. For example, it could be useful for detecting changes in the paradigm of specific technical knowledge, evolving the genealogy of technical knowledge and creating patent maps for new R&D. These methods greatly increase the effectiveness of technical knowledge information, which is the basis of R&D. In addition, the results of this study can help in evaluating patented assets.

This study confirmed the development process of technical knowledge. It is a fact that sharing, sympathy and mutual trust for technical issues and technical values are created among professional engineers and researchers inside and outside the organization, and their preferences and interactions develop and expand technical knowledge. Understanding the process of development and the evolution of this technical knowledge gives hints, such as expanding the discretionary power of engineers and researchers regarding corporate secrets, or reviewing the balance between control and independence, to solve Japanese management problems, which are often closed and monetized in R&D activities.

This study presents a scoring of the technical significance of patents by combining the two analytical methods. In addition, there are proposals as a method for detecting changes in the genealogy and paradigm of technical knowledge. As an analysis method, it is a new proposal that has never existed before.

This paper aims to shed light on the linkage between research and development (R&D) networks and public funding presented in a given period by using network-based evaluation tools as a means of exploring the relational dimension in public projects designed to foster technology R&D activities.

This research uses co-occurrence network analysis of relevant public projects to assess how technological associations might occur within the R&D activities of given publicly funded projects as well as conducts correlation analysis to understand the extent to which linkages of R&D activity in technology fields are related to public expenditure.

Core technology fields, regarded as eligible to receive continued public funding, are critical for enhancing competitiveness and sustainable growth at the nationally strategic technology level. Thus, the relationship between R&D and the level of government funding for these fields is generally perceived as strong. However, a few technology fields, which did not actively form specific network relationships with other technology fields, are considered to exceptionally drive the largest government support. This trend indicates that the government-funded R&D should be designed and managed not only to curb the inefficiencies existing in the current funding programs but also to achieve the appropriateness for further technology development.

Despite the comprehensive findings, this study has several limitations. First, it is difficult to control any confounding factors, such as the determinants and constraints of the government budget allocation and expenditure decisions over S&T areas, strategic frameworks for public investment and evolving policy landscapes in technology sectors, which lead to bias in the study results. Second, this study is based on a narrow, single-year data set of a specific field of projects supported by the Korean government’s R&D program. Therefore, the generalization of findings may be limited. The authors assumed that influences caused by confounding variables during the initial phase of the public funding schemes would not be significant, but they did not take into account possible factors that might arise coincident with the subsequent phase changes. As such, the issue of confounding variables needs to be carefully considered in research design to provide alternative explanations for the results that have been ruled out. The limitations of this study, therefore, could be overcome by comparing the outcome difference between subsidized and non-subsidized R&D projects or evaluating targeted funding schemes or tax incentives that support and promote various areas of R&D with sufficiently large, evidence-based data sets. Also, future research must identify and analyze the R&D activities concerning public support programs performed in other countries associated with strategic priorities to provide more profound insight into how they differ. Third, there are some drawbacks to using these principal investigators-provided classification codes, such as subjectivity, inaccuracy and non-representation. These limitations may be addressed by using content-based representations of the projects rather than using pre-defined codes. Finally, the role that government investment in R&D has played in developing new science and manufacturing technologies of materials and components through network relationships could be better examined using longitudinal analysis. Furthermore, the findings suggest the need for further research to integrate econometric models of performance outcomes such as input–output relations into the network analysis for analyzing the flow of resources and activities between R&D sectors in a national economy. Therefore, future research would be helpful in developing a methodological strategy that could analyze temporal trends in the identification of the effects of public funding on the performance of R&D activity and demand.

Public funding schemes and their intended R&D relationships still depend on a framework to generate the right circumstances for leading and promoting coordinated R&D activities while strengthening research capacity to enhance the competitiveness of technologies. Each technology field has a relatively important role in R&D development that should be effectively managed and supervised to accomplish its intended goals of R&D budgeting. Thus, when designing and managing R&D funding schemes and strategy-driven R&D relations, potential benefits and costs of using resources from each technology field should be defined and measured. In this regard, government-funded R&D activities should be designed to develop or accommodate a coordinated program evaluation, to be able to examine the extent to which public funding is achieving its objectives of fostering R&D networks, balancing the purpose of government funding against the needs of researchers and technology sectors. In this sense, the examination of public R&D relations provides a platform for discussion of relational network structures characterizing R&D activities, the strategic direction and priorities for budget allocation of the R&D projects. It also indicates the methodological basis for addressing the impact of public funding for R&D activities on the overall performance of technology fields.

The value of this work lies in a preliminary exploratory analysis that provides a high-level snapshot of the areas of metallurgy, polymers/chemistry/fibers and ceramics, funded by the Korean Government in 2016 to promote technological competitiveness by encouraging industries to maintain and expand their competencies.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an approach for conceptualizing science based on collaboration and competences of researchers.

The research is conducted by exploratory analysis of collaboration and competences using case studies from humanistic, engineering, natural sciences and a general topic.

The findings show that by applying the proposed approach on bibliographic data that readily exist for many national sciences as well as for international scientific communities, one can obtain useful new insights into the research. The approach is demonstrated with the following exploratory findings: identification of important connections and individual researchers that connect the community of anthropologists; collaboration of technical scientists in the community of anthropologists caused by an interdisciplinary research project; connectivity, interdisciplinary and structure of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and a community based on a general topic; and identifying research interest shift described with concretization and topic-shift.

As demonstrated with the practical implementation (http://scienceatlas.ijs.si/), users can obtain information of the most relevant competences of a researcher and his most important collaborators. It is possible to obtaining researchers, community structure and competences of an arbitrary research topic.

The map for collaboration and competences of a complete science can be a crucial tool for policy-making. Social scientists can use the results of the proposed approach to better understand and direct the development of science.

Originality and value of the paper is in combining text (competences) and network (research collaboration and co-authoring) approaches for exploring science. Additional values give the results of analysis that demonstrate the approach.

This study research contributes in fulfilling the gap by carrying out a systematic literature review (SLR) of contemporary research studies in closed-loop supply chain (CLSC). To the best of the author’s knowledge, an SLR rooted in bibliometric analysis has not been carried focusing on advent developments in CLSC. SLR employs scientific methodologies to select papers from standard databases. The SLR using advanced bibliometric and network analysis enables unveiling the key features of the contemporary literature.

The author has analyzed over 333 documents published from 2008 and onward. Using the contemporary tools from bibliometric analysis tools, the author presented an exploratory analysis. A network analysis is utilized to visualize literature and create clusters for the cocited research studies, keywords and publication sources. A detailed multivariate analysis of most influential works published based top 100 articles via a cocitation matrix is done. The multivariate analysis used k-means clustering in which optimal number of clusters are estimated. The analysis is further extended by using a factor analysis, which enables determining the most influential clusters in the k-means clustering analysis.

The SLR using a bibliometric and network analysis enables unveiling the key features of the contemporary literature in CLSC. The author examined published research for influential authors, sources, region, among other key aspects. Network analysis enabled visualizing the clusters of cocited research studies, cowords and publication sources. Cluster analysis of cocited research studies is further explored using k-means clustering. Factor analysis extends findings by identifying most contributing grouping of research areas within CLSC research. Each clustering technique disclosed a unique grouping structure.

CLSC has received considerable attention, and its core areas start with focusing on reverse logistics concepts relating reuse, recycling, remanufacturing, among others. Contemporarily, the studies have enhanced reverse logistics core functionalities interfaced with the other interesting avenues related to CO₂ emission reduction, greening and environmental protection, sustainability, product design and governmental policies. Earlier studies have presented a literature review of CLSC; however, these reviews are commonly conducted in the traditional manner where the authors select papers based on their area of expertise, interest and experience. As such these reviews fall short in utilizing the advanced tools from bibliometric analysis.

The current study aims to present an exploratory analysis of the use of Facebook in American public and academic libraries, with the purpose of understanding patterns of Facebook use in libraries.

This study presents both a statistical descriptive analysis and a content analysis.

The research findings show that both kinds of libraries use the information section and the wall and that there is a difference in the use of other Facebook sections, which was surprisingly limited in both kinds of libraries. In addition, public libraries use the wall and the photos section as major channels of information more than academic libraries. Concentrating on the content of the Facebook wall posts, it appears that there are some differences between the two sections (categories and sub‐categories). However, it seems that both kinds of libraries use Facebook simply as a way to deliver information to users, rather than as a venue for discussion.

Research findings enable librarians and information scientists to better understand the Facebook phenomenon in different kinds of libraries.

This study investigates system dynamics (SD) applications in performance measurement (PM) research and practice. A bibliometric analysis was conducted to investigate the maturity of this research area and identify opportunities for development.

A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted to provide a comprehensive and rigorous review of the existing literature. The search was conducted on 10 platforms identifying 97 publications, which were evaluated using bibliometric analysis.

The analysis revealed that applications of SD are most commonly used in the PM system design phase to model organisational performance. In addition, the bibliometric results showed a highly dispersed author set, with most studies using exploratory methods, suggesting that the research is in a relatively early stage of development. The results also showed that over 50 per cent of the causal models were not validated, emphasizing an important methodological gap in this research area.

This SLR is limited to indexed publications on 10 platforms, the search strategy was relatively precise and only available papers in English language were used for the literature review.

PM systems supported by SD can help managers understand and improve organisational behaviours by addressing dynamic complexities and relationship between variables. This study evaluates the maturity of this research area including information about the current development of this area and opportunities to build on existing knowledge.

This study identifies how SD approaches are applied to PM and highlights areas that require further research consideration. This paper is the first of two publications to result from this study and focuses on evaluating the current state of this research area.