Workplace spirituality: exploring past, present and future through bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to do a comprehensive analysis of the existing literature on workplace spirituality to address the intellectual framework of workplace spirituality and the framework's future direction.

Design/methodology/approach

A multistep screening procedure was used to obtain data from the Scopus database, which included 648 papers ranging from 1998 to 2023. The bibliometric analysis is conducted by using VOSviewer and Biblioshiny.

Findings

The bibliometric analysis showcases that workplace spirituality is a multidimensional concept primarily studied in the organizational behavior domain. The most important research themes were organizational culture and spirituality. In addition, this paper advances workplace spirituality literature by identifying the keywords, prominent authors, journals and conceptual structure.

Research limitations/implications

The study summarizes the existing knowledge on workplace spirituality using bibliometric analysis, classifies thematic areas, identifies research gaps and suggests future avenues of research.

Originality/value

The review paper conducts a bibliometric analysis of the emerging area of workplace spirituality over time. These results can also serve as a guide for future research in the subject of workplace spirituality.

Citation

Barik, S. and Nayak, T. (2024), "Workplace spirituality: exploring past, present and future through bibliometric analysis", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 31 No. 9, pp. 3216-3241. https://doi.org/10.1108/BIJ-04-2022-0251