Sustainability and knowledge management: authorship profile and thematic analysis of the KM Brasil publications from 2002 to 2016

Abstract

The documents published in the electronic records of KM Brasil, corresponding to the thirteen editions of the event, from 2002 to 2016, are analyzed with a focus on sustainability. The objective is to identify the breadth of the sustainability theme, the authorship profile and the thematic diversity, within the framework of the discussions related to knowledge management, from the historical basis of KM Brazil, the biggest event of the theme in Latin America. The theoretical foundation presents a brief characterization about knowledge management and sustainability. The descriptive study is characterized by a quantitative-qualitative approach, using bibliometric techniques, mainly through descriptive statistics, complemented by a content analysis. The quantitative analysis initially covered 605 documents, focusing later on the 18 articles that presented the theme sustainability in the title and / or keywords, and the qualitative analysis is restricted to these 18 articles. Among the results, we highlight the occurrence of 54 authors who published on the subject of sustainability, with prevalence of authorship of the masculine gender, collective, with academic link and performance in the public sector; in addition to 42 subjects and 18 foci related to sustainability and knowledge management. It is concluded that, despite the large number of participants in the business market, there is a considerable predominance of the academy in the studies on sustainability, and that the number of 18 documents on sustainability is not very representative in relation to the total of the 605 publications that make part of the historical basis of KM Brazil.