Madrid, España
Purpose– Thispaperaimstoanalyzethethematiccontentofresearchaddressingtherelationbetweenboard of directors (BoD) and business transformation (BT) to obtain better understanding of status and to derive future areas of study. Design/methodology/approach–Thispaperreviewsliteraturethroughabibliometricanalysisbasedoncooccurrence of articles published in Web of Science Core Collection ™ (WoS) between 1990 and2022, identifying key concepts, setting network of relations and identifying the strategic importance of clusters of concepts. Findings and implications are discussed, future lines of research are presented and limitations are noted. Findings– Thematicresearchon boards addressing transformation shifted from the analysis of individuals’ traits to an organizational approach with majority of research centered on the role of boards under different theories and the consequences of strategic changes on firm’s performance. Further research is around gender diversity, sustainability and the moderating role of ownership structure and business culture. Research limitations/implications– Some limitations are also noted. This analysis considered articles indexed by WoS for Q1þQ2 publications as source of literature, while including others such as Scopus would increase knowledge base. Also, to identify main streams of research, the authors considered keywords with cumulative occurrence spanning from 30% to 40% while increasing this percentage would add terms that might improve precision to the connections among keywords. Other techniques could have been used such as co-citation or bibliographic coupling, although the authors find these as better suited to investigate the basic structure behind the foundational knowledge of the topic while the authors’ intention was to understand the positioning of study fields regarding the degree of research progress. Practical implications– Thispaperpresentssome practicalimplications for future researchers. Those who wish to leverage previous evidence to address new research questions might look into principal themes covering BoD dynamics and composition to exert CG, and the relation between strategic decisions and performance measured by different variables. Those who wish to position their research as new findings to shedlightondilemmas,mightfindopportunitiesinthefieldsofclimatechange-sustainability,R&Dforgrowth and innovation under the perspective of intangible assets. Originality/value– Thispaper,isthefirstto thebest ofthe authors’knowledge, toidentify researchclusters for the intersection of boards and transformation and to determine their stage of development.