recent research topics in hrm

Human Resources Research Paper Topics For 2024

Table of contents

• 1.1 Human Resources Management Research Topics
• 1.2 Equal Employment Opportunity HR Research Topics
• 1.3 Career Development HR Research Topics
• 1.4 Research Topics on Recruitment and Selection
• 1.5 HR Risk Management Topics
• 1.6 Workplace Safety HR Topics
• 1.7 Trending HR Topics

Human Resources is one of the most popular and essential topics for the business minded. If you remember your basic economics, you may remember that the basic components necessary for production in any kind of economy are Land, Capital, and Labor.

Human labor is an essential resource that keeps a business running. Like any other resource, it must be managed. This is where the term “Human Resources” and Human resources research topics come in.

Having relevant data for research paper is easy if you know where to look. There are lots of online sources and books in libraries to use in your task. Make sure you spend enough time on planning before writing your task.

How to choose a Human Resources topic for your project?

Selecting research topics in human resource management is not as simple as simply choosing the title and proceeding to write it. In order to get a good grade, the paper must be original and well researched. It needs to cover all relevant aspects of the chosen HR topics. Writing a hr related research topics is a very structured and analytical process. This is true for all fields, including human resources research topics.

The first step is topic selection . This is where we can help you. This page features a list of over 90 human resources topics. If you are having problems coming up with your own ideas, please choose hr related research topics from this list instead.

These titled papers all have a great deal of material about human resource management research topics out there. They are each trending topics in hrm topics for research and have plenty of resources available out there on the internet. Each of them is also relevant to the actual field of human resources management.

So, while writing a hr related research topics is not a typical or common activity for an HR employee, it will give you a lot of insights and information. These insights could give you a leg up in the future when you have graduated from School and College.

Human Resources Management Research Topics

At most large companies, ‘Human Resources’ is an entire department of its own. Most other departments at the company typically deal with producing a good or service. Others, like the public relations department, work with the media and other external affairs. Hence, there are many ways to approach HR research topics.

• How HR helps companies remain competitive in a global market.
• Managing part-time, full time, and freelancing employees.
• How much paid leave is optimal?
• What occasions deserve raises and bonuses?
• The simplest way to resolve interpersonal conflicts.
• The most effective team-building strategies.
• Organizing teams according to personalities.
• Can an introverted employee be a good team leader?
• How to improve productivity through a goal-oriented approach.
• The agile method and how it helps.
• The best way to utilize productivity metrics.
• Methods for disciplining employees.
• How to manage international employees.
• Preventing workplace violence.
• Benefits of regular psychological counseling for all employees.

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Equal Employment Opportunity HR Research Topics

• Are women more likely to get paid less for the same position as a man?
• Do men and women deserve the same pay?
• How to manage equal opportunity employment?
• The best tactics for implementing equal opportunity.
• Recruiting as an equal opportunity employer.
• How to recognize and manage discrimination in the workplace.
• The glass ceiling and how to break it.
• Best practices for mediating disputes between employees.
• Dealing with intimate relationships between employees.
• How to create a diverse workplace?
• Making the workplace an inclusive and accessible place for disabled employees.
• Preventing unfair discrimination against LGBT+ employees.
• The costs of an unequal workplace.
• The benefits of a diverse and inclusive workplace.
• Government requirements for equal opportunity.

Career Development HR Research Topics

Those who are interested in working in the field could take their first steps by writing a paper on human resource management topics. There is a huge variety of possible human resource topics for research papers, so it is likely that everyone will find some aspect of it they enjoy.

• Creating leaders among employees.
• Why does professional career development matter?
• How career development helps both employees and organizations.
• The best approaches to on-the-job training.
• Should training be prioritized over completed current work?
• Best practices for training interns.
• Should interns be paid more?
• Professional certification training for employees.
• How does active professional development affect productivity?
• Is it worth it to help an employee develop if they find a new, better-paid job afterward?
• Skills that all employees should develop.
• Must-have training and development for all employees.
• Advantages and disadvantages of paying for an employee’s professional training.
• Advantages and disadvantages of leading professional development sessions.
• Should companies help employees pay for school?

Research Topics on Recruitment and Selection

Studying human resources is a crucial part of management studies. Whether you are a college or university student, you can buy paper online to save time and effort. There are lots of reputable services that can provide excellent assignments to boost your academic performance.

• What does the ideal new employee look like?
• When is the best time to recruit a new employee?
• When is the worst time to recruit a new employee?
• Should highly skilled but untested individuals be recruited for senior positions?
• Best practices for improving employee retention.
• How to attract good employees?
• The best platforms to recruit on.
• Is social media an effective way to recruit?
• What kind of employees should small businesses look for?
• What kind of employees are needed for a large company?
• Criminal background checks – Do’s and Don’ts.
• How to effectively assess skills during an interview.
• How does HR evaluate a potential new recruit?
• Is it better to recruit an employee with experience but no skill, or the other way around?
• Recruiting university graduates directly – a good idea or a bad one?

HR Risk Management Topics

With so many moving parts working together in one company, it is natural for confusion or conflicts to arise. In order to make sure all these departments, employees, and managers work together, Human Resources is essential. In companies with hundreds of employees, their job simply cannot be understated.

• What kind of risks does HR have to manage?
• What role does HR take in risk management?
• How does HR ensure worker protection?
• Is HR there to protect employees or protect the company?
• Legal measures HR can take.
• Risk management during the covid-19 pandemic.
• How HR managed risks revolving around covid-19.
• Reasons to carry out regular internal audits.
• Risk management among the ‘#metoo’ movement.
• Training the workplace to minimize potential risks.
• Risk management when working from home.
• Ways to ensure all your employees follow masking and social distancing rules.
• Ways to ensure all employees get vaccinated.
• Responding to a legal action taken by an employee.
• When should HR take legal action?

Workplace Safety HR Topics

• How to ensure compliance with workplace safety rules.
• The consequences of not following workplace safety.
• Ways to prevent osha violations.
• How to ensure all employees follow health and safety protocols?
• How to ensure all employees get vaccines?
• Fines and penalties for violating workplace safety rules.
• Consequences of violating safety rules.
• Steps to minimize or prevent burnout.
• Bringing dangerous weapons into the workplace.
• Steps to take when an employee is assaulted at work.
• How to ensure psychological wellbeing during remote work.
• Ensuring company leadership also follows safety roles.
• Combating sexual harassment at the workplace.
• Monitoring employees during remote work – is it ethical?
• Developing specialized safety standards for the workplace.

Trending HR Topics

• Unique ways to keep morale up during the pandemic.
• Online recreational activities to develop teamwork during remote work.
• Use of VR and AR in the workplace.
• Famous figures or celebrities in the workplace.
• Analyzing and updating how much a particular job is worth.
• Steps to take to improve long-term retention.
• Ways to handle overqualified employees or applicants.
• Is an HR department necessary for smaller, family-owned businesses?
• Defusing a tense and volatile moment in the workplace.
• DRM tools for keeping in-house training methods proprietary.
• Use of artificial intelligence for HR topics and tasks.
• How big data is useful to human resources.
• Virtual and online onboarding and orientation.
• Hiring the most talented personnel from a global marketplace.
• Are virtual interviews better than in-person interviews?

Conducting research on human resources is essential for any business looking to enhance their staff’s productivity, skills, and management. Accessing the most effective resources is critical to achieving this goal. This is where an online essay writer can be an invaluable asset in producing high-quality research papers related to human resources. By leveraging the knowledge and expertise of an online essay writer , you can conduct thorough research and create a top-notch human resources research paper that meets your needs.

HR is one of the most dynamic fields of work currently available. It is at the crossroads of psychology, sociology, accounting, and business. In the last few years, there have been many exciting changes in how human resources are handled, due to the rise of virtual platforms and working from home.

Only time will tell if these changes are temporary or permanent. But whichever way they go, our list of HR topics for research project 2023 will always be here for perusal.

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HRM Dissertation Topics

Published by Carmen Troy at January 6th, 2023 , Revised On April 16, 2024

Introduction

Human resource management studies stated that employees should be hired, retained and managed. It is an extensive field that requires an in-depth understanding of the underlying factors and concepts.

As a human resource management student, you will study many different concepts, frameworks, and theories related to employee management. However, before your graduation, you will be required to submit a dissertation on a human resource management research topic of your choice.

Even though several topics and concepts are yet to explore in the field of human resource management, you will want to make sure that your proposed topic has sufficient literature to support and justify the content of a theoretical framework , or else you might struggle with data collection .

This article provides you with a comprehensive list of HRM topics that are relevant to your field and identifies some interesting literature gaps.

Choosing from our list of topics will certainly improve your chances of submitting an outstanding dissertation. So, go ahead and choose an HRM dissertation topic of your interest. We can even customize these topics based on your project needs.

PhD qualified writers of our team have developed the proposed topics, so you can trust to use these topics for drafting your dissertation.

Note –

You may also want to start your dissertation by requesting  a brief research proposal  from our writers on any of these topics, which includes an  introduction  to the topic,  research question ,  aim and objectives ,  literature review  along with the proposed  methodology  of research to be conducted.  Let us know  if you need any help in getting started.

Check our  dissertation examples  to get an idea of  how to structure your dissertation .

Review the full list of  dissertation topics for here.

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2024 HRM Dissertation Topics

Topic 1: how human resources departments achieve equal employment opportunities.

Research Aim: The research will aim to investigate how HR departments achieve equal employment opportunity in organizations. EEO, or Equal Employment Opportunity, is the notion everybody has an equal chance to pursue a job on the basis of merit, regardless of skin color, gender, or gender identity. It is the duty of HR department to give every employee and equal right in the organization. The research will examine how HR department keep the organization environment friendly by controlling equal employment opportunities.

Topic 2: The effect of motivating strategies on employee performance

Research Aim: The research will aim to find the impact of motivating strategies on employee performance. Employee motivation plays a huge part on performance. Employee engagement cannot be substituted by anything else in order for any organisation to run efficiently and without interruption. It is critical that a company and its employees not only have a strong connection with the top management, but also have a good and healthy relationship with their colleagues. The study will also make recommendations on what further might be done to obtain optimal results utilising motivating methods for the benefit of both the company and the individual.

Topic 3: Organizational Conflicts as Antecedents of Staff Turnover: Evidence from the UK Food Sector

Research Aim: The research will aim to review recent available literature on employee turnover in order to determine organizational conflicts as antecedents of employee turnover in the UK food sector in order to close gaps in the literature and present a broader range of turnover factors and understanding of employee motivational factors in their job decision.

Topic 4: How does AI involvement in HRM provide Zara with a competitive advantage?

Research Aim: The research will aim to inspect the benefit of competitive advantage at Zara through the involvement of artificial intelligence in their HRM. AI assists the human resources department in identifying their personnel’ skill sets and recommending a training programme based on their work positions. It combines all of the data and assists the HR staff in making succinct decisions about what training to do in which sector to boost abilities. The study will also explain the importance of AI in organizations and organizations success. It will also look into strategies and policies Zara used to achieve competitive advantage.

Topic 5: The role of HR in creating a respected working environment that contributes in sustainable revenue growth

Research Aim: The research aims to examine the role of HR in creating a respected working environment and sustainable revenue growth. The study will identify current misunderstandings and disparities in understanding of topics such as sustainable development, corporate social responsibility, and the link between strategic human resource management and sustainable HRM through a comprehensive literature review. It will also identify and recognise the challenges that sustainable HRM encounters in reality, with a particular emphasis on the prevalent strategic HRM schema and the misunderstanding of corporate social responsibility.

Covid-19 HRM Research Topics

The role of managers during the pandemic.

Research Aim: In this study, the Human resource management techniques which HR managers will adopt for performing their operations during the COVID -19 will be discussed.

The management techniques for employees.

Research Aim: This study will focus on how the employees are trained during the Coronavirus pandemic.

The economic Crisis for HR Managers during Covid-19

Research Aim: This study will discuss how the economic crisis will disturb the payroll and how the managers will work.

The policies of HR for affected employees.

Research Aim: In this study, HR will design policies on how HR will manage when there is a gap between employees working. How will the ill patients be provided with support by companies through HR?

The employees' cooperation for HR

Research Aim: This study will highlight how well the employees support the decisions of the HR policymakers during the pandemic.

HRM Dissertation Topics for 2023

Topic 1: effect of employee engagement on customer loyalty in the service-based industry.

Research Aim: Employees engagement means that employees are passionate and committed to their work. In the service industry, where employees’ performance can greatly influence the quality of service, it is worth exploring employee engagement in customer loyalty in the service-based industry. Therefore, in this study, survey-based research will be conducted to identify employee engagement in customer loyalty.

Topic 2: Contingent workforce and its impact on organisation’s performance – Evaluating the IT Industry

Research Aim: Nowadays, companies hire freelancers and contractual workers, unlike permanent payroll employees. Various cost benefits can be obtained by hiring such a workforce. However, such a workforce may not have the required skills to do a job as effectively as a trained staff would have done. Thus, the present study focuses on identifying the impact of a contingent workforce on its performance in the IT industry.

Topic 3: Factors of growing mental health issues of employees at workplace in service-based industries

Research Aim: The wellness of employees at the workplace is necessary for their mental health and work performance. This study will identify the factors that can increase employees’ mental health issues at the workplace based on survey-based of employees and managers of service-based industries.

Topic 4: Analysing the importance and impact of training and development on an organisation’s sustainability during economic crises.

Research Aim: to achieve organizational objectives and milestones, leaders and business owners have realized the importance of training and developing their workforce to align with the organizational objectives. This research aims to analyze the importance and impact of employee training and development on the organization’s sustainability during economic downturns.

Topic 5: How online digital platforms have helped organisations in recruiting effectively and efficiently

Research Aim: With the advent of technology, firms have revolutionized their business operations. Under this revolution, many organizations have adopted different techniques and methods to recruit talented employees. Therefore, this research intends to determine how online digital platforms have helped organizations find employees more efficiently and effectively.

Topic 6: Analysing the factors which directly impact an employee's personal decision to leave employment

Research Aim: Employee turnover rate has always been a major concern for many organizations regardless of their size and nature. A valuable and talented employee is usually hard to find and retain. However, it has been found out that different factors motivate an employee to search for a new job. Keeping this phenomenon in mind, the current research will be analyzing the factors that directly impact the employee’s personal decision to leave employment.

Topic 7: Critically analysing the concept of workplace flexibility and how it impacts employee and organisational performance

Research Aim: In today’s modern era, the workplace environment has been transformed drastically from a strict and conventional style to a more flexible one. Therefore, this research aims to critically analyze the concept of workplace flexibility and how it impacts employee and organizational performance.

Topic 8: A comparative analysis of employees' job satisfaction and motivational factors in public versus private organisations.

Research Aim: Job satisfaction and employee motivation are regarded as the most important element of HR practices. The main aim of HR policies is to satisfy, retain, and motivate employees. Therefore, this research aims to conduct a comparative analysis of the employee’s job satisfaction and motivational factors in public versus private organizations.

Topic 9: The influence of COVID-19 on virtual employee management practices by organisations

Research Aim: This research is highly useful in the current context of COVID-19. Organisations all around the world are getting impacted by the COVID-19 and are closed at the moment. The current study will focus on using different virtual employee management practices that companies can use in the current context of COVID-19. These practices will be beneficial for organizations in almost all business sectors.

Topic 10: The role of using transformational leadership style in the improvement of organisational creativity at Morrisons

Research Aim: The aim of this research will be the benefits of using the transformational leadership style by Morrisons’ leaders to improve organizational creativity. This study will research how leaders can get the advantage of a transformational leadership style for increasing creativity at the organization.

Topic 11: The green HRM practices and their impacts on the corporate image of IKEA

Research Aim: This study will aim to study different green HRM practices and their role in improving IKEA’s corporate image and reputation. It will be researched how companies can improve their corporate image by focusing on green HRM practices and processes. The findings will be beneficial for the management, customers as well as employees.

Topic 12: Involving employees in the decision-making process and its influence on employee productivity at Subway

Research Aim: It will be researched in this study how Subway and other companies in this industry can involve the workers in the decision-making process to improve employee productivity. It will be studied that employee productivity is increased by involving the employees in the decision-making process. The findings will be useful in designing useful HR practices by Subway.

Topic 13: The impact of a flat organisational structure on the decision-making process

Research Aim: The main objective of this study is to evaluate the decision-making difficulties and issues faced by HR managers of companies with a flat organizational structure. This study will also investigate the benefits and challenges related to the flat organizational structures used by companies. A case study approach will be used.

Topic 14: The role of workforce diversity in improving organisational capability and innovation at Toyota Motors

Research Aim: To carry out this study, an innovative company named Toyota Motors will be selected. The main objective for carrying out this study will be to analyze how the organizational capability and innovation at Toyota Motors are improved due to workforce diversity. The main emphasis will be on studying the workforce diversity present at Toyota Motors and its significance in improving innovation and organizational capability. The success factors of Toyota Motors for HR will be studied.

Topic 15: The impact of digitalization on changing HRM practices at Aviva

Research Aim: The contemporary business world moves towards digitalization due to technological advancements. This research will study the different impacts of digitalization in changing various HRM practices at Aviva. Different HRM practices used by Aviva before and after the digitalization era will be discussed, and the changes will be analyzed. This study will show how digitalization has changed HRM practices in the contemporary business world.

Topic 16: The influence of employee learning and development opportunities on employee satisfaction at British Airways

Research Aim: It will be studied in this research that how employee satisfaction at British Airways is influenced by employee learning and development opportunities. Different employee learning and development opportunities at BA will be studied, along with their impact on workforce satisfaction.

Topic 17: The impact of recognizing employee contributions on employee retention at Shell

Research Aim: This study’s main objective is to analyse whether Shell can retain its employees by recognizing their contributions or not. Different strategies used by Shell for recognizing employee contributions will be studied that lead towards motivating the employees, which ultimately impact the retention of workers.

Topic 18: The role of green HR practices in employee engagement and retention

Research Aim: Green HR practices is a newly emerged concept in HRM. The study will aim to research the impact of green HR practices on employee engagement and retention. It will be studied how companies can improve employee engagement and retention by focusing on green HR practices.

Topic 19: The role of providing daycare facilities in increasing the productivity of female employees

Research Aim: This study will be focusing on the productivity of female workers. It will be studied how female workers’ productivity is increased by providing daycare facilities for their children. The impact on the satisfaction level of female employees due to the daycare facility will also be explored.

Topic 20: The impact of artificial intelligence on enhancing the human resource practices of Zara

Research Aim: For this study, the researcher will focus on the concept of artificial intelligence and use it in the HR context. It will be studied that either the HR practices at Zara can be enhanced by implementing AI. The benefits and implications of implementing AI in the HR context will also be part of this study.

Topic 21: The role of e-leadership in improving employee productivity and motivation.

Research Aim: The contemporary business world has become highly advanced due to technological capabilities. The concept of e-leadership has emerged due to advancements in technology. The purpose of this study will be to analyse the impact of e-leadership in improving the productivity and motivation level of the workforce.

Topic 22: The role of effective HR planning in a successful strategic alliance process.

Research Aim: This study will study the importance of effective HR planning for the strategic alliance process. It will be studied how HR management can mould the HR practices and focus on effective HR planning to make the strategic alliance process successful.

Topic 23: The impact of different personality traits on teamwork at Microsoft

Research Aim: The main focus of this research will be studying Microsoft’s teamwork. It will be further analyzed how Microsoft’s teamwork is influenced by the personality traits possessed by different team members. Different types of personality traits will be studied in this research that impacts teamwork positively and negatively.

Topic 24: The impact of career growth opportunities on employee loyalty at HSBC Holdings.

Research Aim: This study will aim to review different types of career growth opportunities offered by HBSC Holdings to its employees. Moreover, it will also be studied how employee loyalty is improved due to various career growth opportunities. The findings of this study will be beneficial for the banking sector.

Topic 25: The role of adapted HR practices in improving organisational performance at the international branch of DHL.

Research Aim: The study’s main objective will be to analyse companies’ changes in their HR practices for international branches. How and why the HR practices are adapted by HR management for improving the organisational performance at the company’s branch, which is located outside the country. For this, the DHL case study will be selected, and it will be assessed how and why DHL has used adapted HR practices across different countries.

HR Learning and Development Dissertation Topics

All organisational activities aimed at improving the productivity and performance of groups and individuals can be classified as HRM’s learning and development function elements. Learning and development encompass three pivotal activities, including education, training, and development.

As such, the training activities help to evaluate an employee based on his existing job responsibilities. Educational activities include those focusing on jobs that an employee can expect to carry out in the future.

Finally, the development activities are those that the employer may partake in the future. If you’re interested in exploring this human resource topic in-depth, we have some interesting dissertation topics for you:

Topic 1:The importance of appreciative inquiry with respect to organisational learning and development culture – A case study of ExxonMobil

Research Aim: This research will discuss the importance of appreciative inquiry and its impact on organisational learning and development culture with a specific focus on ExxonMobil.

Topic 2:To establish the correlation between organisation competency development and learning activities & programmes

Research Aim: This research will discuss how organisational competency development and organisational learning activities are correlated.

Topic 3:An examination of knowledge management and organisational learning for sustained firm performance. A case study of British Telecom

Research Aim: This research will examine how organisational learning and knowledge management helped British Telecom sustain their firm performance.

Topic 4:Investigating learning and development of human resources in the public sector in the UK

Research Aim: This dissertation will evaluate the different ways of achieving the learning and development of human resources in the UK’s public sector.

Topic 32:The importance of HR learning and development activities for SMEs

Research Aim: This research will focus on how SMEs utilize HR learning and developmental activities to improve their employees’ performance.

Topic 33:Human resource practices and employees’ decision to quit – Does Lack of Learning and Development play a Role.

Research Aim: This research will focus on whether or not lack of learning and development in an organization leads to employee turnover,

Topic 34:Developing organisational competitive advantage through strategic employee training in computer knowledge

Research Aim: This dissertation will explore how companies can gain a strategic advantage over their competitors through employee training.

Topic 35:The impact of various training and learning based activities on employees’ productivity

Research Aim: The main aim of this research will be to determine the impact of different pieces of training and learnings on employees’ productivity.

Topic 36: The role of HR analytics and metrics in improving organizational performance at Tesco

Research Aim: This study aims to research a new concept in human resource management, named HR analytics and metrics. Moreover, their impact on improving organizational performance will also be studied. This study will be beneficial for Tesco in using HR analytics and metrics in different HR practices that can lead to improved organizational performance.

How Can ResearchProspect Help?

ResearchProspect writers can send several custom topic ideas to your email address. Once you have chosen a topic that suits your needs and interests, you can order for our dissertation outline service , which will include a brief introduction to the topic, research questions , literature review , methodology , expected results , and conclusion . The dissertation outline will enable you to review the quality of our work before placing the order for our full dissertation writing service !

HR Performance Review Dissertation Topics

A performance review, also known as a career development discussion, performance evaluation and employee appraisal, can be defined as a method to evaluate an employee based on their job performance, mainly for appraisals. This might be an interesting area to focus your dissertation on. Here are some interesting topics in this area of HRM:

Topic 37:To understand the relationship between performance review and employee motivation in large and diversified business organisations

Research Aim: This research will understand the relationship between employee motivation and employee performance review. Large and diversified businesses will be the main focus of this study.

Topic 38:Effective performance appraisal – A study to establish a correlation between employer satisfaction and optimising business results

Research Aim: This research will analyse the impact of performance appraisal on employer satisfaction and how it optimises business results.

Topic 39: Investigating the efficacy of performance appraisal from the perception of employees in UK retail industry – A case study of Tesco

Research Aim: This research will analyse the efficacy of performance appraisal concerning employees, with a specific focus on Tesco.

Topic 40: Employee performance appraisal and the role of fairness and satisfaction

Research Aim: This dissertation will explore whether employees report satisfaction and fairness when performance appraisal is conducted.

Topic 41:Investigating performance review and appraisal methods employed by human resource department of any large oil and gas company

Research Aim: This research will study the human resource department of a large oil and gas company and will investigate how “performance review” and appraisals are conducted.

Topic 42: Job satisfaction and performance appraisals – Are they Interconnected?

Research Aim: This research will study in-depth whether job satisfaction and performance appraisals are interconnected or not.

Topic 43:Investigating the relationship between public sector appraisals and the spinal pay reward

Research Aim: This research will talk about the spinal pay reward system and evaluate its effectiveness in the public sector.

Topic 44:Analysing the impact of performance management on employee performance improvement

Research Aim: This research will investigate how performance management helps companies improve their employees’ performance.

Topic 45: Can HR performance drive employee engagement? Studying the UK banking industry

Research Aim: This research will talk about the different ways through which HR performance review helps in improving employee engagement. The UK banking industry will be in focus in this study.

Topic 46:The role of HR performance review in increasing employee retention and productivity

Research Aim: This research will investigate how organisations utilize performance reviews as a tool to improve employee retention and productivity.

HR Employee Motivation Dissertation Topics

Employees need objectives and goals to remain focused. The quality of work may significantly drop if they are not constantly motivated by their employers.

Business organizations employ various employee motivation methods and techniques to keep their employees motivated. Thus, this is an interesting topic to explore for your final year dissertation. Here are some HRM dissertation topics related to employee motivation.

Topic 47:To investigate the role of motivation in HRM – A study highlighting the most important motivation factors for future business leaders

Research Aim: This research will discuss the different motivation factors organisations should use to develop future leaders. In addition to this, the role of motivation throughout HRM will be discussed.

Topic 48:Employee satisfaction and work motivation – Are they both related?

Research Aim: This research will understand the relationship between motivation and employee satisfaction and the different motivation techniques companies can employ to increase employee satisfaction.

Topic 49: Evaluating the Role of Employee motivation in performance Enhancement

Research Aim: This study will discuss the role of employee motivation concerning employee performance, i.e. whether it enhances performance or not.

Topic 50:Human resource management – Motivation among workers in large and diversified business organisations

Research Aim: This dissertation will talk about motivation in large and diversified organisations and how these companies ensure that their employees are motivated at all times.

Topic 51:Effects of motivational programmes and activities on employee performance

Research Aim: This research will focus on the different motivational techniques and programs that impact employee performance.

Topic 52: Does motivation play a role in decreasing employee turnovers? A case study of British Airways

Research Aim: This research will discuss the role of motivation in decreasing employee turnover with a specific focus on British airways.

Topic 53:Motivation and performance reward – Are the two interrelated?

Research Aim: This research will talk about motivation and performance rewards and will assess whether the two are interrelated and directly related.

Topic 54: Work productivity and the role of employee motivation programmes and activities

Research Aim: This study will assess employee motivation programs’ impact on employee productivity, i.e. if it increases or decreases.

Topic 55:To discuss the role of employee motivation in relation to retention levels

Research Aim: This research will analyze employee motivation’s role to help companies retain employees.

Topic 56:Differences and similarities between traditional and contemporary theories

Research Aim: This research will discuss and compare traditional and contemporary motivation theories implemented by companies.

Topic 57: The role of employee empowerment in employee motivation and satisfaction at British Petroleum.

Research Aim: This study will aim to analyse different strategies of employee empowerment carried out by British Petroleum and their impact on workers’ motivation and satisfaction. The research will be studied that either different employee empowerment strategies improve employee motivation and satisfaction. The findings will be beneficial for companies working in the petroleum sector.

Topic 58: The impact of open communication in improving employee engagement at Zara

Research Aim: In this research, different modes of communication used by organisations will be studied and especially the impact of open communication in improving employee engagement at Zara will be analyzed. The importance of open communication for different organisations in the fashion and retail sectors will be discussed. Moreover, different communication strategies that can help improve employee engagement at Zara will be discussed based on past literature, theories, and framework.

HR Performance Management Dissertation Topics

All processes and activities to consistently meet organisational goals and objectives can be considered the HR performance management mechanism elements. Different organisations employ different performance management strategies to gain a competitive advantage. To explore this area of human resources, here are some intriguing topics for you:

Topic 59:Investigating different performance management techniques for retaining employees

Research Aim: This research will talk about companies’ various performance management techniques to retain employees.

Topic 60:The role of performance management activities in improving employees’ skills and abilities

Research Aim: This research will discuss how performance management helps employees improve their skills and abilities and how it ultimately helps companies.

Topic 61:Managing performance of workers through performance management techniques – A Case Study of Google

Research Aim: This research will explore how organisations use different performance management techniques to manage employees and their performance. A specific focus of this study will be Google Incorporation.

Topic 62:Employee performance and performance management systems – A qualitative study

Research Aim: This study will conduct a qualitative study to understand the different performance management systems for improving employee performance.

Topic 63:Performance management examinations in human resource management of profit-oriented organisations

Research Aim: This research will understand performance management in profit-oriented companies regarding how their human resource department ensures optimal performance.

Topic 64:Exploring the essentials elements of the performance management framework

Research Aim: This research will explore its vital features and performance management framework.

Topic 65:Human resource management practices and business performance – The role of environmental uncertainties and strategies

Research Aim: This research will explore whether environment uncertainties and strategies play a role in employee and business performance.

Topic 66:The efficacy of performance management systems in the UK’s retail industry

Research Aim: This research will explore the UK’s retail industry’s performance management efficacy.

Topic 67:Towards a framework for performance management in a higher education institution

Research Aim: This research will investigate performance management in the educational setting.

Topic 68:Should wages be capped through performance management – A qualitative study

Research Aim: This research will analyse whether wages should be adjusted and capped concerning performance management with a focus on its effects.

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Strategic Human Resource Management Dissertation Topics

Strategic human resource management is tying the human resource management objective to the company’s goals and objectives. This helps companies in innovating and staying ahead of their competitors by gaining a competitive advantage.

Being a relatively new concept, there are various aspects of strategic HRM that are left to be explored. Here are some interesting strategic HRM dissertation topics for you:

Topic 69:The efficacy of communication processes and employees’ involvement plans to improve employee commitment towards organisational goals – A case study of Sainsbury

Research Aim: This research will study the role and efficacy of the communication processes and employees’ involvement in order to improve employees’ commitment towards organisational goals.

Topic 70:To investigate SHRM theory and practice in a call centre – A case study of any UK call centre

Research Aim: This dissertation will discuss the various SHRM theories and how it is implemented. A UK-based call center will be focused on this study.

Topic 71: Differences and similarities between SHRM strategies and policies employed by German and Japanese automobile companies

Research Aim: This research will compare the different SHRM techniques and policies implemented by German and Japanese automobile companies.

Topic 72: A resource-based view assessment of strategic human resources quality management systems

Research Aim: This research will understand the resource-based view of strategic human resources quality management systems.

Topic 73: To understand and critically evaluate the HRM strategies employed by small and medium sized enterprises in the UK

Research Aim: This research will discuss and evaluate the different strategic HRM strategies employed by small and medium-sized enterprises in the UK.

Topic 74: Relating organisational performance to strategic human resource management – A study of small scale businesses in the UK

Research Aim: This study will analyse whether organisational performance and strategic human resource management are interconnected by assessing small scale businesses in the UK.

Topic 75: Investigating strategic human resource management in Singapore – A qualitative study

Research Aim: This research will analyse strategic human resource management in Singapore by undertaking a qualitative method.

Topic 76: The role of organisational support programmes to enhance work outcome and employees behaviour

Research Aim: This research will understand the organisational support program in order to enhance employee work outcome and their behaviour.

Topic 77: To establish the most important components of strategic HRM for SMEs in the UK to develop a competitive advantage

Research Aim: This research will talk about the relationship between the different SHRM components for SMEs in the UK in order to gain a competitive advantage.

Topic 78: To establish the significance of the relationship between organisational performance and strategic human resource management

Research Aim: This research will explore the relationship between organisational performance and strategic human resource management and how it helps companies achieve their objectives.

Human Resource Theory Dissertation Topics

The human resource theory framework consists of a soft and hard approach to human resources management. Various theories cover the different aspects of the soft and hard human resource approach.

Exploring this area of HRM will help in understanding more about the soft and hard HRM approaches. Here are some dissertation topics in this area that you can choose from.

Topic 79: A comparative analysis of various human resources theory approaches

Research Aim: This research will discuss various human resource theories and approaches and provide a comparative analysis.

Topic 80:To study human resources systems practiced by Multinationals in the UK

Research Aim: This research will discuss the various human resource systems as practised by multinational companies operating in the UK.

Topic 81:The role of human resources management (HRM) in regards to addressing workers’ concerns.

Research Aim: This research will discuss the importance of human resources in understanding and addressing worker’s concerns.

Topic 82: Can HRM have a negative influence on the performance of business organisations – A qualitative study?

Research Aim: This research will discuss a unique aspect of human resource management, i.e. whether it harms the company’s performance or not.

Topic 83: Is Human resources the only option for employees? An exploratory study

Research Aim: This study will analyze human resources’ role in solving employee issues and assess whether it is the only option for employees.

Topic 84:Exploring the contribution of human resource to the success of organisations

Research Aim: This research will aim to understand the role and contribution of the human resource department in companies’ success.

Topic 85:To investigate the most predominant human HRM and control strategies employed by business organisations

Research Aim: This research will discuss an interesting topic, i.e. the most predominant HRM strategies organisations implement.

Topic 86:To investigate the role of HR as a shared service.

Research Aim: This study will discuss human resources’ role as a shared service in the organisation.

Topic 87:Does a supervisor has a role to play in implementing HR practices – A critical study

Research Aim: This study will critically analyze supervisors’ role in implementing human resource practices in an organization.

Topic 88:The ethics of firing employees – Do companies really follow it?

Research Aim: This research will focus on how employees are fired at organizations and whether human resources follow the ethics of firing or not.

HR Organisational Culture Dissertation Topics

Organisational culture, also known as organisational climate, is defined as the process by which an organisation’s culture can be quantified. The properties of the work environment that are either considered positive or negative by the employees (and that may influence their behaviour) are the most important components of the organisational culture framework.

Studying this aspect of human resources will help you gain an in-depth knowledge of the role of culture in human resource management. Here are some interesting dissertation topics in this area:

Topic 89:The role of leadership, HRM and culture in vitalising management systems in firms

Research Aim: This research will understand the role of leadership and culture in human resource management and how it helps companies manage their systems.

Topic 90:Finding the right balance between differentiation and standardisation of HRM practices and policies – HRM of multinational companies operating within the European Union

Research Aim: There are certain human resource practices that are standardized throughout the world. This research will investigate the differences between such standard policies with respect to culture. Multinationals operating in the European Union will be focused.

Topic 91:Cross-cultural human resource management – The role it plays in the success of different organisations

Research Aim: This research will study the role of cross-cultural human resource management in the success of companies.

Topic 92:The impact of cross-cultural competencies in start-up companies

Research Aim: A lot of companies do not encourage cross-cultural human resources in the workplace. This research will analyse how cross-cultural competencies help startups grow and succeed.

Topic 93:The role of organisational cultural on HRM policies and practices – A case study of Cambridge University

Research Aim: This research will aim to understand the role of organisational culture on human resource policies and practices. The main focus of this study will be at Cambridge University.

Topic 94:The relationship between human resource management practices and organisational culture towards organisational commitment

Research Aim: This research will assess the relationship between different cultures and human resource practices with respect to organisational commitment.

Topic 95: Investigating cultural differences between the work values of employees and the implications for managers

Research Aim: This study will conduct an investigation related to the work values of employees based on their various cultural differences. It will then be concluded what this means for the managers.

Topic 96:To effectively manage cultural change without affecting work productivity

Research Aim: This research will discuss an interesting topic as to how managers should manage organisational cultural change without harming productivity.

Topic 97:Inducting new employees into the culture – Does it help organisations?

Research Aim: This research will discuss whether or not it is feasible for organisations to hire employees when the company is undergoing a cultural change.

Topic 98:Recruiting to change the culture – The Impact it has on the Profitability of the Company

Research Aim: This research will discuss whether companies should hire to lead change in the organisation, i.e. whether hiring should be done for this specific purpose, and what this new hiring means for the company in terms of profitability.

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HR Diversity Dissertation Topics

The changing corporate world has provoked organisations to develop and implement diversity management systems as part of their human resource management system. Although relatively new, diversity management is an important research area of human resource management that brings challenges and learning to employees.

With many areas unexplored and literature gaps in this subject, there are some extremely interesting dissertation topics you can select for your final year project. Some of them are listed here:

Topic 99: Investigating the difference between discrimination and diversity – How Do they Impact Organisations

Research Aim: This research will discuss the differences between the two concepts, diversity and discrimination and their impact on organisations.

Topic 100:Managing diversity through HRM: A conceptual framework and an international perspective

Research Aim: This study will discuss how the human resource department can manage diversity. The study will be conducted in an international setting.

Topic 101:Managing diversity in the public sector – How do companies manage to remain successful

Research Aim: This research will explore managing diversity in the public sector and how these companies can be successful even through diversity.

Topic 102:Managing cultural diversity in human resource management

Research Aim: As much as a human resource helps companies manage diversity, how will companies manage diversity in their main HR department. This research will answer this exact question.

Topic 103:The managerial tools, opportunities, challenges and benefits associated with diversity in the workplace

Research Aim: This research will focus on the tools available to human resources in managing diversity, and how they change it to opportunities and overcome diversity-related challenges.

Topic 104: Investigating the challenges of exclusion and inequality in organisations – Assessing HR’s role.

Research Aim: This research will first investigate the exclusion and inequality challenges that organisations face and how human resources overcome these challenges.

Topic 105:How does HRM Help in managing cultural differences and diversity

Research Aim: This research will discuss HR’s role in managing cultural differences and diversity in organisations.

Topic 106: Can HR eliminate diversity-related discrimination from workplaces? Assessing its role

Research Aim: This research will talk about HR’s role in eliminating diversity-related discrimination from organisations, and whether it will be successful in doing so or not.

Topic 107:Training managers for diversity – How difficult is it for companies and HR

Research Aim: This research will discuss and analyse the role of HR and companies in ensuring manager’s learning and development for diversity.

Topic 108:Training the newly hired staff for diversity in a large and diversified business organisation

Research Aim: This research will investigate the role of HR in training employees and staff to deal with, manage and coexist with diverse employees.

Important Notes:

As a human resource management student looking to get good grades, it is essential to develop new ideas and experiment with existing human resource management theories – i.e., to add value and interest to your research topic.

Human resource management is vast and interrelated to many other academic disciplines like management , operations management , project management , business , international business , MBA and more. That is why it is imperative to create a human resource management dissertation topic that is articular, sound, and actually solves a practical problem that may be rampant in the field.

We can’t stress how important it is to develop a logical research topic based on your entire research. There are several significant downfalls to getting your topic wrong; your supervisor may not be interested in working on it, the topic has no academic creditability, the research may not make logical sense, there is a possibility that the study is not viable.

This impacts your time and efforts in writing your dissertation , as you may end up in the cycle of rejection at the initial stage of the dissertation. That is why we recommend reviewing existing research to develop a topic, taking advice from your supervisor, and even asking for help in this particular stage of your dissertation.

While developing a research topic, keeping our advice in mind will allow you to pick one of the best human resource management dissertation topics that fulfil your requirement of writing a research paper and add to the body of knowledge.

Therefore, it is recommended that when finalizing your dissertation topic, you read recently published literature to identify gaps in the research that you may help fill.

Remember- dissertation topics need to be unique, solve an identified problem, be logical, and be practically implemented. Please look at some of our sample human resource management dissertation topics to get an idea for your own dissertation.

How to Structure your HRM Dissertation

A well-structured dissertation can help students to achieve a high overall academic grade.

• A Title Page
• Acknowledgements
• Declaration
• Abstract: A summary of the research completed
• Table of Contents
• Introduction : This chapter includes the project rationale, research background, key research aims and objectives, and the research problems. An outline of the structure of a dissertation can also be added to this chapter.
• Literature Review : This chapter presents relevant theories and frameworks by analyzing published and unpublished literature on the chosen research topic to address research questions . The purpose is to highlight and discuss the selected research area’s relative weaknesses and strengths while identifying research gaps. Break down the topic and key terms that can positively impact your dissertation and your tutor.
• Methodology : The data collection and analysis methods and techniques employed by the researcher are presented in the Methodology chapter, which usually includes research design , research philosophy, research limitations, code of conduct, ethical consideration, data collection methods, and data analysis strategy .
• Findings and Analysis : Findings of the research are analysed in detail under the Findings and Analysis chapter. All key findings/results are outlined in this chapter without interpreting the data or drawing any conclusions. It can be useful to include graphs, charts, and tables in this chapter to identify meaningful trends and relationships.
• Discussion and Conclusion : The researcher presents his interpretation of the results in this chapter and state whether the research hypothesis has been verified or not. An essential aspect of this section is establishing the link between the results and evidence from the literature. Recommendations with regards to the implications of the findings and directions for the future may also be provided. Finally, a summary of the overall research, along with final judgments, opinions, and comments, must be included in the form of suggestions for improvement.
• References : Make sure to complete this following your University’s requirements
• Bibliography
• Appendices : Any additional information, diagrams, and graphs used to complete the dissertation but not part of the dissertation should be included in the Appendices chapter. Essentially, the purpose is to expand the information/data.

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Today’s Human Resource Management (HRM) needs to deploy complex set of competences to deal with different issues threatening organizations’ performance and, even, survival. Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic set off a situation of rupture with the past, that has made emerge HRM’s fragility and challenges – in ...

Keywords : diversity management, COVID-19 crisis, employees perceptions, human resource management, knowledge sharing, employees engagement, collaboration

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Research trends in human resource management. A text-mining-based literature review

International Journal of Manpower

ISSN : 0143-7720

Article publication date: 26 April 2022

Issue publication date: 14 March 2023

The purpose of the study was to detect trends in human resource management (HRM) research presented in journals during the 2000–2020 timeframe. The research question is: How are the interests of researchers changing in the field of HRM and which topics have gained popularity in recent years?

Design/methodology/approach

The approach adopted in this study was designed to overcome all the limitations specific to the systematic literature reviews and bibliometric studies presented in the Introduction. The full texts of papers were analyzed. The text-mining tools detected first clusters and then trends, moreover, which limited the impact of a researcher's bias. The approach applied is consistent with the general rules of systematic literature reviews.

The article makes a threefold contribution to academic knowledge. First, it uses modern methodology to gather and synthesize HRM research topics. The proposed approach was designed to allow early detection of nascent, non-obvious trends in research, which will help researchers address topics of high value for both theory and practice. Second, the results of our study highlight shifts in focus in HRM over the past 19 years. Third, the article suggests further directions of research.

Research limitations/implications

In this study, the approach designed to overcome the limitations of using systematic literature review was presented. The analysis was done on the basis of the full text of the articles and the categories were discovered directly from the articles rather than predetermined. The study's findings may, however, potentially be limited by the following issues. First, the eligibility criteria included only papers indexed in the Scopus and WoS database and excluded conference proceedings, book chapters, and non-English papers. Second, only full-text articles were included in the study, which could narrow down the research area. As a consequence, important information regarding the research presented in the excluded documents is potentially lost. Third, most of the papers in our database were published in the International Journal of Human Resource Management, and therefore such trends as “challenges for international HRM” can be considered significant (long-lasting). Another – the fourth – limitation of the study is the lack of estimation of the proportion between searches in HRM journals and articles published in other journals. Future research may overcome the above-presented limitations. Although the authors used valuable techniques such as TF-IDF and HDBSCAN, the fifth limitation is that, after trends were discovered, it was necessary to evaluate and interpret them. That could have induced researchers' bias even if – as in this study – researchers from different areas of experience were involved. Finally, this study covers the 2000–2020 timeframe. Since HRM is a rapidly developing field, in a few years from now academics will probably begin to move into exciting new research areas. As a consequence, it might be worthwhile conducting similar analyses to those presented in this study and compare their results.

Originality/value

The present study provides an analysis of HRM journals with the aim of establishing trends in HRM research. It makes contributions to the field by providing a more comprehensive and objective review than analyses resulting from systematic literature reviews. It fills the gap in literature studies on HRM with a novel research approach – a methodology based on full-text mining and a big data toolset. As a consequence, this study can be considered as providing an adequate reflection of all the articles published in journals strictly devoted to HRM issues and which may serve as an important source of reference for both researchers and practitioners. This study can help them identify the core journals focused on HRM research as well as topics which are of particular interest and importance.

• Human resource management
• Text-mining

Piwowar-Sulej, K. , Wawak, S. , Tyrańska, M. , Zakrzewska, M. , Jarosz, S. and Sołtysik, M. (2023), "Research trends in human resource management. A text-mining-based literature review", International Journal of Manpower , Vol. 44 No. 1, pp. 176-196. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-03-2021-0183

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Katarzyna Piwowar-Sulej, Sławomir Wawak, Małgorzata Tyrańska, Małgorzata Zakrzewska, Szymon Jarosz and Mariusz Sołtysik

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction

The human resource (HR) function has evolved over the years from serving a purely administrative role into one that is more strategic in character. Today it is believed that the mission of human resource management (HRM) is to support the organization in achieving its objectives by developing and implementing HR strategies that are integrated with a company's business strategy, promote staff development, foster a positive employment relationship, promote an ethical approach to people management, and care about the environment (social and natural) ( Ehnert, 2009 ; Braga et al. , 2021 ).

In practice, HRM means providing continuous solutions to a wide array of problems occurring in employee-employer, line worker-manager, and employee-employee relations and also in contacts with, e.g. trade unions. Human behaviors, feelings and attitudes are determined both by the personal characteristics of individuals and by the impact of the environment. The shape of HRM is significantly influenced by such factors as, e.g. the demographic and technological transformations ( Greiling, 2011 ; Silva and Lima, 2018 ), and globalization ( Gerhart and Fang, 2005 ).

HRM has evolved as a professional and academic discipline in parallel with both planned shifts in global considerations and unplanned phenomena such as, e.g. epidemics. For researchers it is crucial to identify, define, explain, and help practitioners understand the key factors which have an impact on HRM. Another of the researchers' roles is to formulate practical guidelines on how to manage people in different circumstances and outline areas of future research. HRM thrives on the contributions made in other fields that it assimilates and applies in practice. It unscrupulously builds on theoretical developments made earlier in related disciplines ( Boxall et al. , 2009 ). Finally, the researcher endeavors to provide an overview, comparisons, analyses and syntheses of previously published findings ( Paul and Criado, 2020 ).

The theme of trends in HRM has been addressed in numerous publications (e.g. Cooper et al. , 2020 ; Madera et al. , 2017 ). Their authors have employed various approaches to identify such phenomena, including systematic literature reviews. Articles offering a traditional overview provide a quantity-oriented (i.e. meta-analytical, systematic) approach together with descriptive or qualitative elements. Jointly, they develop a theoretical background, highlight irregularities in existing findings, integrate the findings of a wide variety of publications and in general provide other researchers with an up-to-date understanding of the discipline, frequently prepared by leading specialists ( Palmatier et al. , 2018 ). In most cases, the documents selected for analysis were based on titles, keywords and abstracts only. Unfortunately, they contain only around 8% of all research findings ( Blake, 2010 ). In order to gain a deeper insight into such a body of knowledge authors have often turned to the by-hand review method (e.g. Cooper et al. , 2020 ).

Conventional systematic by-hand literature reviews are sometimes characterized by errors in article selection, possible simplifications and potentially incomplete and not universal results (subjective, impressionistic descriptions), In response to these shortcomings, in recent years a number of new alternatives have emerged. One new approach that has attracted increasing attention is bibliometric studies. This method applies dedicated IT tools to gauge trends in articles. They examine academic material from both an objective and qualitative perspective for the purposes of identifying, organizing, and analyzing information in a specific research field ( Capobianco-Uriarte et al. , 2019 ). As far as trends in HRM are concerned, Markoulli et al. (2017) presented a summary of previously published traditional and narrative reviews and on its basis created a science map and defined clusters based on keyword co-occurrence analysis and the VOSviewer software tool.

Bibliometric analyses can be treated as a platform for writing an entire article or can be used only as preparation for the groundwork for further in-depth content analysis and qualitative descriptions. In turn, a text mining toolset can help identify research trends and select papers which are in line with a particular trend. Moreover, a full-text analysis of publications using a text mining toolset enables researchers to obtain higher-quality results than when using only keywords, such as in the case of VOSviewer analyses ( Kobayashi et al. , 2018 ). As a consequence we decided that it was worth adopting a methodology based on full-text mining and a big data toolset in order to identify trends in HRM research. We believe that big data and analytics help not only companies function but also researchers in a highly data-driven world ( Kobayashi et al. , 2018 ).

The purpose of the study was to detect trends in HRM research presented in journals during the 2000–2020 timeframe. The following research question was asked: how are the interests of researchers changing in the field of HRM and which topics have gained in popularity in recent years?

The paper is organized as follows. In the second section we describe the HRM research trends identified in previous studies. Here the focus is on the context in which authors were operating when analyzing HRM issues. The third section is devoted to the research method employed for the purpose of this study. Then we present the results and discussion. The article ends with conclusions, including limitations and areas of future research.

The article makes a threefold contribution to academic knowledge. First, it uses modern methodology to gather and synthesize HRM research topics. The proposed approach was designed to allow early detection of nascent, non-obvious trends in research, which will help researchers address topics of high value for both theory and practice. Second, the results of our study highlight shifts in focus in HRM over the past 20 years. Third, the article suggests further directions of research.

2. Trends in the HRM research identified in previous studies

In their search for HRM research trends authors of this study firstly used the Scopus database and a search strategy based on such terms as: trends in human resource management/HRM, trends in research on human resource management/HRM, human resource management/HRM trends, intellectual structure of human resource management/HRM. The searching process covered titles, abstracts and keywords and was limited to articles written in English. The search produced 37 documents. Then the authors also searched for additional articles in Google Scholar.

Most of the articles were devoted to the trends identified in HR practices in companies (e.g. Dubravska and Solankova, 2015 ). One of such trends is HRM digitalization ( Ashbaugh and Miranda, 2002 ). Table 1 presents a list of HRM trends identified in the research (related to academic work) conducted by different authors.

It can be concluded from the above that researchers employed different approaches to defining and identifying these trends. Research trends may be associated with research topics (e.g. Özlen, 2014 ), research methods (e.g. Pietersen, 2018 ) and the general characteristics of the academic domain (e.g. Sanders and De Cieri, 2020 ). Although a number of authors have provided traditional literature reviews of trends in HRM, Chae et al. (2020) , for example, focused only on the local (Korean) research trends and used only keyword analyses. Others focused on a specific sector ( Cooper et al. , 2020 ), industry ( Madera et al. , 2017 ) or region ( Wood and Bischoff, 2020 ). There are also articles that outline the evolution of research in particular journals (e.g. Pietersen, 2018 ). Others address specific problems, such as international HRM (e.g. Sanders and De Cieri, 2020 ) or green HRM ( Yong et al. , 2020 ). The most visible trends identified in previous studies and associated with research topics were strategic HRM, HR performance and employment/industrial relations. The first topic was addressed in eight works while the remaining was the subject of five publications.

3. Material and methods

The approach adopted in this study was designed to overcome all the limitations specific to the systematic literature reviews and bibliometric studies as presented in the Introduction. The full texts of papers were analyzed. The approach applied is consistent with the general rules of systematic literature reviews ( Tranfield et al. , 2003 ) and consists of several steps, which are presented in Figure 1 .

3.1 Selection of journals

Thousands of articles covering HRM can be found on both Scopus and the Web of Science. For the sake of the present analysis, it was necessary to define inclusion criteria in the meta-analysis.

The main topic of the journal was related to HRM,

The journals were indexed in Scopus and WoS,

The journals have a high SNIP index value (the limit value is set at 1 - status for 2020; full values are presented in Table 2 ),

Full versions of the article were available,

The articles were published in the years 2000–2020.

A total of 8 journals met the above criteria ( Table 2 ). The full texts of the papers were downloaded from academic databases. No duplicates were found. Only research papers were included, while editorials, calls for papers, errata and book reviews were excluded.

All the metadata were removed from the papers. The titles and abstracts often contain catchwords designed to increase readership. As a consequence, only the texts of papers minus their titles, keywords, abstracts and references were analyzed in this study. Additional bibliographic information that could be useful in the analytical process was downloaded from the Crossref database. Each paper was converted into a text file and then into a bag-of-words model for the needs of automatic analysis using computer algorithms. The algorithms were created using Python libraries, such as grobid, nltk, scikit-learn, hdbscan, and scipy ( Pedregosa et al. , 2011 ).

3.2 Search for the most important terms

w i j – result for term i in document j ,

t f i j – number of occurrences of i in j ,

d f i – number of documents containing i ,

N – number of documents in the corpus (set of documents).

The TF-IDF method is not a mathematical model. It requires extensive computation, cannot be used to discover synonyms and ignores multiple meanings of words ( Zhang et al. , 2011 ). However, in the case of research papers, these problems have a minimal impact due to the more precise language used by researchers.

3.3 Identification of thematic groups (clusters)

The TF-IDF model presents each paper as a multidimensional vector. The number of dimensions is equal to the number of keywords used in the analysis. In the next step, all the vectors were compared to each other, which led to the discovery of clusters.

As mentioned in section 3.2 , the TF-IDF model does not analyse synonyms and ignores multiple meanings of words and phrases. In scholarly texts, it is rarely a problem. Even in HRM, where the number of synonyms can be perceived as higher than in other areas of management, the impact on the results should be negligible.

There are two main approaches to clustering: partitioning and hierarchical clustering. The former can be applied when all the corpus elements must be included in one of the groups. This induces data noise, as not even similar elements have to be included. The latter allows some elements to remain outside the clusters. The clusters become much more homogenous. This constitutes a better approach when it comes to identifying trends. Multiple hierarchical clustering methods are available, e.g. meanshift, DBSCAN, Optics and HDBSCAN (Hierarchical Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise) ( McInnes et al. , 2017 ). HDBSCAN is characterized by the least number of limitations. It takes each paper (vector) and checks at what distance it can find similar publications. Then it compares the results, and the densest areas are detected as clusters. Unlike some other methods, the clusters lack permanent density or a fixed number of elements. The only parameter that the researcher needs to establish is the minimum cluster size. The best value can be determined through a series of experiments.

In the present study, the authors carried out a set of experiments using different minimum cluster sizes. The highest value detected was 20. Lower values lead to a much higher number of clusters. Moreover, general phrases not directly related to HRM played a significant role in the discovery of these clusters. With the minimum cluster size set to values greater than 20, the number of clusters was significantly lower. That led to general results based on the most popular phrases only.

The entire sample was divided into groups of papers published in 5-year overlapping periods starting with 2000–2004 and ending with 2016–2020. Each paper was assigned to all the groups into which it fitted. Cluster analysis was performed for every group separately, and the results were used to identify trends.

Cluster analysis was performed on each group separately, and the results were used to discover trends. Approximately 30 clusters on average were identified for each five-year period. However, for a trend to be identified at least two similar clusters had to be discovered in successive periods Therefore, many unrelated clusters were excluded by the algorithm. Such behaviour is expected, as it removes noise from data. Usually, only one-third of clusters meet the conditions to form trends.

The number of papers published in each year is presented in Figure 2 . A slight decrease in the number of articles can be observed compared to 2018–19, which may have been a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

3.4 Identification of trends

Long-lasting trends that existed and evolved during the studied period,

Declining trends which came to an end during the studied period,

Emerging trends which began during the studied period,

Ephemeris trends that began and ended during the studied period.

3.5 Interpretation of trends

The results delivered by the algorithm must be checked through further studies. The algorithm can detect mergers or splits in trends. We decided, however, that the final decision should be left to researchers. At this stage, trends should also be named, interpreted and described. The interpretation phase should help highlight changes within trends and try to predict their future evolution.

4. Results and discussion

The analyses, performed by researchers using automatic algorithms and further verification, led to the discovery of 42 trends presented in Table 3 . These trends are ordered according to the year of their first occurrence and their duration. It is worth emphasizing that the year in which a trend was observed does not indicate that the idea behind it emerged at the same time. Rather, it shows when a subject began to increase in popularity among researchers. Furthermore, the number of identified trends is much higher than the results from previous studies presented in Section 2.1 Table 4 .

The use of tracking revealed the evolution of clusters, and made it possible to identify trends. The analysis led to the discovery of the types of trends presented in Section 3.4. Of the 42 trends, 4 were long-lasting, 5 declining, 17 emerging and 16 ephemeris in character. One possible fact to note is that “strategic HRM”, which was a prevailing trend in previous studies, is not directly presented in the results obtained using text-mining analyses. However, it is included in the “architecture and changing role of HRM” trend.

At this point it is worth emphasizing that sociologists of science have examined the principles governing the selection of topics analysed by researchers, and noticed that it may result from a trade-off between conservative production and risky innovation ( Bourdieu, 1975 ). The main problem when choosing research topics is deciding whether to continue topics fixed in the literature or take the risk of exploring new, hitherto unknown themes. Trend a analysis offers an indirect solution based on strategic ambidexterity. This is not only because it allows us to observe disappearing themes that continue to be exploited, but also to identify those topics, in which there is a growing interest (exploration).

Long-lasting trends are not homogenous and change over time. The evolution of trends can be tracked using keywords of considerable importance in subsequent years. The importance of keywords was evaluated using the TF-IDF algorithm and averaged for each cluster. The TF-IDF formula was presented in the Methodology section. It should be noted that the TF-IDF score has to be calculated for each phrase in each paper. In this study, over 150,000 phrases were identified in over 6 thousand papers. That resulted in a significant number of calculations made by the algorithm, which cannot be presented in the paper. A comparison of cluster keywords reveals new topics within trends. The evolution of trends may lead to the disappearance of earlier topics or to their parallel development. Declining and ephemeris trends are associated with issues that are of less interest to researchers, have been resolved or were eclipsed by changes in a researcher's approach to the object of their study. The disappearance of certain trends is a normal phenomenon in science. Such a disappearance can be predicted to a certain degree when the average number of papers decreases.

Since we identified many trends, only a few examples will be described below. One example of a long-lasting trend is “Diversity Management”, which covered the entire 2000–2020 timeframe. The articles that discussed this trend focused on effective diversity management, its impact on organizational performance (e.g. Choi et al. , 2017 ), team performance ( Roberge and van Dick, 2010 ), knowledge sharing ( Shen et al. , 2014 ), innovation ( Peretz et al. , 2015 ), and the various factors which impact upon its effectiveness. Some papers discussed only one form of diversity in the workplace, e.g. age diversity ( Li et al. , 2011 ), gender diversity (e.g. Gould et al. , 2018 ) or ethnic diversity (e.g. Singh, 2007 ).

One sub-trend that can be observed within the above-discussed trend is age management', which falls within the 2005–2018 time range. The papers assigned to this sub-trend focus on HR practices towards older employees (e.g. Kooij et al. , 2014 ).

One example of a declining trend is “new and traditional career models”. This trend, which was observed in the years 2000–2019, highlights the fact that the weakening of organizational boundaries has increased career freedom and independence from previously constraining factors. The papers which examined this issue provide conceptual knowledge of different career dimensions. For example, a shift has taken place from objective to subjective careers. Individuals have to make sense of their careers, because they can no longer depend on their employers ( Walton and Mallon, 2004 ). Individual cultural, social and economic capital builds a field of opportunities for pursuing a career ( Iellatchitch et al. , 2003 ). Simultaneously, two major kinds of boundaries to the “boundaryless career” have been identified: the competence-based boundary (industry boundary) and the relation-based boundary (social capital boundary) ( Baghdadli et al. , 2003 ).

In the last two decades, increasing environmental awareness has pushed researchers towards addressing the issue of HRM as a strategic tool for making companies sustainability-driven organizations (e.g. Podgorodnichenko et al. , 2020 ). One of the emerging trends identified in our study is “Green and sustainable HRM”. This trend focuses on the environmental responsibility of companies (e.g. DuBois and Dubois, 2012 ) or/and achieving simultaneously social and economic goals (if the triple bottom line concept is discussed) (e.g. Ren and Jackson, 2020 ). The results, in the form of behavioral changes, have also been examined (e.g. Dumont et al. , 2017 ) and the contribution of HRM to company sustainability has been discussed in the context of different countries (e.g. Alcaraz et al. , 2019 ).

Finally, one example of an ephemeris trend is “HR certification”. The discussion on this trend was initiated by Lengnick-Hall and Aguinis (2012) . They applied a multi-level theory-based approach to investigating HR certification. They tried to assess the value of HR certification for individual HR specialists, their organizations as well as for the HR profession as a whole. The main topic addressed in later articles devoted to this trend was the value of HR certification (e.g. Aguinis and Lengnick-Hall, 2012 ). The value of HR certification has been linked with shareholder value ( Paxton, 2012 ). The link between organizational values and HR certification is another issue that has been addressed. Organizational values are treated as a key antecedent to the use and pursuit of HR certification ( Garza and Morgeson, 2012 ).

Table 3 presents only those periods during which specific trends were active, but provides no information on their dynamics. This can be observed by looking at the average number of papers per year (ANPY) in consecutive periods. Table 4 presents all the trends active during the last year of the study. They were divided into three groups according to whether the ANPY was decreasing, increasing or stable in recent years. To depict the relative strength of these trends, table shows the average number of papers published in the final 5-year period.

It can be concluded that trends with an increasing dynamic coincide with the trends defined in the literature. For example, “flexible employment from the perspective of HRM” corresponds with “employment relations” distinguished by Markoulli et al. (2017) and “the HRM process, the changing nature of HRM, and precarious employment relations” in the typology developed by Cooper et al. (2020) . “Diversity Management” is related to “organizational culture” ( Özlen, 2014 ). “Employee participation” may be associated with “employment relations” ( Cooke et al. , 2019 ) and “organizational commitment” ( García-Lillo et al. , 2017 ). The latter occurs both in the presented typology and in previous ones. “leader–member exchange” should be included in “behavioral issues” ( Özlen, 2014 ). Finally, a trend characterized by an increasing dynamic is “green and sustainable HRM”. Green HRM was an independent subject of analysis in a study by Yong et al. (2020) .

5. Conclusions

5.1 contributions and implications.

The present study provides an analysis of HRM journals with the aim of identifying trends in HRM research. It makes contributions to the field by providing a more comprehensive and objective review than analyses resulting from conventional systematic literature reviews as well as by identifying 42 different trends. It fills an existing gap in literature studies on HRM with a novel research approach – a methodology based on full-text mining and a big data toolset. As a consequence, this study can be considered as providing an adequate reflection of all the articles published in journals strictly devoted to HRM issues and which may serve as an important source of reference for both researchers and practitioners. It can also help them identify the core journals focused on HRM research as well as those topics which are of particular interest and importance.

As the study covers a period of over 20 years it should come as no surprise that some trends emerged and declined over this time. However, our study creates an opportunity for reviving research topics which combine old trends with new ones, and at the same time take into account the interdisciplinary nature of HRM as a field of research. Some researchers have observed that success can often be achieved by adopting a tool from another research area or through a new way of analyzing old problems that brings new insights and solutions ( Adali et al. , 2018 ).

Finally, we observed the emergence of a number of trends during the studied period that are still active. In particular, green and sustainable HRM is not only an emerging trend but also developing rapidly. It is worth mentioning here that while many articles have focused on green HRM issues, they have not been published in journals that specialize in HRM but in journals devoted to environmental issues. One possible future challenge for researchers may be to estimate the proportions between HRM articles published in HRM journals and those featured in other journals.

Practitioners interested in the evolution of the field can find in this paper areas of HRM that require improving in their own businesses or which can be treated as a platform for introducing innovations in HRM (emerging trends). The information contained in this paper can also be utilized as a source for evaluating the performance of sub-fields in a HRM research domain and for adjusting research policies with regard to funding allocations and comparing research input and output ( Gu, 2004 ). The editors of journals may take into account the results presented in this paper when making decisions regarding the direction, scope, and themes of their journals.

5.2 Limitations

In this study, the approach designed to overcome the limitations of using systematic literature review was presented. The analysis was done on the basis of the full text of the articles and the categories were discovered directly from the articles rather than predetermined. The study's findings may, however, potentially be limited by the following issues.

First, our eligibility criteria included only papers indexed in the Scopus and WoS database and excluded conference proceedings, book chapters, and non-English papers. Second, only full-text articles were included in the study, which could narrow down the research area. As a consequence, important information regarding the research presented in the excluded documents is potentially lost. Third, most of the papers in our database were published in the International Journal of Human Resource Management, and therefore such trends as “challenges for international HRM” can be considered significant (long-lasting). Another – the fourth – limitation of the study is the lack of estimation of the proportion between searches in HRM journals and articles published in other journals. Future research may overcome the above-presented limitations. Although we used valuable techniques such as TF-IDF and HDBSCAN, the fifth limitation is that, after trends were discovered, it was necessary to evaluate and interpret them. That could have induced researchers' bias even if – as in this study – researchers from different areas of experience were involved. Finally, this study covers the 2000–2020 timeframe. Since HRM is a rapidly developing field, in a few years from now academics will probably begin to move into exciting new research areas. As a consequence, it might be worthwhile conducting similar analyses to those presented in this study and compare their results.

Workflow of the methodology used in this study

Number of papers in the years 2000–2020

Trends in HRM research identified in previous studies

HRM-related journals included in this study

Trends in HRM research in the years 2000–2020

Activity of long-lasting and emerging trends in recent years

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• Open access
• Published: 05 December 2023

Human resource management research in healthcare: a big data bibliometric study

• Xiaoping Qin 1 ,
• Yu-Ni Huang 2 ,
• Zhiyuan Hu 1 ,
• Kaiyan Chen 3 ,
• Richard Szewei Wang 5 , 6 &
• Bing-Long Wang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9910-9804 1  

Human Resources for Health volume  21 , Article number:  94 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Human resource management (HRM) in healthcare is an important component in relation to the quality and efficiency of healthcare delivery. However, a comprehensive overview is lacking to assess and track the current status and trends of HRM research in healthcare. This study aims to describe the current situation and global trends in HRM research in healthcare as well as to indicate the frontiers and future directions of research. The research methodology is based on bibliometric mapping using scientific visualization software (VOSviewer). The data were collected from the Web of Science(WoS) core citation database. After applying the search criteria, we retrieved 833 publications, which have steadily increased over the last 30 years. In addition, 93 countries and regions have published relevant research. The United States and Australia have made significant contributions in this area. Current research articles focus on topics clustered into performance, hospital/COVID-19, job satisfaction, human resource management, occupational/mental health, and quality of care. The most frequently co-occurring keywords are human resource management, job satisfaction, nurses, hospitals, health services, quality of care, COVID-19, and nursing. There is limited research on compensation management and employee relations management, so the current HRM research field still has not been able to present a complete and systematic roadmap. We propose that our colleagues should consider focusing on these research gaps in the future.

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Introduction

Among the many management elements, people are the most dynamic and active element, and they are an important asset in organizations [ 1 ]. The term “human resources” was first coined by the academic Peter F. Drucker in 1954 [ 2 ]. The key function of human resources management (HRM) is to “put the right people in the right jobs at the right time” [ 2 ]. HRM refers to the planned allocation of human resources in accordance with the requirements of organizational development through a series of processes, such as recruitment, training, use, assessment, motivation, and adjustment of employees, to mobilize their motivation, bring into play their potential and create value for the organization [ 1 ]. Ensuring the achievement of the organization’s strategic objectives, HRM activities mainly include human resource strategy formulation, staff recruitment and selection, training and development, performance management, compensation management, staff mobility management, staff relationship management, staff safety and health management, etc. Similarly, modern healthcare management has human resources as the core. The HRM level in hospitals is related to the quality and efficiency of medical services provided by hospitals, which is also the core of internal hospital management and the focus of health macro management [ 3 ].

The World Health Organization (WHO) states that health systems can only work with the help of health workers, and that improving the coverage of health services and realizing the right to the highest standard of health depends on the availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of health workers [ 4 ]. In response to evolving characteristics in socio-economic development and the human resource market, healthcare system personnel reforms are evident in three key areas: first, decentralization and flexible employment practices grant hospital managers greater decision-making autonomy concerning priorities and access to medical resources. However, they also impose quantitative and functional constraints on physicians' working hours, career planning, and medical payment systems. Second, a focal point is the rational allocation of technical staff to achieve efficiency while controlling labor costs. Finally, hospital organization change and restructuring are prevalent. Many European countries have unionized hospital employees, limiting the ability to establish independent incentives and rewards. In contrast, U.S. hospital employees often do not belong to specific organizations, leading cost control efforts to revolve around adjusting the allocation of technical staff and employee numbers to reduce labor expenses [ 5 , 6 , 7 ].

The current global trend in the number of publications on HRM in healthcare is rising. However, there are currently several problems in HRM research. The following issues mainly exist: (1) the expertise and professionalism of HRM managers are limited. (2) Theoretical methods and technical applications are weak. (3) Insufficient regulation of regulations, systems and procedures. (4) Management is mainly at the level of operational work, and functions are too fragmented [ 8 , 9 ]. Although hospitals worldwide generally recognize the importance of HRM, they do not pay sufficient attention to it. The management of human resources is also stuck in the previous understanding that its work is carried out only by transferring positions in hospitals, promoting and reducing the salary of employees and a series of other operations [ 10 ]. Most senior management in hospitals have comprehensive medical knowledge; some are experts in a particular field. Still, they lack expertise in HRM, which makes them work in a transactional way in HRM. There is also currently a general health workforce imbalance in countries worldwide. The lack of well-being of healthcare workers is particularly problematic in foreign healthcare institutions [ 11 ], and to reduce costs, some organizations have reduced staffing levels. In turn, because of lower quality of service, the morale of healthcare providers often suffers. Patient satisfaction may decline [ 12 ]. In the process of data gathering, we found that the literature related to HRM in healthcare is still under-reported and that the research topics are scattered, and there is still a lack of generalization and summary of these literatures [ 13 ]. There is no systematic theoretical support in the current research, which defines the perspective that researchers should take when analyzing and interpreting the data to be collected, leading to biased interpretations of the results, and does not allow other researchers to combine the findings with existing research knowledge and then apply them to practice [ 14 ]. Second, data collection was not rigorous, and the downloading strategy was not appropriate to achieve completeness and accuracy of data. There is also a lack of information and incomplete use of features in the presentation of knowledge maps and visualization results [ 15 ].

Therefore, the aims of this study are the following; first, we provide a new way of viewing the field of healthcare HRM and its associations by examining co-occurrence data. Second, we relate our evolutionary analysis to a comprehensive future research agenda which may generate a new research agenda in healthcare hospital HRM. This review, therefore, focuses on illuminating the research frontiers and future roadmap for healthcare HRM research [ 16 , 17 ].

Materials and methods

This study provides a bibliometric analysis of the HRM research literature in health care over a 30-year period to describe the landscape and trajectory of change in the research field. The methodology used for this overview is based on bibliometric mapping [ 18 , 19 ], a visualization technique that quantitatively displays the landscape and dynamic aspects of the knowledge domain [ 20 ]. Data were collected from the Web of Science (WoS) core citation database. Two Java-based scientific visualization software packages (CiteSpace and VOSviewer), developed by Chaomei Chen and Van Eck and Waltman, were used to analyze the data [ 18 , 21 ].

The data for this study were retrieved from the Web of Science on 28 September 2022. Web of Science was chosen as the search engine, because it is the most widely accepted and commonly used database for analyzing scientific publications [ 22 ]. The keywords “human resource management” and “healthcare organization” were used as search topics. First, to get a complete picture of HRM research, we searched all the literature from 1977 to the date of the search.

Eight hundred thirty-three publications on HRM in healthcare organizations were identified (Fig.  1 ). We excluded publications before 1990, because the two documents before 1990 did not include complete information. In addition, articles, review articles, and early access articles were included in the study. To minimize language bias, we excluded literature published in languages other than English. Each publication in WoS contains detailed information, including the year of publication, author, author’s address, title, abstract, source journal, subject category, references, etc. A detailed description of the contents of the database preceded the bibliographic analysis. For example, some authors presented their names in different spellings when submitting articles, so reviewing and integrating the data in detail was necessary. A total of 718 publications were included and exported to VOSviewer and CiteSpace software to analyze the following topics: global publishing trends, countries, journals, authors, research orientations, institutions, and quality of publications.

Research flow chart of the bibliometric analysis

Introduction to CiteSpace and VOSviewer

VOSviewer is a software tool for building and visualizing bibliometric networks. It was developed by Van Eck and Waltman [ 21 ]. In VOSviewer, metric networks can be visualized and analyzed for factors, including journals, researchers, or individual publications. They can be constructed based on citations, bibliographic couplings, co-citations, or co-authorship relationships [ 21 ].

Global publication trends

Number of global trends.

After applying the search criteria, we retrieved a total of 718 articles. Figure  2 a shows the increase in articles from 1 in 1977 to 108 in 2021. To predict future trends, a linear regression model was used to create a time curve for the number of publications throughout the year, and the model fit curve for the growth trend is shown in Fig.  2 b. The trend in the number of publications fitted the time curve well at R 2  = 0.8802. The R-squared value is a measure of how well the trend line fits. This value reflects the degree of fit between the estimated value of the trend line and the corresponding actual data; the better the fit, the more reliable the trend line is [ 23 , 24 ]. Based on the model’s trends, it is also predicted that the number of articles on HRM in healthcare will increase to approximately 300 by 2030, an almost threefold increase compared to 2021.

a Total number of publications related to HRM research. The bars indicate the number of publications per year. b Model fitting curves of global publication trends. c Top 10 countries of total publications. d Distribution world map of HRM research

Country and regional contributions

Figure  2 c, d shows the number of publications and the world distribution of the top 10 countries in total publication numbers. The USA contributed the most publications (172, 24.2%), followed by Australia (86, 12.0%), the UK (83, 11.6%), and China (78, 10.9%).

Total number of citations

The USA had the highest total number of citations of all included publications (5195) (Table 1 ), while the UK ranked second (2661), followed by Australia (1960) and the Netherlands (1271). The detailed rankings and numbers are shown in Fig.  3 a and Table 1 .

a Top 10 countries of average citations for each article. b Average number of citations. c Top 10 countries of the H-index

Average citation frequency

Belgium had the highest average number of citations (49.26), followed by the UK (32.06), the USA (30.2), and Canada (27.13), as shown in Fig.  3 b.

Total citations and the h-index reflect the quality of a country’s publications and academic impact[ 25 ]. Figure  3 c shows the ranking of the h-index, where the top country is the USA (h-index = 36), followed by the UK (h-index = 27), Australia (h-index = 23), and Canada (h-index = 22).

Analysis of publications

Table 2 shows the top 10 journals for publications on HRM in healthcare, with 54 articles published in “International Journal of Human Resource Management”, 44 articles published in “BMJ Open”, 30 articles published in “Journal of Nursing Management”, and 24 articles in “BMC Health Services Research”.

Table 3 shows the top 10 most published authors with 96 articles/reviews in the last decade, representing 13.4% of all literature in the field. Timothy Bartram from Australia has published 19 papers, followed by Sandra Leggat from Australia, Stanton P from the USA, and Townsend K from the UK with 13, 11, and 10 papers, respectively. All researchers listed as authors were included in this term for analysis, regardless of their relative contribution to the study. Notably, we have included all authors in this analysis regardless of their relative contribution to the study.

Research orientation

Figure  4 a shows the top 10 research orientations of the 100 research orientations. The most common research orientations were management (193 articles), nursing (107 articles), health policy services (105 articles), and health care sciences services (201 articles).

a Top 10 research orientations and the number of publications in each orientation. b Top 20 institutions with the most publications

Institutions

Figure  4 shows the top 20 institutions with the most published papers. La Trobe University has the highest number of articles with 24, followed by the University of London (23) and Griffith University (18).

Co-occurrence analysis

In the keyword mapping on HRM research in healthcare, the size of the nodes represents the frequency, while the line between the nodes reflects the co-occurrence relationship. A total of 1914 keywords were included, and 59 met the criteria. All keywords were grouped into six clusters: performance (light blue cluster), job satisfaction (red cluster), quality of care (blue cluster), human resource management (brown cluster), occupational/mental health (purple cluster), and hospital/COVID-19 (green cluster) (Fig.  5 ).

Co-occurrence analysis of HRM research in healthcare

The most prominent themes in HRM research in healthcare are as below. In the “Performance” cluster, the keywords which have the greatest co-occurrence strength were “performance”, “systematic review”, “decentralization health system” and “motivation”. The main keywords in the “Job Satisfaction” cluster are “job satisfaction”, “organizational commitment”, “transformational leadership” and “turn over”. In the “Quality of care” cluster, the keywords that stand out are “quality of care”, “patient safety”, “high-performance work system”, “quality management” and “patient satisfaction”. In the “Human resource management” cluster, the prominent keywords include “human resource management”, “health policy”, “public health”, and “education and training”. In the “Occupational/Mental Health” cluster, the prominent keywords are “Occupational health”, “mental health”, “well-being” and “burnout”. The main keywords in the “Hospital/COVID-19” cluster were “hospitals”, “COVID-19” “workforce” and “qualitative research”.

Global trends in HMR in healthcare

Our study of HMR research in healthcare illustrates current and global trends in publications, contributing countries, institutions, and research orientations. The field of HMR research has evolved over the past three decades. However, as this study shows, the number of publications steadily increases yearly, with 93 countries or regions publishing in the field, suggesting that research focusing on HMR research and providing in-depth knowledge will likely increase.

Quality and status of publications worldwide

We find that most publishing countries are developed countries, but developing countries are catching up. The total citation rate and the h-index reflect the quality and scholarly impact of a country’s publications [ 25 ]. According to our study, the US ranks first among other countries in total publications, citations, and h-index, making the most substantial contribution to global HRM research. The UK and Canada also contribute significantly, with impressive total citation frequencies and h-index, especially the UK, which ranks second in average citation frequency. However, some countries, such as Belgium, Canada and Australia, also play an important role, given their high average citation frequency. In developing countries, HRM research has also served as a guide for hospitals to improve the quality of care. The study will serve as a reference for developing countries to learn from the experience of developed countries as their economic development gradually catches up with that of developed countries.

The impact and prestige of the journals can be seen in the number of articles published in the field and the influential journals in healthcare HRM research, including the BMC Health Services Research, the Journal of Nursing Management, the International Journal of Human Resource Management, the Health Care Management Review, and the Journal of Health Organisation and Management. These high-quality journals are thus the main source of information for researchers in this field on the latest developments in HRM in healthcare.

The study shows that almost all of the top 20 institutions come from the top five countries with the most publications, with the majority coming from the US, Australia and the Netherlands, reflecting the great academic influence of these three countries in the field of HRM in healthcare. These institutions play an important role in raising the academic performance of a country. Furthermore, the top 20 authors represent research leaders who are likely to impact the future direction of research significantly. Therefore, more attention should be paid to their work to stay abreast of the latest developments in the field.

Research Focus on HRM

Keywords play a crucial role in research papers as they contain vital information [ 26 ]. A systematic analysis of keywords within a specific research domain offers valuable insights into trends and focal points across various research areas [ 27 ]. Moreover, co-occurrence analysis relies on the number of joint publications to evaluate relationships among the identified keyword domains. As a result, it serves as an effective method for predicting future trends and focal points within the research areas of interest. These findings are expected to inspire more researchers to contribute to the future of HRM research in healthcare [ 28 ].

In this study, a total of six research domains were eventually summarized. Performance, Hospital/COVID-19, Job Satisfaction, Human resource management, Occupational/Mental Health, and Quality of care. By visualizing the analysis results, we can easily further clarify future trends. As the co-occurrence diagram shows, the keywords “Organizational culture”, “Patient safety”, “Nursing”, “Leadership”, “Quality of care” and “Hospitals” are highlighted as larger icons, so that investment and demand for quality research are necessary for the context of these six research directions.

Six modules and research directions in human resources

This study found that the visual clustering results and the keywords that emerged from the clusters were closely related to the HRM module s described in “Human Resources Management: Gaining a Competitive Advantage” by Noe. R . [ 29 ]. The modules have been cited in HRM research and are used as textbooks in universities [ 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 ]. Some of the keywords in each cluster correspond to human resource planning, performance management, recruitment and staffing, and training and development, respectively. The explanation of the HRM modules is described in the next paragraph. However, there are no explicit keywords in the modules related to employee relations management and compensation management results. This may be due to the private nature of the compensation structure in healthcare organizations during data collection, making it unavailable.

The explanation of the HRM modules [ 29 ]

Human resource planning is the starting point of HRM. It helps the organization forecast future personnel needs and their basic qualities, primarily through planning.

Recruitment and staffing, with HR planning as the input, is equivalent to the organization’s blood, nourishing the organization and solving the problem of staffing and staff matching.

Training and development, with the “education” theme.

Performance Management is at the heart of the six dimensions. It is also the primary input to the other dimensions.

Compensation management aims to motivate employees to solve the company’s problems.

Employee relations management aims to manage people and help the company form an effective cycle of rational human resource allocation.

Human resource planning

Human Resource Plan (HRP) stands for the implementation of the HR development strategy of the enterprise and the accomplishment of the enterprise’s goals, according to the changes in the internal and external environment and conditions of the enterprise, through the analysis and estimation of the future needs and supply of human resources and the use of scientific methods for organizational design, as well as the acquisition, allocation, utilization and maintenance of HR and other aspects of functional planning. HRP ensures that the organization has a balance of HR supply and demand at a needed time and in a required position, and achieves a reasonable allocation of HR and other resources to effectively motivate and develop of employees [ 34 ].

Decentralization health system, organizational culture/structure are high-frequency words in the clustering results related to “human resource management”. It is important to assess the extent to which decentralization can be used as a policy tool to improve national health systems. For policymakers and managers, based on relevant literature and research as well as country experience analysis, the experience of decentralization in relation to the organization and management of healthcare services is considered a forward-looking and pioneering concept capable of achieving optimal allocation of HR and other resources, in addition to the need to focus more on ex-ante and ex-post incentive development to deliver a 1 + 1 > 2 HRM effect [ 35 ]. HRP is the starting point and basis for all specific HRM activities. It directly affects the efficiency of the overall HRM of the enterprise. It is, therefore, taken as the primary job requirement for HR managers [ 36 ]. Organizational culture/structure significantly impacts the healthcare sector, such as excellence in healthcare delivery, ethical values, engagement, professionalism, cost of care, commitment to quality and strategic thinking, which are key cultural determinants of high-quality care delivery [ 37 ]. Therefore, as with other for-profit organizations, healthcare organizations must ensure that their organizational structure functions effectively to achieve their strategic goals. The organization formulates and implements HRM, an important task to achieve the development strategy goals.

Staff recruitment and allocation

Recruitment and staffing are the first steps in hospital HRM activities. Under the guidance of the organization’s human resources development plan, potential staff who meet the development conditions are attracted. Through the scientific selection of outstanding personnel, a platform with guaranteed treatment and development prospects is provided to ensure that the team of the healthcare organization is built solidly and meets the development needs. From the findings of this study, the keywords “workforce” and “workload” appear as high-frequency keywords in the co-occurrence analysis. Still, keywords related to traditional staff recruitment (e.g., analysis of recruitment needs, job analysis, competency analysis, recruitment procedures, and strategies) do not appear often. Recruitment and staffing are the prerequisites of human resources work. They bring a new dynamic source to healthcare organizations while complementing staff, making the organization full of vitality and vigor, facilitating organizational innovation and management innovation and helping improve the healthcare organization’s competitive advantage [ 38 ]. Recruitment and staffing, as a part of HR, directly impact the successful running of daily activities.

Training and development

Human resource training is an important component of quality and safety in the health care system. The keyword “education and training” shows a high frequency of co-occurrence in the clustering results of analysis, corresponding to the module “training and education”. However, it is connected to the keywords “human resource management” and “health policy”, and is in the same cluster with” public health”, “health care management”, and the distance between the lines and dots indicate that these topics are closely related, proving the importance of education and training in the HRM of health systems. Healthcare organizations (especially for non-professionals and caregivers) can improve the performance of their employees by enhancing their capabilities, knowledge and potential through learning and training, so that they can maximize their qualifications to match the demands of their work and advance their performance [ 39 , 40 ].

Performance management

Performance management, the core of the six modules, is also featured in the clustering results. Although this is an important focus for HR professionals, few studies have explored the link between HRM and health sector performance [ 6 ], the results show “performance” and “motivation”. The effectiveness of performance management is an important component of HRM, which effectively improves the quality of care in healthcare organizations/institutions [ 6 ]. Focusing on the effectiveness of performance management is considered to be crucial. First, as an integral part of HRM within an organization, it can help the organization meet its goals. Second, ineffective approaches can lead to negative attitudes among employees (including clinicians, nursing staff, administrators, etc.) and adversely affect performance due to decreased satisfaction among employees and patients. Third, given the increasing quality and cost reduction pressures on healthcare organizations, conducting further research on performance management and effectiveness is critical [ 41 ]. However, it is clear from our results that healthcare organizations have recognized the importance of performance management and are pursuing “high performance”. Although the topic of performance management in HRM in healthcare is one of the research priorities, the number is lacking and more discussion on performance management should be suggested for future research.

Compensation management

Compensation is an important tool to motivate employees to work hard and to motivate them to work hard. The results of the database's bibliographic analysis show that no keywords directly involved compensation. This indicates that “compensation management” has not been considered a hot topic or a research issue over 30 years of available literature. To clarify the content of this module, we further searched the database of 718 articles with keywords, such as compensation, remuneration, salary, etc., and found that only 35 of them mentioned or discussed compensation, and some years (e.g., 2018, 2009) even had no relevant literature being published. However, issues such as fairness of compensation management and employee compensation satisfaction are still important issues of concern to business management academics [ 42 , 43 ]. The actual situation is that it is difficult to conduct research on compensation management. Most organizations keep their employees’ compensation confidential, and when conducting research, HR managers avoid talking about their employees’ compensation or leave it vague, rendering it impossible for researchers to conduct further research.

Employee compensation is one factor that has the greatest impact on organizational performance. In the future, organizations should be encouraged to scientifically structure their compensation management and empower academic research to establish and implement fair compensation management systems based on empirical research while maintaining the privacy and security of organizational information.

Employee relations management

The connotation of employee relations management involves organizational culture and employee relations, as well as the coordination of the relationship between employers and employees. Healthcare organizations have complex structures with employees with varying skills, tasks or responsibilities, and such conflicts are often managed through the communication skills of administrative staff [ 44 ]. Although the keywords related to “employee relations management” did not occur in this study's analysis results, the six HRM modules are closely related. Therefore, this does not mean that no description of employee relations management was completely absent in the retrieved articles. It is clear that there is currently a lack of research on employee relations management in the healthcare field. Still, with the continuous development of the healthcare industry, it faces multiple challenges. If employee relations are not handled properly, healthcare organizations with social responsibility will face great public pressure, which will even affect the quality of healthcare services and performance, so it is especially important to strengthen the research on employee relations management.

This study inevitably has some limitations, the first of which arises from using quantitative methods to review documents in the field of HRM. The review relied on an analysis of the bibliographic data associated with the documents rather than a review of the research findings. The impact of the study was, therefore, limited to the general direction of developments in the field, rather than a synthesis of research findings. As a result, we may have missed some publications due to database bias. Second, most of the publications identified were in English and some articles relevant to other languages have not been included. Third, Since HRM exists in a wide range of industries and research areas, although researchers have set the screening criteria as detailed as possible, there may still be some literature that has not been detected.

This study describes the current state and global trends in HRM research in healthcare. The United States has made significant contributions in this field, establishing itself as a global leader. It is foreseeable that more and more publications will be published in the coming years, which indicates that HRM research in healthcare is booming. The analysis results of this study echoed the modules of HRM. It can be seen that in the current HRM research, many topics have been of interest. However, the focus and hotspots of the research are scattered, and there is presently no systematic research on the content of HRM in healthcare.

Availability of data and materials

All data and materials generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Editor-in-Chief and the referees for their helpful comments which help to improve our manuscript significantly.

This research was supported by Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, China (Grant number: 2021-RC630-001).

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Yu-Ni Huang

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Kaiyan Chen

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BW, ZH and LLconceived of the presented idea. BW, developed the theory. BW, YH, RW, KC and XQ collected the data and discussed the results. BW and YH encouraged XQ to investigate the hospital management field and supervised the findings of this work. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the final manuscript.

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Qin, X., Huang, YN., Hu, Z. et al. Human resource management research in healthcare: a big data bibliometric study. Hum Resour Health 21 , 94 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12960-023-00865-x

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This chapter summarizes the contemporary research perspectives and gaps covered in the book. Exploring contemporary research ideas and gaps within any field of research is imperative for its advancement, and the fields of Human Resource Management (HRM) and Organizational Behavior (OB) are no different. The research gaps overviewed in this book are synthesized into larger research themes to guide the development of current and future research agendas. The future of research in these fields is forecasted and future trends are also outlined. Finally, broader research and funding agendas for scholars are evaluated to unpack the complex research challenges within the fields of HRM and OB.

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Singh, R., Ramdeo, S. (2023). Conclusions and Future Research Directions in Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior. In: Contemporary Perspectives in Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30225-1_12

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