Interdisciplinary patchwork: a bibliometric analysis of investor relations and financial communication

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) established its first “Investor Relations Section” in 1976, and in 1988 their Body of Knowledge Task Force officially claimed Investor Relations (IR) to be a subfunction of Public Relations (PR) (PRSA, 1988). However, despite this early foundation, a different understanding prevailed for a long time, in both practice and research. Multiple scholars have complained that even if IR is part of PR, there is a clear lack of research in the field of IR from the perspective of communications and PR (Kelly et al., 2010; Laskin, 2009); likewise, in practice, the field is shaped by a strong dominance of professionals with an economic background and a denial of the ability of PR professionals to handle IR topics (Petersen and Martin, 1996; Laskin, 2009, 2014). Nevertheless, to meet the various requirements of the field in practice and to address its holistic nature in research, the field of IR and the subordinated financial communication must recognize its interdisciplinary roots, with all its intersections and diverse influences.

The field of IR encompasses communicative processes between companies and financial publics to enable relationships; it also refers to financial disclosure, and is guided by laws and legal regulations (Hoffmann and Fieseler, 2012; Hong and Ki, 2007; NIRI, 2003). The range of involved fields and disciplines is even broader: marketing is involved in promoting the company’s brand and for value proposition (Hoffmann et al., 2011a); insights from information technology are essential to enabling data analysis or digital reporting (Halim et al., 2015); linguistics concentrates on the study and improvement of text production (Whitehouse, 2023); and psychology is needed to understand investor behavior, decision-making processes, and market dynamics (Hoffmann, 2023).

Despite this visible interdisciplinarity and the assumption that IR and financial communication emerge as a dynamic field with various influences, prior studies have contended that these influences work in parallel and are separate from each other. Scholars have argued that strands of research stay within their own domains and mainly rely on the corresponding discipline’s own theories and methods, with little overlapping and interactions. Furthermore, scholarship networks appear as distinct, close clusters (Doan and McKie, 2017; Hoffmann and Strauß, 2024; Hoffmann et al., 2018).

Accordingly, the field gets approached by claims of interdisciplinarity—as several disciplines contribute to the same strategic process—but also of siloing and isolation—as interaction among and consideration across those disciplines seem scarce. In this regard, bibliometric analysis is needed to determine how the field of IR and financial communication develops out of the various influencing disciplines and the extent to which these influences collaborate, overlap, or co-exist. The paper empirically assesses existing research at a macro level to address the distinctness or similarity of the contributions. It aims to present the influences on the evolution and structure of the field of IR and financial communication by analyzing previous publications in terms of their sources, authors, core topics, citations, and underlying ideas and intellectual structures. In this way, it addresses the overarching question of how disciplinary and interdisciplinary influences affect and shape the development and performance of the field of IR.

The evolution of companies into larger entities with higher expenditures and a greater need for resources led to the early stages of the separation of ownership and management in the 17th century, which laid the foundation for IR and financial communication. As a communication function, IR enabled companies to connect and communicate with their newly acquired shareholders and investors about their intentions and progress (Laskin, 2009). Despite developing only slowly in the early years, the specialization and globalization of capital markets and broader shareholder bases, with the corresponding specific interests and needs, led to more professionalized stages with their own professional organizations and definitions (Silver, 2004; Laskin, 2009).

In 1996, the world’s largest professional association, the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI), described IR as a “corporate marketing activity combining the disciplines of communication and finance” to positively affect the value of the company and its cost of capital (Petersen and Martin, 1996, p. 177). This definition follows the initial positioning of the field as a concern of corporate communication and PR, which enabled relationships between companies and financial publics and acted as an interpreter and mediator between these audiences (Grunig and Hunt, 1984; Cutlip et al., 1994). However, just a few years later, NIRI adapted and widened the definition, describing IR as “strategic management responsibility that integrates finance, communication, marketing and securities law compliance to enable the most effective two-way communication between a company, the financial community, and other constituencies, which ultimately contributes to a company’s securities achieving fair valuation” (NIRI, 2003).

The revision and expansion of the definition denotes how IR ranges beyond communication and finance. As a strategic communication function, IR should enable an exchange of information, build and maintain relationships, and reach acceptance and cooperation. At the same time, due to its position in the financial domain and its legal demands, the collaboration of several disciplines is needed to fulfill IR’s strategic goal (Hoffmann and Fieseler, 2012; Hong and Ki, 2007).

The scramble for influence and the relevance of collaboration within the field is evident in Laskin’s (2018) elaboration of the three eras of IR: the communication era (1945–1975), the financial era (1975–2005), and the synergy era (2005 to present). In his postulation, Laskin (2018) described how the profession shifted with the changing needs and expectations of financial publics, from practitioners with a background in communications to practitioners with a background in finance—and then, ultimately, to practitioners with combined backgrounds and skills from both fields. Surprisingly, though, both of Laskin’s (2009, 2014) works on the profession in the U.S. revealed that it is predominantly treated within companies as a financial function and is represented primarily by professionals with a financial background. His results showed that the classification of IR and financial communication—i.e. as interdisciplinary or as narrowly focused—is unclear and depends on the company (Laskin, 2009, 2014). This indicates that actual interdisciplinarity is practiced less than assumed.

Similarly, interdisciplinarity seems not to be fully realized in research, with a strong impression that the field is addressed by only a limited number of disciplines that are competing against each other for domination rather than complementing each other. This is especially controversial given IR’s role within communication research: despite its initial position and its definition’s emphasis on two-way communication, Laskin (2009) argued that “communication research largely ignores the area of investor relations” (p. 211). Kelly et al. (2010) described IR as “one of public relations’ most unfortunate paradoxes” (p. 182), as PR mentions IR as a subdiscipline but pays it only little attention in scholarship.

After Kelly et al. (2010) and Laskin (2009) criticized a lack of research, Hoffmann et al. (2018) described a growing volume of publications in the subsequent years, connected to the increasing professionalization of the field. Hoffmann et al. (2018), along with other studies, remarked on the strong roots of the field in business, management, and accounting and also reported impact from the field of communication science—albeit at a lower percentage than from business, management, accounting, and finance (Doan and McKie, 2017; Hoffmann et al., 2018; Hoffmann and Strauß, 2024). Thus, despite the interdisciplinarity of the field, the various disciplines appear to wield influence at different proportions.

Moreover, prior studies on IR and financial communication have described research in this field as staying within the realm of its respective discipline. In their descriptive overview of IR literature, Doan and McKie (2017) remarked that there are no significant interactions among the contributing fields; instead, they are isolated from each other, ignoring the approaches and tools of other fields and remaining within their own silos. Similarly, Hoffmann et al. (2018) described that despite a growing diversification toward more specific questions and interests, the disciplines mostly persist with their individual theoretical lenses. In addition, in their bibliometric analysis of the history of IR and financial communication, Hoffmann and Strauß (2024) described an overall low coherence in the field, arguing that the field remains diffuse: their results showed a strong focus on Western markets in particular, scant cross-country collaborations among authors, and a broad span of thematic and methodological keywords.

Prior studies have described the interdisciplinarity of the field with research interests in PR and communications, finance and accounting, law, and various other disciplines while simultaneously criticizing the field for its isolation and non-interaction between contributing disciplines (Doan and McKie, 2017; Hoffmann et al., 2018). The study at hand builds on these results by assuming that between the claims of interdisciplinarity or isolation, the field of IR and financial communication continues to evolve through intersections and complements.

Bibliometric analysis can enable precise insights into the dynamics of this field, its origins, and its contributions. Over the last decades, bibliometric analysis—“the application of mathematical and statistical methods” to literature (Pritchard, 1969, p. 348)—has been employed in various scientific disciplines to map research and reveal patterns and trends in publications. In addition to multiple other disciplines, it has also been applied in the fields of PR, and finance. More recently, it has been applied in IR and financial communication: Hoffmann and Strauß (2024) conducted a bibliometric analysis to portray the history of financial communication, focusing on collaboration networks of authors and collaborating countries.

Conducting a bibliometric analysis for the overall field of IR and financial communication promises highly informative insights, as it (1) assembles an understanding of the knowledge landscape, with its growth and evolution, (2) quantifies the impact of disciplines, sources, publications, and authors and measures the integration of knowledge across disciplines, and (3) identifies (inter)disciplinary networks of topics and trends (Börner et al., 2005; Pasadeos et al., 1999). Furthermore, (4) co-citation networks identify cited authors and show the co-occurrence of those authors. By revealing the influence and interconnectedness of scholars, co-citation networks uncover the intellectual structure of the field by highlighting foundational scholars who shape the discourse of the field with their publications (Pasadeos et al., 1999).

This study aims to expand the results of Hoffmann et al. (2018) and Doan and McKie (2017) by numerically assessing scholarly publications in the field independent of their origin, using a large sample to elaborate on the growth of the field (in general and per discipline), scientific productivity, outstanding authors, and the field’s intellectual structure. It also extends the results of Hoffmann and Strauß (2024), who mainly focused on geographical aspects and collaboration networks with their focus on a more holistic picture.

Hence, this study enables tracing the formation, development, and interdisciplinary state of the art of IR and financial communication with all its influences, addressing the sub-research questions:

The study uses bibliometric data to map scholarly research. Accordingly, it draws on two major bibliometric data bases: Scopus (Elsevier) and Web of Science (WoS, Clarivate). Both platforms host multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal articles along with other curated high-quality academic sources such as books, edited book chapters, selected conference proceedings, and magazines from various disciplines. The platforms provide access to sources’ document information (e.g. authors, title, and citation count), bibliographical information (e.g. affiliation, publisher), abstract, keywords, and cited references (Archambault et al., 2009). As the two databases comprise partly different sources, datasets from both platforms were combined so as to extend the publication coverage.

To collect a sample of publications independent of their scientific origin, “Investor Relations,” “Financial Communication,” and “Financial Communications” were set as relevant search terms. Quotation marks were used to prevent the terms from being separated. The query used the separator “or” to ensure that the results included at least one of the search terms in the article titles and the authors’ keywords. The inclusion of the abstract in the search string vastly enlarged the sample: a random check of multiple articles in this larger sample showed that even if the abstract included at least one of the keywords, the article itself did not necessarily focus on IR or financial communication, with some just mentioning the field as a side topic. Thus, articles for the sample were selected based on the appearance of the search terms in the publications’ titles and keywords only, to ensure a pivotal contribution to the field.

To cover the field from its earliest accessible article until the time of data collection (January 2024), no exclusion criteria (such as year, language, or journal) were applied. After both databases were accessed as described, the sample consisted of 337 results on Scopus and 291 on WoS. After duplicates were removed, the final sample consisted of 435 unique publications. The final dataset comprises citation information (authors, document title, year, source title, source volume/issues, pages, citation count, source type, document type, DOI), bibliographical information (affiliations, publisher, editor(s), language, corresponding author), keywords (author and indexed keywords), and cited references.

Bibliometric tests were conducted using the Bibliometrix package in RStudio, which facilitates various quantitative analyses for bibliometric and scientometric studies (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017). The analyses included descriptive and frequency analyses (e.g. frequencies of publications per year and/or discipline, journals, citation counts, and keywords), co-occurrence analysis (examining the relationships and co-presence of keywords), and thematic mapping/modeling (visualizing the conceptual structure based on keywords). For the co-citation analysis, VOSViewer was used to visualize co-citation networks (van Eck and Waltman, 2010).

As shown in Table 1, the combined sample consisted of 435 documents, with the earliest published in 1970 and the most recent in 2023. The documents come from 275 different sources (e.g. journals or books) and had an average of 10.97 citations per document. The majority of documents (300) are journal articles, while less than 5% are books or book chapters. The field was examined by 734 authors, of whom 131 published single-authored papers. With only 1.4% of documents having international co-authorships, the research focus appears local. The annual production of publications, presented in Figure 1, shows an overall increase in the number of publications, especially since the late 1990s.

To differentiate between the growths of the various involved disciplines, the 275 different sources were categorized with respect to their primary focus area(s), using the subject areas and categories of Scimago or (especially for books) the main topic of the publication and the background of the authors. This categorization is not definite, due to the interdisciplinarity of many journals and their self-cataloging in multiple disciplines or fields; instead, it enables a rough classification that differentiates between overarching disciplines or lines of thought. The sources were categorized as follows:

1. “Communication and Language”: sub-categories “Communication and Media,” “PR and Strategic Communication,” “Business Communication,” and “Linguistics”

2. “Accounting and Finance”: sub-categories “Accounting and Auditing,” “Finance and Financial Markets,” and “Economics”

3. “Business and Management”: sub-categories “General Management and Strategy,” “Corporate Governance and Responsibility,” and “Innovation and Entrepreneurship”

4. “Law,” no sub-categories

5. “Computer Science and Engineering”: sub-categories “Information Technology” and “Space and Physics”

6. “Life Sciences”: sub-categories “Medicine and Health,” “Psychology, Biology and Chemistry”

7. “Other,” no sub-categories

Figure 2 shows the contributions from the listed main categories and sub-categories. The results show that the main contributors are “Accounting and Finance” (142 publications, 32.64%), “Communication and Language” (125 publications, 28.74%), and “Business and Management” (109 publications, 25.06%). Within these main categories, the field is dominated by the sub-categories “PR and Strategic Communication,” “Accounting and Auditing,” “Finance and Financial Markets,” and “General Management and Strategy.”

Interestingly, the sample contained fewer publications from “Law” (3 publications, 0.69%) than from “Computer Science and Engineering” (34 publications, 7.82%) and “Life Sciences” (15 publications, 3.45%).

For the growth of the different disciplines in terms of annual publications, Figure 3 shows the differences between the development of the main categories “Communication and Language,” “Accounting and Finance,” and “Business and Management” and a combined category (“Other”) for all remaining categories. The results show increasing scholarly attention over the past 2 decades, indicating that IR and financial communication is steadily developing into a more frequently studied research topic among the various disciplines.

For “Accounting and Finance,” the first peak is already visible throughout the 1970s, followed by moderate growth in the 1980s and 1990s (0–4 publications per year) and a more substantial increase in the 2000s (4–8 publications per year); the category shows overall consistent growth, with the highest numbers of publications in recent years (more than 10 publications per year). The “Business and Management” category shows barely any growth until the late 1990s and early 2000s (0–2 publications per year), then peaks between 2005 and 2012 (7–10 publications per year); despite this sharp increase, only moderate growth can be seen in subsequent years (2–7 publications). The “Communication and Language” category emerges latest, with noticeable publications starting around the early 2000s (0–4 publications per year); however, from then on, the category shows a rapid rise, with a peak between 2014 and 2018 (up to 15 publications per year) and moderate to strong growth in recent years (4–10 publications per year).

Table 2 presents the most relevant sources with their total number of publications. As it shows, Corporate Communications is the leading journal with 27 publications, followed by the trade journal Institutional Investor with 14 publications. What stands out is that the 15 most relevant sources are all categorized under the main categories “Communication and Language” (7 sources) and “Accounting and Finance” (8 sources), indicating that the field of IR and financial communication relies heavily on those two pillars. Moreover, the journals under “Communication and Language” cover the majority of publications; thus, even though the general number of sources under “Communication and Language” is lower than that under “Accounting and Finance” (Figure 2), “Communication and Language” publications have a higher concentration in academic journals, whereas “Accounting and Finance” publications are scattered more across sources.

Table 3 shows the ten papers with the greatest reach in terms of the total number of citations. What is striking is the age of the publications: except for the paper of Bushee and Miller (2012) and that of Chapman et al. (2019), the remaining top publications were published in the late 1990s and early 2000s. However, there is a high diffusion of the number of total citations: the top three papers reached over 200 citations, but this number decreases sharply for lower-ranked papers, whereby papers with approximately 80 citations are still among the ten most cited papers in the sample. Also remarkable is that these ten most cited papers are in either the “Accounting and Finance” or the “Business and Management” categories, indicating that “Communication and Language” papers have a lower reach.

The results should be viewed with caution, as they only refer to the citations noted in Scopus and WoS, and the actual number of citations may be higher. Nevertheless, the high number of citations for papers from the late 1990s and early 2000s, the absence of newer publications in the upper ranks of the table, and the strong diffusion of citation counts indicate that authors tend to base their research on a foundation created decades ago.

For the authorship analysis, Figure 4 shows the most productive authors in terms of their number of publications. Four of the ten most productive authors are connected to the category “Communication and Language”, five are connected to “Accounting and Finance,” and one is connected to “Business and Management.” This reinforces the previously discussed results regarding the strength of the influences of these three disciplines. In addition, the results show that authors prefer to stay within their own discipline and mainly publish in journals connected to their own field; even though seven of the ten authors have one or two publications in another discipline, most publishing stays within their own domain. Specifically, publishing in other disciplines occurs from “Communication and Language” to “Accounting and Finance” and vice versa, implying similar levels of openness toward cross-disciplinary publishing in both fields.

Moreover, what is remarkable here is that scholars with only four or five publications appear in the list of most relevant authors, indicating a broad dispersion of authors within the field. In addition, the majority of publications of the most relevant authors were published between mid-2000 and 2023, with the highest concentration between 2011 and 2022; only the articles of Marston, C. were published earlier, ending with the rising peak of the other top authors.

For analysis of the conceptual structure and focus of the content in the publications, keywords can provide an overview. The analysis of the authors’ keywords (Figure 5) shows the most frequent terms used to describe their research. In light of the search string used in this study, it is unsurprising that “investor relations” and “financial communication” are the most used keywords, respectively. However, the results show that the term “investor relations” had overall higher counts in the “Accounting and Finance” and “Business and Management” main and sub-categories than in the “Communication and Language” main and sub-categories, where “financial communication” had higher counts. This distribution indicates a disciplinary preference in keyword usage, wherein “investor relations” is more embedded in a finance-oriented discourse while “financial communication” is instead embedded in a communication-oriented discourse.

Other prominent clusters can be found around “corporate governance” and “disclosure,” which appear often throughout all the “Accounting and Finance” and “Business and Management” sub-categories. Furthermore, while “communication” shows a cross-disciplinary appearance in several sub-categories across all main categories, more specific terms such as “corporate communication,” “public relations,” or “financial information” show a clear communication-oriented focus, with more appearances in the “PR and Strategic Communication” sub-category. More finance-oriented terms such as “financial reporting,” “institutional investors,” and “voluntary disclosure” reached higher counts in the “Accounting and Finance” and “Business and Management” sub-categories, but almost no counts in the “Communication and Language” sub-categories.

Overall, the keyword distribution shows that some concepts and terms connect the disciplines, indicating overlapping, whereas others underscore the different foci and approaches of the specific disciplines, as they primarily arise in individual fields.

The co-occurrence network of authors’ keywords (Figure 6) offers further insights into the connectedness of topics and consequently provides a clearer picture of a given publication’s central concerns. The visualization identifies clusters of keywords that frequently appear together in the same document, with the size of a bubble indicating its frequency of appearance and the closeness and connectedness of the bubbles indicating the frequency of co-appearance. The resulting network consists of 9 colored clusters with varying numbers of connected keywords. Derived from the frequencies of the keywords, “investor relations” is the overall network’s core, and it dominates the field’s research. In its own cluster, it co-appears with various keywords like “media,” “financial markets,” “information asymmetry,” “trust,” and “transparency.” Moreover, it is highly connected to “financial communication,” which is more closely connected with communication-based keywords, such as “journalism,” “strategic communication,” and “social media.”

A thematic map (Figure 7) for the authors’ keywords visualizes the development and dynamics of the topics addressed in the publications. The figure is based on an analysis of keywords calculating their co-occurrence and visualizing them into clusters. The resulting map consists of two dimensions: centrality (horizontal) indicates the importance and relevance of a topic, and density (vertical) indicates the development or specialization. This results in four quadrants: emerging/declining topics are marginal topics with low importance and low development; basic themes are of high importance in the field but are underdeveloped; niche topics are well-developed but only marginally relevant to the field; and motor themes are well-developed, highly important topics for the field. The bubble size represents the frequency of occurrence of the keyword (the higher the occurrence, the more often the keyword is used), and the pie chart segments represent the occurrence ratio per discipline.

As seen in Figures 5 and 6, “investor relations” and “financial communication” are the two most important underlying themes. As basic themes, they form the foundation of the field and persist without further detailed development. Notably, both bubbles contain similar ratios of contributions from the three major categories, reinforcing the contributions from the underlying disciplines.

The rising or disappearing topics depict aspects that are either a side issue of IR and financial communication (e.g. “competitive advantage”) or are or were relevant in certain times (e.g. “Covid-19”). These fading or growing topics are represented by all major categories in similar ways, as they are primarily trending in society and can differ or overlap between the individual disciplines.

Three overlapping themes are identified as very specialized niche topics: “earnings call,” “financial,” and “corporate performance.” Interestingly, this narrow focus is mainly represented under the “Communication and Language” and “Business and Management” categories, highlighting that these disciplines contribute to the field with highly specialized topics that, on the whole, reach a lower relevance for the overall performance of the field.

The most discussed topics, labeled motor themes, relate strongly to the core and definition of the field by being very central and highly developed. Accordingly, the major categories contribute similarly to the occurrences of these topics and individual foci, with “Communication and Language” focusing on “journalism” and “communications,” “Accounting and Finance” focusing on “legitimacy,” and “Business and Management” focusing on “investor relations management.”

A co-citation analysis was conducted to reveal the intellectual structure and thus the influences of various disciplines, authors, and works. This analysis enabled the identification of key researchers and structured the intellectual input of the publications. By visualizing the frequency of commonly cited sources in one publication, it presents highly co-cited works and their connections; consequently, it shows the intellectual and cognitive links that shape the field’s output. The visualization illustrates the frequency of citation by the size of the bubble, the strength of a connection by the closeness or distance between the bubbles, and the overall interconnectedness of publications (cluster) by color.

Since the software to analyze co-citation data can only process one file at a time, the larger file (Scopus) was selected. To ensure the robustness of the results, the same analysis with identical thresholds was conducted with the WoS file, and a similar result was achieved; accordingly, for the analysis, only the 337 results from Scopus were used. For the visualization, an author must be cited at least five times, which reduces the original 19,096 cited authors to 970. The final visualization consists of seven clusters (Figure 8).

The highest density is found around clusters 1, 2, 3, and partly 4. These constellations are highly connected but can still be separated into four distinct clusters. Due to the high density of bubbles, their volume, and the abundance of connections, these four clusters represent the core of the field. With 306 authors, Cluster 1 is the biggest recognized cluster, followed by Cluster 3 (216 authors), then Cluster 2 (165 authors), then Cluster 4 (138 authors).

Cluster 1 (Economics: Accounting, finance, and stock markets) encompasses areas such as accounting, finance, and capital markets. Comprising authors like Miller G., Bushee B., Kirk M., and Verrecchia R., it represents the roots of IR and financial communication in accounting, with a strong focus on stock market-related aspects. Covering topics such as financial reporting, corporate disclosure, and financial markets, it appears as the core of the field within the accounting discipline. This becomes even more evident through its size. The cluster shows strong interdisciplinary connections, with multiple strong (close) connections to corporate communications (Cluster 3), single relations to both linguistics and psychology (Cluster 6), and a thorough intertwinement with the second economics cluster (Cluster 2).

Cluster 2 (Economics: Accounting, corporate-centered) is also concerned with accounting, but it has a more corporate-centered interpretation. Consisting of authors like Marston C., Lev B., Healy P., and Botosan C., it represents the influence from accounting, finance, and related fields while mainly focusing on the corporate perspective (e.g. taxation, corporate performance, corporate governance). Due to its more company-related concentration, it shows a strong connection to corporate communications (Cluster 3) and linguistics (Cluster 4).

Cluster 3 (Communication: Corporate Communication) pools authors in corporate communication, strategic communication, and public relations. Authors such as Laskin A., Hoffmann C., Zerfass A., and Fombrun C. indicate the relevance of thought and research from the field of communication science for IR and financial communication. In addition to the high density in the cluster’s center, a high dispersion can be seen around it. Thus, it comprises not only references to fields like economics or marketing, but also encompasses various connections to linguistics (Cluster 4), accounting (Cluster 1, Cluster 2), psychology (Cluster 6), and the highly interdisciplinary Cluster 5.

Cluster 4 (Communication: Linguistics) represents another grouping of social sciences, this one particularly addressing language and linguistics. With authors such as Palmieri R., Bhatia V., Rocci A., and Perrin D., it focuses on IR and financial communication from the perspective of language, communication, and discourse practices. Due to its interdisciplinary approach to communication science and sociology, it interweaves with Cluster 3; as the authors of both clusters are frequently cited together, the two merge. Because of the focus on corporate and accounting topics and their linguistic lens, the cluster also partially merges with Cluster 2.

Cluster 5 (Communication: Business, marketing, and organizations) can be seen as a remarkable cluster, with an enormous breadth of topics. With various inputs from communication (e.g. Hallahan K.), psychology (e.g. Ajzen I.), marketing (e.g. Kitchen P.), and management (e.g. Gray E.), it encompasses communication processes, practices, and effects in various contexts, including organizational, interpersonal, and mediated communication. Due to its breadth, it has a low density. It appears in the center of the visualization because although the number of connections is low, they are widely spread among the other clusters.

Cluster 6 (Psychology: Cognition and decision-making) represents research on psychology, human cognition, and decision-making processes. With authors such as Kahneman D., Petty R., Cacioppo J., and Koonce L., it represents the basis for publications concerned with the psychological aspects of investment processes. It appears as a relatively closed cluster that only connects to a few authors in the communications (Cluster 3) and family studies (Cluster 7) clusters, although it hosts a significant closeness to the finance and stock market-oriented strand of accounting research (Cluster 1).

Cluster 7 (Economics: Family studies and home economics) is the most distanced and least interwoven cluster. Centering especially around the works of Dew J., it consists of research on social structures, family dynamics, interpersonal relationships, and human development. Due to its interdisciplinarity, those citations are often co-cited with publications in psychology (Cluster 6) and communication (Cluster 5); however, due to its high degree of specialization, it only shows a few connections.

This study aimed to shed light on the influences that shape the field of IR and financial communication in order to highlight the impact of the various contributing disciplines and to explore the field’s dynamics. A bibliometric analysis was conducted to outline the growth of the field, elaborate on the field’s scientific productivity, reveal its core concerns and topics addressed, and identify its intellectual structure.

The analysis showed an increase over time in publications in the field, supporting prior analyses (Doan and McKie, 2017; Hoffmann and Strauß, 2024; Hoffmann et al., 2018). Interestingly, though, when the results are separated into the involved disciplines, they primarily showed growth in the disciplines of “Communication and Language” and “Accounting and Finance,” while the growth in “Business and Management” was on the decline. This finding is contrary to the greater contribution of this perspective in the studies that is described by Hoffmann et al. (2018) or Doan and McKie (2017).

To expand these results, the study also analyzed the input of several sub-categories connected to the major disciplines. This showed that the contributions mainly stem from the sub-categories “PR and Strategic Communication,” “Accounting and Auditing,” “Finance and Financial Markets,” and “General Management and Strategy.” This confirms the allocation of the discipline described by various scholars and institutions (e.g. Laskin, 2009; Laskin, 2018; NIRI, 2003; Hoffmann and Strauß, 2024; Hoffmann et al., 2018). However, the scant input from, e.g. “Law” and “Psychology” partly contradicts the contributing disciplines and fields discussed elsewhere (e.g. Hoffmann et al., 2011b; Hoffmann, 2023; Laskin, 2018).

The criticisms of isolation among the contributing disciplines—i.e. researchers staying within their own theoretical and methodological frameworks—and of weak collaboration between scholars that was described in the literature review (Doan and McKie, 2017; Hoffmann and Strauß, 2024; Hoffmann et al., 2018) became further evident in the results. Despite sharing similar or even identical concerns, the individual disciplines conduct their research in the field with their own focal points, which highlights the common core while indicating the diversity in the field. The results showed that despite shared basic topics (as categorized under the umbrella terms “investor relations” and “financial communication”), individual contributors build clusters that represent their own, discrete focal points based on their discipline.

Building on the findings from Hoffmann and Strauß (2024), the results revealed that the most important authors in the field primarily remain and publish within their own discipline. However, the cross-disciplinary publications of authors in the two major categories “Communication and Language” and “Accounting and Finance” indicate a mutual openness toward scholarship from disciplines addressing the same field of research.

This somewhat cautious openness was also evident in the co-citation analysis, which presented an interdisciplinary field embedded in a broad landscape of diverse intellectual roots. Despite this wide range, the influencing disciplines can be clearly clustered, wherein the densities of the main clusters especially highlight a strong focus in their own intellectual base.

However, contrary to Doan and McKie (2017) or Hoffmann and Strauß (2024), who described a lack of interaction, the deep interlacing of these clusters indicates that the intellectual base of the different clusters—and, thus, disciplines—is firmly connected: particularly the “accounting,” “corporate communications,” and “linguistic” clusters are close and show high overlap with and various connections to other clusters. Moreover, with the “linguistics” cluster visibly encircling the “corporate communication” cluster, together with the strong interconnectedness of two of the “economic” clusters with two of the “communication” clusters, an interwoven intellectual structure of the dominant disciplines can be seen.

The results lead to takeaways for practice and future research. The analysis indicates that IR and financial communication is an emerging field, growing out of various overlapping academic disciplines but also out of disparate academic perspectives with less interaction. Future research and practice must consider that IR relies on the collaboration of several disciplines and cannot fall into independent pieces; it should strive to combine these various influences into a patchwork, which is needed to explore the field in all its facets.

Further quantitative and qualitative research is needed to address the relevance of sub-strands within the main disciplines presented here, along with their thematic foci. Given the above-discussed differences with prior research due to the smaller-scale categorization of journals and contributions, further research must pay more attention to the individual approaches in the smaller fields and disciplines overshadowed by large categories. Furthermore, with quantitative and qualitative research, cross-disciplinary publishing should be better analyzed to elaborate on the exchange of ideas and interdisciplinarity. Moreover, further qualitative analysis is required to expand on the contributing authors, their backgrounds, and affiliations.

Practitioners should be aware that tension among professionals from diverse backgrounds can be seen within research. As the field is examined from multiple disciplines, research informing practice and policy relies on a variety of perspectives. These perspectives may or may not take each other into account, and their foci and what they consider relevant or valuable are fluid. This diversity leads to a broad number of focal points, relevant topics, and lines of thought, which sometimes overlap but often remain disparate. Given this variability, reflection on chosen sources and a greater willingness to consult sources from various disciplines is necessary to develop an overview of this splintered field with a shared base. A cautious combination of these views is vital, especially for one with responsibilities that require fundamental insights from fields and disciplines such as communication, finance, law, marketing, etc., to successfully achieve their goal.

The study has several limitations. First, the study only refers to academic publications that are accessible on Scopus and WoS, and it was restricted to only two search terms, which were applied to the titles and keywords. As both platforms only contain mainly peer-reviewed publications or publications of similar high quality and only offer access to publications connected to their databases (unlike, e.g. Google Scholar), it is likely that the sample does not comprise every existing publication, as it does not include publications that are inaccessible via Scopus or WoS or that use different wording.

Second, bibliometric analysis—especially co-citation analysis—can reveal insights into structural and intellectual influences, but it does not cover them completely; bibliometric analysis does not access the individual authors, their background, their schools of thought, and their inspirations. Thus, the analysis does not provide insights into the structures within a publication, as it does not address, e.g. interdisciplinary author collaborations, discussed theories, or applied methods.

Over the last decades, multiple academics and practitioners have raised questions regarding the responsibility of several disciplines with respect to IR and financial communication. They have identified clear divisions (e.g. Doan and McKie, 2017; Hoffmann et al., 2018; Kelly et al., 2010; Laskin, 2014) and addressed the need for more interdisciplinarity (e.g. Hoffmann and Fieseler, 2012; Hoffmann and Strauß, 2024; Laskin, 2009). Building on this earlier work, this study aimed to show the origins and proportionality of influences that have shaped the field so far.

In the sample of 435 publications published over more than 50 years in 275 sources, the field appears small and highly diffuse, which proves its high interdisciplinary influences. The findings align with both claims of interdisciplinarity and isolation. The study shows that the field of IR and financial communication is highly interdisciplinary, as it combines insights from various disciplines to enable, support, and make the same strategic process as efficient as possible. However, when the contributions are examined in detail, the field seems more like a patchwork of individual, independent pieces that represent their own characteristics but together form a constantly growing entity.