Workplace spirituality: science mapping, themes, and research clusters through bibliometric analysis Open Access

The concept of workplace spirituality (WPS) originates from the broader notion of spirituality, which is often regarded as a core aspect of an individual's inner self and a fundamental element of human existence (Houghton et al., 2016; Long and Mills, 2010; Elnafrawy, 2022). In the context of organizational life, employees frequently seek avenues to fulfill their spiritual needs within the workplace environment, aspiring to find deeper meaning, purpose, and a sense of connectedness through their professional roles (Sharma and Singh, 2020; Nur and Organ, 2006). Generally considered as a state of higher consciousness, a condition that strengthens one's sense of unity with oneself, others, and the divine. They defined “spirituality” as “the basic feeling of being connected with one's complete self, others, and the entire universe.” If a single word best captures the meaning of spirituality and the vital role that it plays in people's lives, that word is “interconnectedness.”

Employees come with their individual spirituality to the workplace and actively grow with it (Karakas, 2010; Kazemipour and Mohd Amin, 2012). WPS thereby helps organizations and enables employees to develop holistically on an individual basis. To satisfy their workers' material and nonmaterial needs, companies have now begun to pay attention to their emotional and spiritual needs (Guillén et al., 2015).

WPS is gradually gaining recognition as a viable solution to a range of human resources problems and challenges, and over the last 20 years, there has been a notable increase in research studies in this area. Organizations can improve their degree of creativity, innovation, and problem-solving skills, as well as their level of commitment and employee stress, by addressing or incorporating the spiritual side of work (Duchon and Plowman, 2005; Houghton et al., 2016; Elnafrawy, 2022; Pawar, 2009). The field of WPS represents a rich and dynamic area of scholarly inquiry, making it highly valuable to explore in terms of its foundational theories, evolving research trends, academic contributions, and overall impact (Barik and Nayak, 2023).

In academia, the term “intellectual structure” refers to the evolution of a research topic over time and across different domains. In this context, a bibliometric study provides a strategic approach to generate valuable scientific insights and recommendations. Such studies are frequently employed to assess existing literature and uncover research trends across various fields (Ahmad et al., 2019) and thematic emphasis of the major field contributors (Bragge et al., 2019) thematic distribution within the research field is still developing (Goyal and Kumar, 2020; Gong and Hassink, 2017). Accordingly, the present study seeks to explore the WPS intellectual structure to deepen the understanding of academic influence and enhance the effectiveness of future research endeavors. The study also outlines the emerging themes and lays the groundwork for future research in this field.

Bibliometric analysis is a set of tools where quantitative techniques are used to analyze and quantify the text and information (Goyal and Kumar, 2020). In addition to managing a huge corpus, bibliometric analysis detects publication patterns, finds subjects that are progressing, and creates thematic evolution visualizations for both retrospection and envisioning future study directions (Ciampi et al., 2021). Science mapping techniques and performance analysis are integrated into bibliometric analysis (Fahimnia et al., 2015; Ertz and Leblanc-Proulx, 2018). Bibliometric analysis involves the quantitative analysis of publications, bibliographic data, and information that provides valuable insights into the trends, patterns, and impact of scientific literature within a particular field of study (Ellegaard and Wallin, 2015). Research methodologies such as scientometrics and bibliometrics have been enormously influential, particularly in fields like nursing, medicine, and science. Comprehensive analysis of a field, incorporating bibliometrics and meta-analysis, is regarded as the most conclusive evidence of a field's existence (Corbet et al., 2019). In the management field, the bibliometric technique is gaining more attention among scholars.

Over the past decade, Workplace Spirituality (WPS) has garnered increasing attention from scholars, practitioners, and organizational leaders, and has been investigated for how it might improve individual and organizational results (Sheep, 2006; Ahmadi et al., 2014; Zhang, 2020). WPS has been a prominent topic in organizational studies, focusing on workers' pursuit of connection, meaning, and purpose in their work lives.

Ashmos and Duchon (2000) pioneered early conceptualizations of WPS by identifying three core dimensions: inner life, meaningful work, and a sense of community. Since then, numerous scholars have highlighted the positive outcomes of spirituality at work, including enhanced job satisfaction (Milliman et al., 2018), organizational commitment (Rego and Pina e Cunha, 2008), and employee engagement (Kinjerski and Skrypnek, 2004).

WPS refers to the integration of personal values, purpose, and inner life with professional roles, and is now widely recognized as a meaningful component of human resource development and organizational culture (Kehoe and Wright, 2013; Long and Mills, 2010).

Traditionally, the benefits of WPS have been emphasized in academic discourse, including increased engagement, organizational commitment, work satisfaction, and employee well-being (Garg, 2017; Sugiono et al., 2021; Petchsawang and Duchon, 2013). WPS has also been associated with promoting organizational justice, trust, workforce agility, and reducing occupational stress and deviant behaviours (Saxena et al., 2020; Soliman et al., 2021). Several studies further point to its role in enhancing performance, retention, and innovation (Milliman et al., 2018; Mhatre and Mehta, 2023). Research has also explored WPS as a buffer against occupational stress, promoting resilience and psychological well-being (Petchsawang and Duchon, 2013; Aftab et al., 2022). WPS fosters ethical behaviour, encourages innovation, and strengthens organizational citizenship behaviour (Mhatre and Mehta, 2023). However, some scholars argue that uncritical adoption of WPS may lead to issues of coercion, inauthenticity, and exclusion (Bell and Taylor, 2003; Lips-Wiersma, 2004), especially when it becomes a managerial tool for productivity rather than personal growth.

Recent studies have begun to integrate WPS with emerging themes like digitalization, showing how virtual environments challenge but also enable spiritual connection (Walter, 2024). With digitalization reshaping the workplace, especially in the post-pandemic era, scholars are beginning to investigate how spiritual needs are expressed, fulfilled, or disrupted in virtual settings (He et al., 2023). For instance, while technology may offer flexibility and autonomy, it may also weaken interpersonal connections and hinder authenticity-core aspects of WPS (Pawar, 2009). Moreover, evolving work models challenge traditional notions of meaning, belonging, and purpose, prompting calls to revisit WPS frameworks within this context.

Scholars have incorporated a range of theoretical views to understand the origin and impact of workplace spirituality (WPS) in organizational contexts, leading to its evolution as an academic construct. These consist of organizational behavior frameworks, motivation theories, and leadership models. Among the most cited are the Spiritual Leadership Theory (SLT) (Fry, 2003) emphasizing how leaders can promote spiritual well-being and corporate performance by fostering vision, hope/faith, and altruistic love.

Similarly, the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) (Deci and Ryan, 1985) has been used in some WPS studies to highlight the importance of autonomy, relatedness, and competence needs. In the context of this bibliometric study, the mention of such theories is not to frame an empirical hypothesis but to map how foundational theories like Spiritual Leadership Theory and Self-Determination Theory have been adopted across the WPS literature. It is easier to discover conceptual anchors, research paradigms, and academic influences that have influenced WPS's intellectual structure when one is aware of the dominant theories in the field. This alignment provides a deeper insight into how workplace spirituality has been theorized over time and sets the stage for exploring thematic patterns and scholarly impact through bibliometric tools.

1. To map the publication trends in the research field of Workplace Spirituality.

2. To identify the most influential authors, journals, articles, institutions, and countries that have contributed to the extant literature.

3. To examine the intellectual and conceptual structure of Workplace Spirituality.

4. To uncover major thematic clusters and research fronts to provide a future research agenda.

The study utilizes a bibliometric methodology for critically analyzing the research papers published in Scopus-indexed journals (Mishra et al., 2018). This technique enables the extraction of new information from literature reviews to enhance the research (Groff et al., 2020). VOSviewer software was deployed to determine the most prolific writers, nations, and institutions, as well as to identify co-citation, co-authorship, and thematic trends in Workplace spirituality (Wani and Ganaie, 2025). VOSviewer is user-friendly software developed to generate and display easily navigable bibliographic maps (Jan and Ludo, 2010). Analyzing publication trends through bibliometric analysis reveals that this tool became widely used in the research field after 2005 (Paul et al., 2021). Bibliometric analysis can be performed on scholarly publication databases such as Web of Science and Scopus. Unlike systematic literature reviews or earlier meta-analyses, bibliometric analysis is more suitable for large databases and offers a broader review scope (Kraus et al., 2022; Feng et al., 2017). Scientific mapping was utilized to map research advancements by assessing the various co-citations-based clusters of cited references and authors to identify the most relevant themes and research gaps (Gaviria-Marin et al., 2019).

A performance study of the review corpus was executed in accordance with the method (Donthu et al., 2021), selecting bibliometric analysis methodologies of co-citation analysis, co-occurrence (or co-word) analysis, and bibliographic coupling. The demarcation of factional knowledge can be effectively achieved by co-citation analysis (Boyack and Klavans, 2010). Bibliographic coupling is useful for explaining the themes within the corpus of knowledge. Moreover, topical trajectories can be revealed using co-occurrence (co-word) analysis (Zupic and Tomaz, 2015). To ascertain a topic's intellectual structure, co-citation analysis is employed (Small, 1973). Two items are said to be substantially co-cited if they have a significant number of identically referenced references (Tishin et al., 2022).

The Scopus database was utilized for this research, as this database provides the most comprehensive coverage of peer-reviewed research (Pattnaik et al., 2020). However, Scopus is a bigger database than Web of Science, and its expanding coverage is helpful for mapping smaller research topics that were not sufficiently covered in the past (Mohapatra et al., 2021). The methodical process that was followed to get a final corpus of 470 articles is shown in Table 1. The keywords “workplace spirituality”, “organizational spirituality”, “spirituality at workplace”, and “spirituality in the workplace” were utilized to incorporate papers from a variety of disciplines represented in the list that were solely published in the English language. Data retrieved or downloaded from Scopus or any other online database is subject to errors due to erroneous bibliographical and bibliometric information arising from the inclusion of the novel publication in later articles (Baker et al., 2021).

Processing raw bibliographic records without prior data cleaning and refinement can lead to inaccurate assessments. Therefore, a thorough and systematic data cleaning process was conducted, involving detailed inspection of references and multiple stages of organization and refinement. In line with the recommendations of Donthu et al. (2021), appropriate steps were taken to retrieve, visualize, and analyze bibliographic and bibliometric data, ensuring the reliability and validity of the results.

Thus, processing such records directly without first doing data cleaning and refining runs the risk of being assessed incorrectly. As such, an introspective cleaning of the data was performed. Therefore, the data was introspectively cleaned, looking at its references and went through a number of steps to clean and organize the data.

Additionally, the natural language processing (NLP) feature built into VOSviewer to clean a large number of phrases that appear in the titles, abstracts, and author-specified keywords to do an accurate topical analysis was used. For instance, plural terms were standardized to their singular forms (e.g. “organizations” to “organization,” “employees” to “employee”). Similarly, variations of related concepts were consolidated (e.g. “organization and organization” merged into “organization”), and abbreviations were expanded to their full forms (e.g. “WPS” to “workplace spirituality”). These preprocessing and cleansing procedures contributed to greater consistency and reliability in theme identification and evaluation.

Data analysis was conducted using the R-Bibliometrix package (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017), a widely recognized tool among bibliometrics and scientometrics researchers across various disciplines (Ganaie and Wani, 2021). The software creates clusters by using data mining techniques to find phrases from paper titles and abstracts. VOSviewer is widely used for network analysis, clustering research themes, and mapping collaborative networksmaps (Jan and Ludo, 2010). The software identifies term affinity based on distance, with smaller distances indicating stronger relationships (Wani and Ganaie, 2025). The clustering process groups similar items, and the size of the dots represents the normalized citation value of each unit of analysis. These visualization techniques effectively highlight research trends and knowledge structures within a field.

Figure 1 illustrates the trend of publications in the area of workplace spirituality within organizations from 2004 to 2024, showing the number of publications each year. The year 2023 stands out as the most prolific year with the highest number of publications, while the earlier years saw significantly lower publication rates. The most prolific years are 2011(24 articles), 2017(40 articles), 2020(41 articles), 2022(45 articles) and 2023(63 articles). This increasing trend continued past 2024, with 9 articles already published by the end of the first month of 2024.

Table 2 portrays the prominent contributing authors, institutions and countries in the area of workplace spirituality. Based upon citations, Dennis Duchon comes out as the most prolific and impactful author with 753 citations, followed by Robert A. Giacalone with 694 citations. Other authors, namely Carole L Jurkiewicz (694 citations), Plowman, D. A (477 citations), and Farahi Karakas (451 citations) have the maximum citations. In terms of publication productivity, Garg Naval has emerged as the most productive author with thirteen publications. Analyzing the most influential institutions upon citations ranked the University of Texas at San Antonio, United States and McGill University, Montreal, as major contributors with 477 and 433 citations, respectively. Among countries, the most influential country is the USA with 5,120 citations by 118 documents, followed by India with 2042 citations from 116 publications.

Table 3 lists the leading journals that publish cutting-edge and well-known research in the area of workplace spirituality. Journal of Business Ethics and Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion are the most pivotal journals, with 2,504 and 1931 citations. The Journal of Business Ethics and Leadership Quarterly demonstrates the highest citation impact, with H-Indices of 229 and 175, respectively. The Journal of Management, Spirituality, and Religion has the highest number of publications (65), reflecting sustained research interest. Several high-ranking Q1 journals, such as the Journal of Business Ethics, International Journal of Hospitality Management, and Leadership Quarterly, emphasize the scholarly significance of the field. The research output has increased notably after 2009, with significant contributions between 2019 and 2024. The ABDC classification indicates a strong presence of A*, A, B, and C-rated journals, with the International Journal of Hospitality Management being an A* journal. These trends underscore the growing academic focus on workplace spirituality and its relevance in management and organizational studies.

Citation count analysis is employed to assess the quality and impact of an article, author, or institution by analyzing the number of times a document has been cited by other scholarly works (Caviggioli and Ughetto, 2019).The top-cited publications on workplace spirituality research are displayed in Table 4. The work by Duchon and Plowman (2005) stands out as the most significant and influential, amassing a total of 477 citations. An exploratory study conducted on six work units within a large hospital system assesses workplace spirituality, marking a key advancement in this area. They discovered in their research how workplace spirituality enhances the work unit performance by nurturing the spirit at work. Karakas (2010) and Krahnke et al. (2003) are the authors with significant contributions towards workplace spirituality with 433 and 355 citations.

By delving deeper into the research conducted by the most-cited authors listed in Table 4, several key themes emerge that are significant to the field of workplace spirituality, including leadership, organizational commitment (Rego and Pina e Cunha, 2008), as well as the intersections of spirituality and religion (Hudson, 2014), and the ethical considerations surrounding workplace spirituality (Sheep, 2006). Additionally, the connections between workplace spirituality, meditation, and work performance are highlighted (Petchsawang and Duchon, 2013).

Table 5 highlights the most influential references in workplace spirituality research, ranked based on local and global citations. Leading the list is the seminal work authored by Duchon and Plowman (2005), “Nurturing the Spirit at Work: Impact on Work Unit Performance,” which has garnered 164 local citations and 477 global citations, reflecting its profound impact on the field. With a remarkable local-to-global citation ratio of 34.38, this study delves into the spiritual dimensions of individuals in the workplace, emphasizing that neglecting spirituality at work may be a critical oversight. Its findings underscore the significance of integrating spiritual well-being into organizational dynamics to enhance performance and engagement. The study titled “Spirituality and performance in organizations: A literature review” Karakas (2010) has the second-highest references with 127 local citations and 433 global citations 29.33 local upon global citations ratio. The study is a review in nature and discovered how workplace spirituality increases organizational effectiveness and employees' performance.

Co-citation analysis unveils the semantic connections among frequently cited references, offering valuable insight into the intellectual foundation of a research domain. As emphasized by Donthu et al. (2021), this analytical approach plays a pivotal role in deciphering the cognitive structures that underpin scholarly discourse, facilitating the emergence of knowledge clusters that shape and advance the field. Figure 2 depicts the co-citation map of references that are cited at least three times by the articles in the review corpus. Duchon, Karakas, and Miliman (Red Nodes), Giaclone and jukerwickz, Fry, Rego Pina (Blue Nodes) and Plowman, Gupta and Petchwang (Green Nodes) have cited the work of a particular area in workplace spirituality.

To uncover the most prominent research trajectories, the authors employed keyword cluster analysis using VOSviewer software. Expanding on the foundational knowledge structures, thematic clusters were further explored through bibliographic coupling, a refined analytical technique advanced by Boyack and Klavans (2010) and recognized as a more robust alternative to traditional co-citation analysis (Donthu et al., 2021). This method reveals more profound intellectual connections by highlighting articles that may not be commonly co-cited but share similar thematic areas, thus providing a broader insight into the developing academic terrain of the field.

Through bibliographic coupling, Table 6 depicts the theme clusters of workplace spirituality with other fields like organizational performance, job satisfaction, work performance, team effectiveness and business ethics, etc. In Table 6, the most significant articles of each cluster are also included.

Cluster 1 consists of 36 articles on workplace spirituality and organizational performance. The three top-cited articles in this cluster are (Duchon and Plowman, 2005; Karakas, 2010; Jurkiewicz and Giacalone, 2015) with 477, 433, and 355 citations, respectively. Duchon and Plowman (2005) have conducted a key study impacting the unit performance, and they have inferred that employees have inner lives that are nourished by meaningful work, which occurs within a community. Karakas (2010) has introduced three different perspectives on how employees get the benefit of spirituality and enhance the organizational performance: 1) Spirituality improves the quality of life and well-being of employees; 2) Spirituality gives workers a sense of community and interconnectedness; 3) Spirituality gives workers a sense of purpose and meaning at work. Jurkiewicz and Giacalone (2015), in their article, have laid the foundation for empirical testing. This article examined and evaluated a compilation of research, leading to the establishment of a value framework for workplace spirituality, which lays the foundation for empirical investigation. Other authors with significant contributions to this cluster include (Rego and Pina e Cunha, 2008; Kolodinsky et al., 2008), who stressed upon the five dimensions of workplace spirituality and how these dimensions have a significant impact on the affective, normative and continuance commitment.

Cluster 2 consists of 30 articles on workplace spirituality and job satisfaction. The most significant study in this cluster on variables having an impact on job satisfaction (Karakas, 2010). This study measures four aspects of workplace spirituality: meaningful work, feeling of community, corporate ideals, and compassion. Saks (2011) has examined the impact of workplace spirituality on employee engagement. The performance of the workers in non-governmental organizations has improved as a result of the practice of workplace spirituality. The study looks into spirituality in order to get a better understanding of workplace spirituality on employee engagement (Houghton et al., 2016). Krishnakumar and Neck (2002) enhanced the framework of “what, why, and how” along with the “spiritual freedom” model established in their research. In more detail, the study examines the growth and development of the literature on workplace spirituality over the previous fifteen years and speculates on the possible contributions of various modern leadership philosophies, such as shared leadership, self-leadership, and authentic leadership, to workplace spirituality.

Cluster 3 is concerned with workplace spirituality, work performance, and team effectiveness includes 11 articles. Petchsawang and Duchon (2013) performed a study on the impact of workplace spirituality practices, like meditation has a greater impact on its workers to express themselves. They discovered that those who meditate regularly score higher on workplace spirituality than those who do not. Again, Petchsawang and Duchon (2013), in their study, present the creation of a workplace spirituality measure and its preliminary analysis. A four-factor model was proposed as a replacement for the original five-factor model based on data analysis. They defined workplace spirituality as a focused inner consciousness that facilitates transcendence, compassion for others, and meaningful work pursuit (Garg, 2017). Using the idea of workplace spirituality, the current research paper addresses conceptual and empirical gaps. They empirically investigate the association between workplace spirituality and work-life balance satisfaction, employee commitment, and job satisfaction. They effectively add to the body of literature by proposing the Karma Capital as an additional aspect of Indian spiritual ideals. This is one of the first studies to examine workplace spirituality using necessary condition analysis (NCA). According to reports, workplace spirituality is a critical factor in determining employee dedication, job satisfaction, and satisfaction with work-life balance.

Cluster 4 consists of 9 articles on workplace spirituality and business ethics. Rego and Pina e Cunha (2008) stressed upon the five dimensions of workplace spirituality and how these dimensions have a significant impact upon the affective, normative and continuance commitment. Importantly, people who have a spiritual experience at work feel more dedicated, more affectively linked, and obligated to their organizations. Pawar (2009) intends to investigate the direct effects on three work attitudes-job satisfaction, job participation, and organizational commitment of three dimensions of workplace spirituality, namely meaning in work, community at work, and positive organizational purpose, as well as individual spirituality. Pawar (2009) discusses the significance of workplace spirituality and highlights its connection to ethics. It proposes that a comprehensive model for facilitating workplace spirituality could be developed by integrating elements from various prior research studies on the subject, potentially offering substantial contributions to the area of workplace spirituality research.

Building on the foundations and topics explored through bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis, co-occurrence analysis was utilized to investigate theme patterns in workplace spirituality, using the keywords proposed by the authors. Figures 3–5 illustrate the evolution of these themes. Research conducted on workplace spirituality from 2000 to 2010 primarily focused on concepts such as spirituality, meaning, and religion (represented by red nodes). Additionally, during this time frame, themes like leadership and workplace spirituality (depicted as green nodes) were also examined. This marks the initial phase of workplace spirituality, which begins with spirituality and religion and evolves into the broader concept of workplace spirituality. The study conducted on the theme of workplace spirituality research between 2011–2020 is concentrated on the themes such as employee engagement, work engagement, job satisfaction and transformational leadership (green nodes). Similarly, employee spirituality, spirituality leadership and ethics (red nodes) and organization satisfaction (blue nodes).

The study conducted from 2021 to 2024 on workplace spirituality is focused on innovative work behavior and employee wellbeing (green nodes) and employee engagement and job performance (blue nodes), spirituality leadership and religion (pink nodes).

The present study offers a comprehensive bibliometric review of workplace spirituality (WPS), highlighting its scholarly trajectory, influential contributors, and emerging themes. “Bibliometric analysis is utilized to track and showcase the evolution of research trends in diverse academic domains” (Donthu et al., 2021). The results highlight the increasing scholarly focus on the topic, especially since 2014, with 2023 marking the most fruitful year thus far. This exponential growth suggests that WPS is transitioning from a niche concept to a mainstream management and organizational behavior theme, driven by the increasing emphasis on employee well-being, ethical leadership, and purpose-driven organizational cultures.

The top ten journals have played a pivotal role in shaping the discourse, with notable contributions from the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion, Leadership Quarterly, and the Journal of Organizational Change Management. Co-authorship is considered a valid indicator of scientific collaboration, both in terms of content and face validity, as it implies that at least two individuals jointly contributed to a single article and likely engaged in similar research efforts. Keyword co-occurrence and bibliometric mapping revealed core thematic areas and emerging research directions (Gorraiz et al., 2016). Influential keywords and co-authorship patterns demonstrate that the USA, India, Canada, and Portugal are the leading contributors, while institutions such as the University of Texas, McGill University, and the University of North Carolina stand out in terms of scholarly output. Highly cited scholars like Dennis Duchon, Giacalone, Jurkiewicz, and Plowman have significantly shaped the field, with foundational works such as Duchon and Plowman (2005) and Karakas (2010) serving as key references.

Researchers have emphasized that citation metrics are indispensable when evaluating the research impact of an individual scholar or institution (Cabezas-Clavijo et al., 2013). Accordingly, the present study identifies and highlights the most influential documents based on their citation impact. Co-citation network analysis highlighted the centrality and influence of core authors (e.g. Duchon, Karakas, Milliman, Giacalone, Jurkiewicz, Fry and Pina), offering a robust intellectual structure for understanding the development of workplace spirituality research. These findings are consistent with the previous studies (Barik and Nayak, 2023).

The intellectual and thematic structure of the field, mapped through co-citation and bibliographic coupling analyses, uncovers five dominant clusters: organizational performance, job satisfaction, business ethics, work performance, and team effectiveness. These clusters suggest that WPS is increasingly viewed through the lens of tangible organizational outcomes, moving beyond abstract theorization. Interestingly, the co-citation network reveals a dense scholarly dialogue centered around spirituality's role in leadership, ethics, and employee commitment. At the same time, bibliographic coupling emphasizes the multidimensional impacts of WPS on both individual and organizational performance. These results are in line with the previous work (Rajni et al., 2022).

During the evaluation process, one of the most prominent challenges identified in integrating spirituality into the workplace is the enduring dichotomy between spirituality and religion. We recommend that future research adopt a more holistic approach that distinctly conceptualizes workplace spirituality as separate from religious frameworks. This distinction will be vital in constructing a universally applicable theory of WPS that transcends cultural and doctrinal boundaries.

Although previous studies have applied a range of theoretical lenses such as identity theory, social exchange theory, transformational leadership, spiritual leadership theory, self-transcendence theory, and the theory of planned behaviour (Mack et al., 2018), there is still considerable opportunity to investigate additional theoretical viewpoints.

By incorporating a wider array of frameworks, scholars can deepen the understanding of WPS and potentially contribute to the emergence of novel, integrative theories in this evolving field.

Furthermore, empirical findings emphasize the need to examine nuanced dimensions of spirituality at work, including altruism, ethical decision-making, and personal moral judgment. Given the inherently subjective and individualized nature of spirituality, achieving conceptual clarity and consensus on its core attributes is essential.

Another notable research gap pertains to the imbalance between the investigation of outcomes versus antecedents of WPS. While many studies focus on the positive impacts of spirituality on organizational outcomes, relatively few explore its antecedents. Future research should consider individual-level factors (e.g. personal values, beliefs, and life experiences) alongside organizational determinants (e.g. leadership styles, organizational culture, and HR practices).

Although mediation analyses have been utilised to some extent, the field remains open to exploring a broader range of mediators, such as trust, psychological safety, and self-efficacy, to better understand the underlying mechanisms of workplace spirituality. Furthermore, there is an absence of studies on moderation. Factors such as workplace environment, acknowledgment of individual differences, leadership styles, and autonomy in the job may play a crucial role in uncovering conditional impacts and contextual subtleties.

Our review also indicates a methodological skew toward quantitative research, particularly studies using structural equation modeling (SEM). However, longitudinal designs remain scarce, limiting insights into the temporal dynamics of spiritual experiences at work. We support the integration of qualitative methods-including case studies, semi-structured interviews, phenomenological techniques, and the content analysis of autobiographies-to understand the individual experiences and the profound meanings related to spirituality (Vedula and Agrawal, 2023). These methods can enrich the literature by offering context-sensitive and narrative-driven insights that are often missed in quantitative frameworks.

The research makes significant contribution to the academic comprehension of workplace spirituality. Initially, it offers an extensive bibliometric analysis of WPS studies over a period of 2 decades (2000–2024), incorporating co-citation, co-occurrence, and bibliographic coupling evaluations. This multifaceted approach allows for a more profound insight into the evolution of intellectual frameworks, thematic groups, and research pathways within WPS over time.

Secondly, the result strengthens the methodological framework for upcoming research by showcasing the efficacy of bibliometric tools (VOSviewer and R-Bibliometrix) in charting and visualizing the intellectual terrain of management and spirituality studies. This creates a replicable template for researchers seeking to carry out extensive literature reviews in other developing fields. Lastly, by pinpointing five thematic clusters-organizational performance, job satisfaction, business ethics, work performance, and team effectiveness research presents a well-structured guide for future inquiries, directing scholars toward gaps and new intersections such as digitalization, remote work, and cross-cultural spirituality.

Practically, the research provides multiple practical suggestions for hospitality managers aiming to lower employee turnover and improve retention by incorporating workplace spirituality. Organizations should intentionally integrate spiritual values like integrity, compassion, and interconnectedness into their cultural and leadership approaches. Managers can enhance employees' sense of meaning at work by acknowledging their contributions, promoting equity, and supporting mindfulness-based practices. The findings also highlight the importance of employee-focused HR strategies that enhance job satisfaction and strengthen emotional engagement. This can be accomplished by offering autonomy, ensuring alignment between individual and organizational values, and establishing recognition programs that celebrate ethical and service-oriented actions. Lastly, hospitality organizations ought to create training and development programs aimed at fostering inner well-being, empathy, and resilience among staff, which will help decrease burnout and turnover. Leadership programs grounded in spirituality can equip supervisors to inspire a sense of purpose and belonging, ultimately boosting both satisfaction and loyalty.

Like any scholarly endeavor, this analytical study is not without its limitations. The scope of the research is confined to bibliographic data retrieved exclusively from the Scopus database through bibliometric analysis. While Scopus offers extensive coverage, relying solely on this database may limit the comprehensiveness of the findings. Future research could benefit from integrating both Scopus and Web of Science databases to ensure a more robust and inclusive dataset, as high-quality articles are often indexed in one but not the other. Additionally, this study focuses only on publications from the year 2000 to early 2024, thereby excluding relevant older literature and works indexed outside Scopus. Another limitation lies in the subjective nature of thematic classification and the interpretation of visual outputs generated by VOSviewer, which may introduce bias or restrict analytical depth. Addressing these limitations in future research can contribute to a more holistic understanding of the workplace spirituality domain.

Additionally, to comprehend the research paradigm from high-quality articles, future studies may employ bibliometric analysis on SCI and SSCI-indexed publications only.