Mapping the scientific map and analyzing the co-occurence of the concept of the digital ecosystem with management approach on the Web of Science

Purpose: With the increasing complexity of organizational environments, both in the private and business sectors and in the government and public management sectors, the necessity of inter-organizational cooperation increases. Therefore, in recent decades, a concept such as an ecosystem has been proposed to create this connection between organizations in different fields of management science. With the rapid development of Industry 4.0, among all kinds of ecosystem combinations (such as innovation ecosystem or entrepreneurship ecosystem), digital ecosystems are a newer and rapidly evolving field, and the attention of researchers has increased significantly in the past few years. The purpose of this research is to provide a scientometric analysis and visualize a map of the knowledge structure and co-authorship network and thematic clusters of the digital ecosystem in the field of management in the Web of Science database.
Methodology: This research is an applied study and has been conducted using common techniques in Scientometrics, specifically co-occurrence analysis methods. To obtain the primary data, the keyword "digital ecosystem" was searched in the Web of Science Database in the years 2000 to 2023, and 4496 articles published in this database were analyzed as a statistical population. The data have been analyzed with the help of VOS Viewer and bibexcel software to extract the knowledge map and co-occurrence network. In this research, authors' fields and indexer's keywords were used for synonym analysis. After retrieving the records, for co-occurrence analysis, 14,140 keywords were obtained from the 4,496 records examined, of which 1,173 frequent words, based on Bradford's law with a frequency of 5 or higher, were considered for co-word analysis.
Findings: 14,140 keywords were found in this analysis, of which 1,173 cases had the same time in the co-occurrence analysis of 5 words. The result of this six-cluster analysis was that the most recent emerging topics in 2021 are related to a variety of emerging information technologies, intelligent relationships, entrepreneurial ecosystems, digitalization, digital servitization, ecosystem architecture, and impacts. The co-occurrence between the two keywords Internet of Things and security has the highest frequency in the research of the digital ecosystem with management approach. The United States of America, the UK. and China have contributed the most in producing research on this issue. The findings Show that Parida V. the most active author and the field of computer science and information systems were recognized as the most prolific field. Among other findings, words such as technology, Internet, innovation, blockchain, strategy, model, framework, etc. are identified as the most frequent keywords, which are grouped into six clusters based on the co-occurrence. Eight clusters appeared in the analysis of countries' collaboration, The highest collaboration of countries is in first cluster with 20 countries, and the least collaboration is seen in cluster 8 with 3 members.
Conclusion: The scientometric study and analysis of the co-authorship network and thematic clusters of the digital ecosystem concept with a management approach in the Web of Science database showed that 99.13% of the scientific documents in this field were written in English. The highest frequency of producing articles on this topic is related to 2022, which is the peak of research in this field, considering the fourth industry and emerging technologies. According to the analysis of time series, three historical periods can be distinguished. These historical courses begin with a focus on the design and initial planning of the ecosystem and continue with the topics of management, innovation, dynamics, platform, value creation, strategy, competition, performance, system, and in the third stage, the topics of emerging information technologies, intelligent relationships, Digitization, service, computer architecture, and entrepreneurial ecosystem are coming. The study of the knowledge structure of the digital ecosystem with a managerial approach shows that can be a road map for further studies in the future. In the study of the synonymy network of the topic under investigation in the Web of Science database, six topic clusters have been identified, which include the management of emerging technologies, innovation and entrepreneurship, co-creation, strategy, digital transformation, and network. In countries collaboration network, the United Kingdom has the most links or collaboration in the world, followed by the United States, France, Spain, China, and Finland, which have more international collaboration than other countries. In the meantime, the number of documents published by Iran and the number of its international collaborations in this matter are worthy of reflection. In order to increase the country's development in the fourth industrial revolution and use digital capabilities, it is necessary for Iran to revise its international collaboration policies and to be present in international scientific arenas as much as possible for scientific growth and the production of high-quality scientific documents.