Mapping the Intellectual Landscape of Employee Performance Research: A Bibliometric and Mapping Analysis (2020–2025)

2.1 Employee performance

The concept of employee performance has been defined in various ways by different researchers, with complementary approaches. Aliyyah et al.¹⁶ state that employee performance is the outcome achieved in terms of quality and quantity according to the responsibilities assigned, reflecting the effectiveness and achievement of individuals in carrying out their tasks. Similarly, Sabuhari et al.¹² emphasize that performance encompasses everything done or not done by employees that affects their contribution to the organization, determined by their ability, effort, and organizational support. Ogalo²⁶ reinforces this perspective by highlighting that employee performance reflects an individual’s ability and capacity to complete assigned tasks, and serves as a key indicator of work success or failure. Supardi et al.²⁷ offer a broader perspective, defining performance as behavior that reflects an employee’s actions in carrying out their tasks, where the work outcome is not just the final product, but also the process influenced by various factors such as skills, motivation, and organizational environment. Meanwhile, Atan and Obeng²⁸ stress that performance not only includes observable actions but also the cognitive processes underlying them, as well as the importance of sustainable performance management to align individual work behaviors with the organization’s strategic goals. In a similar vein, Martini et al.²⁹ define employee performance as the outcome of the work or output produced by an employee in carrying out job activities within a specific time frame.

Based on these various perspectives, it can be concluded that employee performance is the level of success achieved by an employee in carrying out their tasks and responsibilities, both in terms of behavior and work outcomes, which are influenced by internal factors (such as ability, motivation, and attitude) and external factors (such as organizational support and performance management systems). This definition encompasses both quantitative and qualitative dimensions, emphasizing the importance of both the process and the results in the context of achieving organizational goals.

2.2 Bibliometric analysis

Bibliometric analysis is a quantitative approach used to evaluate, organize, and map scientific literature by utilizing statistical indicators such as publication counts, citation frequency, and relationships between scholarly works. This method was first introduced by Pritchard in 1969 and has since evolved into an essential tool for assessing the scientific structure, identifying research trends, and highlighting the contributions of authors, journals, and institutions that are most influential in a particular field.³⁰ By using software tools such as Bibliometrix in RStudio and VOSviewer, this analysis enables the visualization of conceptual relationships through techniques like co-word analysis, bibliographic coupling, and co-citation analysis, providing a comprehensive overview of the evolution of scientific knowledge.³¹ In the field of management and human resources research, bibliometrics is not only used to track the development of themes such as employee performance but also to uncover the interconnections between topics, identify seminal works, and provide direction for future research.²³ Therefore, bibliometrics functions as a bridge between retrospective mapping and prospective exploration within the scientific research ecosystem.

4.1 Excluded relevant articles

Based on the results of the systematic literature review (SLR) using the PRISMA framework, a total of 2,044 articles meets the inclusion criteria and are used in the bibliometric analysis, while 8,522 articles are excluded. Specifically, 27 articles meet the inclusion criteria but are not included in the analysis for specific reasons. Examples of such articles are presented in Table 1.

Although the three articles pass the initial metadata and keyword-based screening, full content analysis reveals that their research substance does not explicitly discuss or measure employee performance as a primary variable or as a structured outcome. The first article³⁵ focuses more on evaluating faculty publication output through bibliometric databases rather than addressing employee performance within an organizational context. The second article³⁶ mentions the term “employee performance”, but does not provide a theoretical definition or sufficient quantitative measurement tools for inclusion in the synthesis. Meanwhile, the third article³⁴ explores a highly technical topic in the context of lean manufacturing and does not focus on the evaluation of individual or group performance. Therefore, these three articles are excluded to ensure that the final synthesis accurately reflects empirical studies aligned with the primary focus of this bibliometric review.

4.2 Main information

Main Information provides a summary of the general characteristics of the articles analyzed in this study, which includes a total of 2,044 from 10,566 documents related to employee performance published between 2020 and 2025, obtained from the Scopus database. The displayed information includes the number of publication sources, number of authors, level of international collaboration, average document age, frequency of used keywords, and average citations per document. A detailed breakdown of this descriptive information can be seen in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3. Main information on employee performance articles.

Figure 3 presents descriptive information on the bibliometric characteristics of 2,044 scholarly documents analyzed in this study on employee performance published between 2020 and 2025. The total number of publication sources analyzed is 701, with contributions from 5,555 authors, including 210 single authors. This is supported by data showing that the average number of collaborators per article is 3.25, and the proportion of international collaboration is 26.47%, indicating openness and cross-border collaboration in the production of scientific knowledge. However, the annual publication growth rate indicates a negative trend of -15.88%, reflecting either thematic saturation or a shift in research focus toward new, more specific areas. Authors use a total of 4,816 keywords. The average document age is 2.57 years, and the average citation per document is 9.84. Overall, these descriptive data provide a comprehensive overview of the volume, collaboration, temporal dynamics, and scientific quality in the employee performance literature during the reviewed period.

4.3 Identifying research trends

This section presents the results of identifying research trends in employee performance studies based on bibliometric analysis of publications from 2020 to 2025. The topic trend visualization illustrates the evolution of research themes over time, showing the most frequently appearing topics and their years of emergence. Figure 4 below displays the development and dynamics of the main topics that have been the focus of the literature over the past five years.

Figure 4. Trend topics in employee performance research.

Based on the topic trend visualization and frequency presented in Figure 4, generated through the bibliometric analysis of 2,044 articles on employee performance published over the past five years (2020-2025), there is a significant evolution in research themes. As shown in Figure 4, this evolution reflects shifting scholarly attention toward emerging concepts and methodological advancements in the field. Topics such as “human” and “article” have the highest frequency and began emerging from 2021 to 2024. More specific themes such as “personnel management”, “adult”, and “motivation” have consistently appeared from 2020 or 2021 through 2024. Interestingly, topics like “job satisfaction” began to dominate after 2022 and remain relevant until 2025. Meanwhile, terms that appeared in the last years, such as “job security” and “hospitals”, emerged in 2024 with a median year of 2025. Overall, these findings indicate that employee performance research has shifted from fundamental aspects and general populations toward more specific and applicable contemporary and contextual issues.

4.4 Detecting key themes/topics

This section aims to detect the main themes or topics most frequently discussed in the employee performance literature through keyword frequency analysis. This identification is carried out to understand the dominant conceptual focus and the terms that consistently appear in publications over the past five years. Figure 5 below presents the visualization of the highest-frequency words that reflect the central themes in related research.

Figure 5. Most frequent words in employee performance themes.

Based on Figure 5, the word cloud and frequency data from the bibliometric analysis of employee performance show that the most common terms are “human” (134), “article” (117), and “employee” (90). This means that most research focuses on people as the main subject and the academic settings where these studies appear. Specific terms such as “job satisfaction” (43), “job performance” (40), “performance assessment” (53), and “employee performance” (50) suggest that researchers widely examine job satisfaction and ways to measure and assess performance. Also, terms like “leadership” (73), “workplace” (59), and “employment” (62) show an increased interest in organizational and management factors affecting performance. Words like “male”, “female”, and “middle-aged” highlight researchers’ attention to demographics in employee performance studies. Therefore, this word cloud provides a clear snapshot showing that recent employee performance research strongly emphasizes organizational factors, leadership roles, assessment methods, and personal characteristics.

The analysis of common words in employee performance studies shows that the terms “human” (134), “article” (117), and “employee” (90) appear most often. Other frequently mentioned terms related to performance include “performance assessment” (53), “employee performance” (50), “job satisfaction” (43), and “job performance” (40). These highlight that research mainly focuses on evaluating and measuring employee performance. Terms such as “male”, “female”, and “adult” show interest in demographics, while “leadership”, “employment”, “workplace”, and “job satisfaction” emphasize organizational factors. Words like “psychology”, “human experiment”, and “perception” suggest that psychological and behavioral viewpoints are important in these studies. Overall, this list clearly illustrates the wide variety of topics and main interests explored in employee performance research in the last five years.

4.5 Bibliographic coupling/grouping contemporary themes

The network visualization results from the VOSviewer export in employee performance research successfully map seven main clusters, each representing a thematic focus in the literature over the past five years. The VOSviewer output, in the form of a network visualization, is shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Network visualization of employee performance research.

The mapping of topic interconnections presented in Figure 6 identifies seven main clusters, each representing a distinct thematic focus within the literature on employee performance:

Overall, this mapping illustrates the diversity of approaches in employee performance studies, ranging from structural, psychological, to contextual approaches based on contemporary challenges.

4.6 Identification of the most influential publications in employee performance research

This section presents the results of identifying the most influential publications in employee performance research based on global citation counts. This analysis aims to recognize scholarly works that have made significant contributions in shaping the direction and development of the literature in this field. Figure 7 below displays a list of articles with the highest citation counts, representing the main foundations in the development of employee performance research.

Figure 7. Most global cited documents in employee performance research.

Based on Figure 7, the visualization and tabular data of the Most Globally Cited Documents indicate that the article by Paais and Pattiruhu,³⁷ titled Effect of Motivation, Leadership, and Organizational Culture on Satisfaction and Employee Performance, published in the Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business, is the most globally cited work, with 230 citations and an average of 38.33 citations per year. It is followed by the works of Yu et al.³⁸ and Singh et al.,³¹ with 215 and 213 citations, respectively, also indicating a very high level of scientific influence. Other articles, such as Prentice et al.³⁹ and Narayanamurthy & Tortorella,⁴⁰ also record significant citations, indicating high relevance in the literature related to employee performance.

Table 2 presents the normalized citation data for the three articles with the highest relative academic impact in the field of employee performance. It is evident that the publication by Meneses et al.⁴¹ records the highest normalized TC score of 19.51. This article addresses customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction in the context of wine tourism. It is followed by Lu et al.⁴² with a score of 18.59, which discusses sustainable human resource management practices, employee resilience, and common good values. Next, the article by Chatterjee et al.⁴³ achieves a score of 14.62, focusing on the role of digital leadership capabilities in moderating the relationship between the digital work environment and organizational performance. The high normalized citation values of these three articles indicate that, despite being relatively recent, these publications have made a significant impact in the literature and signal a shift in research attention toward more contemporary, applied themes that are relevant to the challenges of modern organizations.

From the perspective of normalized citation, which is a relative measure that allows for comparing academic influence across articles without being distorted by publication time, three articles with the most significant early influence in the field of employee performance are identified. The top-ranked article is by Meneses et al. (2025) (Normalized TC = 19.51), which examines customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction in the context of wine tourism using user-generated content. This study reveals that attributes such as environmental aesthetics, sensory experiences, and staff performance have varying impacts on customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction, supporting two-factor and three-factor theories. This approach offers a new direction in measuring and managing employee performance based on real-time, multidimensional customer perceptions.

5.1 Main information

The results from the bibliometric analysis of 2,044 documents related to employee performance published between 2020 and 2025 reveal intriguing dynamics in the landscape of scholarly publications. The relatively high number of sources (701 journals) indicates that this topic has garnered widespread attention across various disciplines, with significant contributions from 5,555 authors. The fact that only 210 publications were written by single authors, with the remainder resulting from collaborations, highlights a strong trend toward collaborative research, both nationally and internationally, as reflected by the 26.47% proportion of international co-authorship. These findings demonstrate that employee performance research is not only multidisciplinary but also involves increasingly active academic networks that transcend borders.

However, the annual publication growth rate decline of -15.88% indicates a trend toward stagnation or reduced interest in general publications in this field, possibly due to thematic saturation or a shift in focus toward more specific and contextual issues, such as digital transformation, work well-being, or organizational sustainability. The relatively young average document age (2.57 years) suggests that the literature used is current and relevant to contemporary developments. Meanwhile, the average citation counts per document, nearing 10, indicates that publications in this field have a strong citation impact, signaling substantial intellectual influence among scholars. The diversity of keywords (4,816) also suggests that employee performance is a broad and multidimensional research area, offering significant opportunities for exploring new topics in future studies. Thus, this descriptive information provides a solid foundation for understanding the structure of scientific production while opening up space for further discussion on the direction and strategic focus of research in the future.

5.2 Identifying research trends

The analysis of topic trends in employee performance research from 2020 to 2025 reveals a shift in thematic focus that reflects the adaptive dynamics of scientific inquiry in response to the social context and needs of modern organizations. At the beginning of the period, the emerging themes were still general, such as “human” and “article”, indicating a conceptual focus on individual entities and systematic approaches in scholarly publications. However, as time progressed, researchers’ attention began to shift toward more specific issues, as reflected in the consistent appearance of terms like “personnel management”, “adult”, and “motivation” from 2020-2021 through 2024. These terms show a research trend toward exploring managerial and psychological dimensions related to the management of adult employees and intrinsic motivating factors within organizational contexts.

The most noticeable change appears in the final years of the analysis period, with the emergence of new topics such as “job satisfaction”, “job security”, and “hospitals,” which have become key focuses from 2022 to 2025. The appearance of the term “job satisfaction” as a dominant topic reflects the growing attention to employee psychological well-being as an important indicator of job performance, in line with the increasing uncertainty in the work environment post-pandemic. Meanwhile, topics like “job security” and “hospitals”, which emerge in 2024, indicate that employee performance research is beginning to respond to contemporary issues that are sector-specific and contextual, particularly in the healthcare sector. Overall, the pattern of topic evolution illustrates that employee performance research has shifted from theoretical and descriptive domains to more applied and context-based approaches, simultaneously opening up space for future studies to explore issues relevant to the dynamics of sectors and the ever-changing socio-economic needs.

5.3 Detecting key themes/topics

The analysis of the most frequently occurring words in the employee performance literature provides an initial overview of the thematic direction and dominant conceptual focus over the past five years. The words “human” (134 occurrences) and “employee” (90 occurrences) are the most frequently used terms, indicating that research is heavily oriented toward individuals as the central focus within organizations. Terms like “performance assessment” (53), “employee performance” (50), and “job performance” (40) emphasize that performance evaluation remains a core pillar of this research. The repeated use of these terms suggests that the academic discourse not only focuses on the definition of performance itself but also on how it is measured, assessed, and linked to various organizational and psychological variables. Additionally, the appearance of words such as “leadership” and “workplace” reflects that both the work environment and the role of leadership are significant factors associated with the improvement or decline of employee performance.

Interestingly, several terms reflecting demographic and psychological dimensions, such as “male”, “female”, “adult”, and “psychology”, also emerge with high frequency. This suggests that research in this field is not limited to the operational aspects of organizations but also takes into account individual characteristics that influence work behavior. Additionally, the word “article”, appearing 117 times, indicates a connection between studies and literature reviews, as well as a systematic approach to building conceptual frameworks, likely stemming from the use of quantitative and systematic methods such as bibliometrics. Therefore, this data shows that studies on employee performance evolve within a multidisciplinary framework, integrating managerial, psychological, and methodological approaches. These findings serve as an important starting point for understanding how the topic has been shaped and can be directed toward further exploration through thematic mapping and advanced bibliographic analysis.

5.4 Grouping contemporary themes

The topic mapping through network visualization in employee performance research identifies seven main clusters that represent the diversity of themes and the contemporary direction of literature development over the past five years. The green cluster emerges as the dominant cluster, focusing on managerial and strategic dimensions, covering themes such as transformational leadership, performance management, human resource management, and talent management. This focus indicates that leadership practices and HRM strategies continue to be central in efforts to enhance employee performance and innovation. On the other hand, the yellow-green and red clusters reflect a significant shift towards psychological and behavioral approaches. Terms such as engagement, well-being, organizational behavior, employee creativity, and psychological capital indicate an increasing focus on non-structural factors related to employee well-being and work experience, which are increasingly recognized as key determinants in achieving optimal performance.

Furthermore, the mapping results also reveal the emergence of contextual themes that reflect the academic response to global challenges and the dynamics of modern organizations. The purple cluster highlights topics such as Covid-19, digital transformation, resilience, and job autonomy, underscoring that issues related to individual resilience and technological adaptation have now become integral components in employee performance research. Meanwhile, the dark blue and light blue clusters focus on structural and work environment elements, such as training, work motivation, organizational culture, and sustainability, indicating that systemic aspects and organizational values continue to play a crucial role in supporting performance. The orange cluster, linking employee engagement with social exchange theory, also signifies the strengthening of the theoretical framework to explain the reciprocal relationship between organizations and employees. Overall, this cluster structure shows that contemporary themes in employee performance research are evolving integratively, combining structural, psychological, social, and contextual aspects, while reflecting a research direction that is increasingly adaptive to the complexities of today’s work environment.

5.5 Identification of the most influential publications

The Most Global Cited Documents in employee performance research reveal that works with the highest citation counts tend to address fundamental issues related to the determinants of employee performance within the organizational context. The article by Paais and Pattiruhu,³⁷ which ranks first with 230 citations, highlights the roles of motivation, leadership, and organizational culture in shaping job satisfaction and employee performance. This finding emphasizes that theoretical constructs integrating individual and organizational variables remain highly relevant and serve as key references in the latest literature. Other articles, such as those by Yu et al.³⁸ and Singh et al.,³¹ which each obtained 215 and 213 citations, demonstrate that the focus on aspects such as organizational behavior, work engagement, and performance management strategies remains central to the development of theory and managerial practice. The high citation counts of these articles not only reflect the strength of their empirical and theoretical contributions but also indicate that themes such as leadership, motivation, and work culture have cross-contextual and cross-industrial appeal. Thus, these highly cited works not only shape the conceptual foundation but also serve as markers for the main direction of employee performance research in the global academic landscape.

Analysis of articles with the highest normalized citation values in the employee performance literature reveals a strong tendency towards contextual and responsive approaches to the dynamics of modern organizations. Meneses et al.,⁴¹ with a normalized TC score of 19.51, ranks at the top through their study examining the determinants of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction in the tourism sector, specifically wine tourism. The user-generated content-based approach employed in this study emphasizes that customer experience, particularly in relation to service interaction quality and staff performance, has become a key new indicator in assessing employee performance. The high citation value in a short period indicates that research with a sector-specific focus and innovative analytical methods has significant potential to become a reference in interdisciplinary studies, including tourism and human resource management.

Next, Lu et al.⁴² and Chatterjee et al.⁴³ each obtain normalized TC scores of 18.59 and 14.62, respectively, consistently indicating that sustainability and digitalization are central themes in the latest literature. The study by Lu et al.⁴² positions sustainable HRM as a key variable that not only impacts employee performance but also resilience and work engagement, both of which are critical elements in sustaining organizational productivity over the long term. On the other hand, Chatterjee et al.⁴³ emphasize the role of digital leadership capabilities in steering and stabilizing technology-based workplace transformation. The focus on digital leadership and adaptability in the face of technological disruption highlights the urgency of aligning organizational practices with changes in the global work environment. Both studies mark a new direction in employee performance research, one that is not solely focused on employee output but also considers systemic conditions, organizational values, and technological readiness as integral parts of the process for achieving sustainable performance.