Sport management: a bibliometric study on central themes and trends

Abstract

Prompted by the scarcity of analyses of the directions in which sport management research has so far evolved, this study attempts to fill this gap by mapping the most important historical trends that have characterised this discipline. In order to achieve this purpose, a bibliometric analysis is employed, applying citation and co-citation analyses to citations from articles published in three sport management journals between 1987 and 2010. The co-citation relationships between references are analysed by applying a dense network subgrouping algorithm, which generates a number of clusters of influential works. The results point out a number of dominant trends influential over the entire period covered, focused on change in organisations, consumer motivation in sport marketing and diversity in organisations. Less influential trends reflect an interest in the impact of sport events, sport economics and in the status of sport management as an area of research.

Keywords:

• sport management
• bibliometric
• legitimacy