How does a body of scholarship emerge, develop, and evolve? Research is the product of a community of scholars and their collaboration over time builds and disseminates knowledge. One way to examine a scholarly community and scholarship evolution is to consider patterns of collaboration through coauthorship networks. This article conducts a social network analysis of coauthorship between public service motivation (PSM) scholars from 1990 to 2016. This analysis depicts the social structure of the field as it evolved and offers implications both for its theoretical progress and for individual scholars. In general, we find that the PSM coauthorship network has grown increasingly since 1990 but it is not a cohesive network of scholars. It consists of many disconnected subgroups that actually represent opportunities for individual scholars to build social capital and influence. We conclude with implications of our findings and we offer suggestions for further analysis.
The Coauthorship Network Analysis of the Norwegian School of Economics