In the current era of information and knowledge, organizational learning (OL) and knowledge management (KM) are two fundamental fields that add value to organizations by facilitating the achievement of their goals (Castaneda, 2010). Companies that learn faster and use knowledge more effectively tend to be leaders (Smith, 2008). However, KM and OL are dynamic subjects that “have gone through dramatic changes in the last twenty years and will continue to change in the next ten years” (Easterby-Smith and Lyles, 2011, p. 1). These changes have rarely been investigated and they are the main focus of this study. Vera and Crossan (2003) stated that although OL and KM are closely related, these are rarely studied together. Furthermore, despite the theoretical extension of KM, its trajectory and identity remain largely unknown (Serenko, 2013), which applies equally to OL. The objective of this study is to review OL and KM research, particularly to determine whether OL has been conceptually absorbed by KM. Several studies have focused on KM and OL separately (Bapuji and Crossan, 2004; Brahma and Mishra, 2015; Easterby-Smith et al., 2000; Lee et al., 2016; Serenko, 2013; Serenko and Dumay, 2015a, 2015b), but the current study is the first to simultaneously investigate the evolution of both fields. We have identified the main conceptual categories in each field, the representative authors in terms of frequency and impact and the relevant journals. The domains considered in this study are theoretical, empirical and analytical articles accessed via the Scopus and ISI Web of Science databases for 1970-2016. In Section 2, we present a brief review of the concepts considered and related research conducted using bibliometric and scientometric tools. In Section 3, we describe the methods used in the current study. In Section 4, we present our results and these are discussed in Section 5. In Section 6, we explain some implications and limitations, and give our conclusions

. ۲٫ Theoretical background

۲٫۱ Knowledge management

KM was first conceptualized in the 1990s, where it was facilitated by the globalization of economies and markets, knowledge-intensive products and services and the rapid development of information technology (Alavi and Denford, 2001). The study of KM was developed by Drucker (1993) in terms of knowledge-intensive firms and the fundamental role of their knowledge workers (Drucker, 1966). Most KM definitions are based on processes. Alavi and Leidner (2001) proposed one of the most widely cited frameworks comprising four processes: creation, storage retrieval, transference and knowledge application. The processes that are frequently incorporated in KM definitions are the creation, access, dissemination and application of knowledge (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995); the creation, maintenance, renewal, organization, transference and realization of knowledge (Wiig, 1997); the identification, capture, storage, sharing, application and selling of knowledge (Liebowitz, 1999); the generation, access, facilitation, integration, embedding, application, transfer and protection of knowledge (Lin, 2014); and the creation, acquisition, documentation, storage, electronic transference, face-to-face sharing and use and reuse of knowledge (Castaneda, 2015a).