On the shoulders of giants: uncovering key themes of organizational unlearning research in mainstream management journals

Unlearning has evinced immense traction and opportunity in debates pertaining to organizational learning, innovation, management of change, knowledge management, and new product development, to name but a few. Provided the diversity and expansiveness of the phenomenon, past studies have undertaken both narrative and systematic reviews to synthesize the field of organizational unlearning (OU). Although highly commendable and enlightening, these scholarly efforts would be augmented by contemplating the share of leading management journals towards furthering the research on unlearning. Moreover, a systematic comprehension of the research themes of OU can be instrumental in representing the intellectual structure of the field. For this purpose, we undertake a combination of bibliometric and thematic analysis to identify critical trends that have helped shape unlearning research. The results discern the main scientific actors (articles, authors, journals, universities), research design, and dimensions of OU. In addition, eight clusters of unlearning along with underlying theoretical perspectives are analyzed, which may help scholars integrate the development of one domain to another, formulate pertinent research questions related to OU, and encourage interdisciplinary research.