A bibliometric analysis of psychological contract literature: current status, advancements and future research trends

Abstract

In the current competitive and dynamic environment, employees' psychological contract is an important psychological factor through which organizations can achieve competitive advantage. Numerous studies have shown that psychological contract is a significant predictor of various organizational outcomes. Despite the growing interest in exploring the psychological contract aspects among scholars, review articles and thorough analysis have been limited. The present study fills in this gap by identifying and evaluating the research development of psychological contract topic. Using 1333 journal articles from the Elsevier Scopus database published between 1973-2019, a bibliometric analysis was employed to assess the patterns of global psychological contract research based on the number of publications, co-authorship analysis amongst affiliated countries and authors, and co-occurrence of author keywords. The results revealed that the number of publications increased every year; subsequently, cumulative total publications also steadily increases till the present time. The current research findings show that researchers from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and China contributed about 61% of worldwide publications, leading the other 64 countries/territories. Moreover, four of the world's top 100 universities were among the most productive universities in each of the ten leading countries selected for the analysis. By providing a detailed overview of the research studies in the area of psychological contract, this study highlights the insights and directions for the future researchers, practitioners, academicians, and scholars in related business, management, social sciences, and psychology fields.