Research Trends in Islamic Work Ethics: A Bibliometric Analysis of Employee Performance Studies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.71238/jiberm.v1i01.194Abstract
This study maps the research landscape linking Islamic work ethics (IWE) and employee performance through a bibliometric analysis of 155 Scopus-indexed documents published between 2000 and 2026. Using VOSviewer, keyword co-occurrence, overlay, and density visualizations were combined with co-authorship analyses at the author, institution, and country levels, followed by a citation analysis of the most influential works. The results show that the field is organized around seven thematic clusters connecting IWE with job satisfaction and commitment, leadership styles, organizational justice, knowledge sharing, organizational citizenship behavior, and destructive supervision. Earlier studies concentrated on Islam, commitment, and Middle Eastern settings, whereas recent studies emphasize ethical leadership, moral identity, organizational identification, workplace deviance, and task performance. Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia dominate publication output and collaboration, while author networks remain concentrated in a few Pakistan-based groups with selected international partners. The most cited works are the early studies of Yousef and several Journal of Business Ethics articles on justice, citizenship, and helping behavior. The findings reveal a shift from treating IWE as an attitudinal antecedent toward positioning it as a personal resource and boundary condition within leadership and performance mechanisms, and they highlight the need for broader cross-regional collaboration, stronger performance measures, and longitudinal research designs.
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