Mapping the field: relational study on Six Sigma

Abstract

Six Sigma is one of the main approaches to quality management. Its research has produced an extensive literature and the objective of this study is to complement previous reviews by conducting a relational study, which has never been done previously. We analysed 798 articles published prior to 2018 in 392 academic journals using the Web of Science and Scopus databases. Relational techniques were used for mapping the five fields: citation, co-citation, bibliographic coupling, co-author and co-word. The study identifies the most influential journals, papers and authors in Six Sigma research revealing the fields’ conceptual, intellectual and social knowledge structures. Results showed that, although Six Sigma literature includes a large number of authors and journals, a small number of these dominate the field. Conceptually, it is noteworthy that seven sub research areas exist in the field, these being related to (1) methodological issues, (2) project and empirical issues, (3) business excellence, (4) training on Six Sigma, (5) Six Sigma process, (6) engineering issues and (7) lean and healthcare issues. The current article provides several starting points for practitioners and researchers when investigating Six Sigma and contributes to broadening the vision of the field.

Keywords:

• Six Sigma
• bibliometric
• relational study
• science mapping
• co-citation
• bibliographic coupling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Web of Science provides multiple databases cross-searches: Web of Science Core Collection (includes Science, Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities, Book, and Conference Proceedings Citation Indexes), BIOSIS Previews, Chinese Science Citation Database, Current Contents Connect (tables of contents), Data Citation Index, MEDLINE, and Zoological Record.

This study used the Web of Science Core Collection to conduct the searches.