Scientometrics and meta-synthesis of the research current state in the field of inter-organizational collaborative networks

The emergence of Information and Communication Technology has caused many changes to take place in organizations. Among them, the inter-organizational collaborative networks, in particular, have expanded. This paper aims to review systematically the pertaining research literature and find answers for these questions: First: what is the main subject that the research have been focused? Second what is the main existing research gap in the aforementioned subject? The theory of the paper is relied on “life cycle stages of collaborative networks”. The method of data acquisition covers two techniques of “co-occurrence method of words” in the period 2005 to 2019 and “meta-synthesis method in the period of 2009-2019 for finding the first and second answer, respectively. After conducting the review, the paper first, presents a comprehensive picture of the status of scientific activities in the period 2005 to 2019 and shows that most of the studies have focused on the creation stage of the life cycle of collaboration networks, and at this stage, the issue of partner selection has the most frequency of articles. As to the second question, the paper concludes that carrying out studies on providing a comprehensive approach to the preparation and management of partner profiles, core value mapping and innovation management in order to quickly select partners and reduce the level of risk in long-term collaborative networks are the important subjects to fill the gap.