Mapping the landscape of talent management research in higher education: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Research on talent management (TM) in higher education has witnessed a positive development in recent years, following the rising recognition of TM as a key strategy for higher learning institutions to achieve competitive advantage and sustainable performance. However, a comprehensive review of TM using bibliometric analysis that focused on TM research in higher education has not been published. Following this gap, the present study used quantitative bibliometric approaches to statistically and objectively explore research publication patterns of TM in higher education. VoSviewer and Bibliometrix R-package were used to analyse data retrieved from the Scopus database. This analysis involved seven indicators such as highly cited papers, prominent authors, co-authorship patterns among countries, influential journals and countries, thematic mapping, emerging trends, and bibliographic coupling. Results showed that TM in higher education is an evolving topic, with contributions from scholars since 2006. It emerged from this study that topics such as leadership, recruitment, talent attraction, talent development, talent retention, and employee engagement are inherent to TM in higher education. It is important to study the development of TM research in higher education and its characteristics as this type of analysis is still scarce in the literature. The present study contributes to the literature by providing the evolution of this research field as well as helping scholars shape future work in this field.