The inclusion of the full range of 21 subcategories shown in
Appendix A resulted in a content-coding scheme that provided
complete coverage of all articles in the 20 years that comprised the
pilot test. We then applied the taxonomy to all other years of
published articles.
Like any other taxonomy that is created inductively, we cannot
say unequivocally that this is the only possible taxonomy. We
can say, however, that it is sufficiently comprehensive to classify
each of the 358 IHRM articles included in our review. Also, it is
important to note that the comparison of publication trends with
broader business trends involves the inevitable task of trying to
map categories from one area onto the other. This can be
challenging, especially when the terms used by academics and
practitioners do not always overlap.