Political Connections and Performance: A Bibliographic Coupling Analysis

The main purpose of this paper is to map the current research front (i.e., to identify the more recent contributions and detect the current trends) on political connections and performance field based on a systematic review of 112 papers published in refereed journals indexed to the Scopus database. Applying the bibliographic coupling method and using the VOSviewer software for the construction and visualisation of scientific maps of papers, journals and authors, the analysis conducted allows to establish how research has evolved in this area. The results show that numerous studies were developed in China and analyse the impact of political connections on performance in privatisation, initial public offering (IPO), and financing processes. Also, several research examines the influence of contextual factors in this relationship. The findings presented in this paper will enable future authors studying the influence of political connections on performance to focus their studies more effectively.