A brief bibliographic analysis of the scholarly writings of Jan Johanson
Provides an historical overview of Jan Johanson's research interests and publications, created by using the Publish or Perish software
Written by Anne-Wil Harzing, AIB Fellows Bibliometrician. This analysis first appeared in the AIB Newsletter.
Introduction
Jan Johanson scholarly career spanned no less than seven decades, starting with his licentiate thesis in 1966: Svensk kvalitetsstål på utländska marknader [Swedish quality steel in foreign markets], which - unusually for a thesis – has been cited 40 times. His two most highly-cited articles appeared in the next decade: “The internationalization of the firm – four Swedish cases” in Journal of Management Studies (1975, with Finn Wiedersheim-Paul) and “The Internationalization of the Firm – a Model of Knowledge Development and Increasing Foreign Market Commitments” in Journal of International Business Studies (1977, with Jan-Erik Vahlne). Together, they acquired well over 25,000 citations.
During the next 45 years – in an oeuvre that included more than 100 publications – Johanson continued to make important contributions in his two core research areas: internationalization of the firm, and markets as networks (see below). His two last publications, both published in April 2021, revisited these themes:
- “Speed and synchronization in foreign market network entry: A note on the revisited Uppsala model” in Journal of International Business Studies
- “Coping with complexity by making trust an important dimension in governance and coordination” in International Business Review.
His key scholarly contributions are reviewed below by his friends and colleagues, Mats Forsgren, Ulf Holm, and Jan-Erick Vahlne.
Johanson’s collective scholarly work has been cited more than 75,000 times in Google Scholar, making him one of our mostly impactful International Business academics in terms of scholarly impact. Moreover, given the close relationship between academia and business in the Scandinavian countries, I am sure his work was equally impactful outside the field of academia. Although Johanson wrote much of his influential work with Jan-Erik Vahlne, he also co-authored with more than 40 other academics, both junior and senior. He touched the lives of many.
Note
This write-up is substantially shorter than my previous analyses. Jan Johanson did not have a Google Scholar profile. A regular Google Scholar search provided nearly 450 results with at least 3 or 4 namesakes and dozens and dozens of strange stray citations. Moreover, many of his key publications appear to have been erroneously merged to later book chapters by Google Scholar, or have links that are going to a non-existent webpages. Hence I was unable to do a full analysis. However, Jan Johanson's friends and colleagues have written up and excellent eulogy that reviews his main contributions. This can be found in the in the AIB Newsletter.
Copyright © 2025 Anne-Wil Harzing. All rights reserved. Page last modified on Wed 12 Feb 2025 17:19
Anne-Wil Harzing is Emerita Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.
