The intellectual structure of transportation management : A review of the literature

"Transportation management" and "management of transportation" are keywords frequently featured, yet rarely comprehensively defined or explained in peer-reviewed publications in the transportation research domain. In this study, we reveal and analyze the hitherto implicit intellectual structure of this advanced and diverse research field using bibliometrical methods. On the basis of a systematic review of 900 scholarly articles published between 1946 and 2012, we identify 55 topical clusters that delineate and weight the dominant associations with the term "transportation management" as either a specific or executive function at an operational, strategic, and normative level. Moreover, we identify two avenues for further research that warrant future transport-specific research and that might potentially yield findings that can be generalized beyond this industry context.