Bibliometric analysis of studies related to job crafting

Abstract

Employees who were once viewed as passive workers in terms of job design are now viewed as active workers. The self-initiated adjustments that employees make to their own job requirements and workplace resources in order to achieve and/or maximize their personal (work) goals are known as job crafting. The phenomenon has attracted attention in both academia and practice. Purpose. In this research, in order to see the evolution of this topic, bibliometric analyses of studies which have been published from 1983 to 2025 were performed. Methodology. Within this scope, co-citation analysis, co-occurrence of keywords analysis, and bibliographic coupling analysis were conducted through two tools as Biblioshiny and VosViewer. Findings. As a result, prominent authors, publications, and “key terms” of the job crafting literature were clarified. In addition, main themes were identified throughout the co-citation and bibliographic coupling analyses. In the discussion part, results were reviewed. The results support the idea that the attention of job crafting has been increasing (Rudolph et al., 2017). This upward trend is not convenient for the citation data. In addition to the fact that there are ups and downs and no rising graph like the number of publications, there are extreme increases in the number of citations in 2001 and 2009. The main reasons could arise from the fact that the first official definition of the concept of job crafting in 2001, the development of its theoretical foundations and the fact that the subject was seen as an extension of positive psychology that developed in the early 2000s, and the changing business dynamics after the global economic crisis in 2008 played an important role in the increase in the number of citations to studies in this field. Value of results. Current researchers in the field who are interested in this topic will find this review useful as it provides a unique perspective on the past and suggests several future paths for research on the subject.