Since When Does Remote Work Started? A Bibliometric Analysis on Work Arrangement in the Last Decade

Abstract

The technological advent has turned many unimaginable arrangements in the past to almost every single arrangement possible currently. Technologies advancement has transformed and eased our lives in many aspects. Apart from its' significant contributions to the economy sector, technologies have also transmuted our work lives. Technologies improvement has enabled the possibility for work from home (WFH) at present which made even more relevant during the current fight of the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. The phenomenon of WFH adoption has motivated current study to examine the work arrangement trends at workplace in the last decade from 2010 to 2020. This paper aims to study the work arrangement research publications in SCOPUS database. We endeavor to produce a descriptive finding of the work arrangement research publication for further investigation of the various influence of work arrangement in the field of organizational behavior. We employ a 4-phases research design method, i.e., design review, data search, data analysis and interpretation of results to address the research objective. Specifically, a bibliometric analysis approach was utilized to examine the work arrangement research trends, the growth of publication, author's contribution by institutes and countries, as well as keyword analysis. Biblioshiny and VOSviewer are the two types of software used to illustrate the data in the visualization format. Meanwhile, the descriptive analysis was performed using Microsoft Excel. The initial data search retrieved 368 publications. After the filtering process, 260 publications were used to proceed with the analysis. The results reveal that the common keywords used in this context are flexible work arrangements, gender, and work-life balance. This study presents a statistical result of the evolution of scientific literature in Work Arrangement along with the current research interest and the potential direction of future research. A rising trend was observed in the work arrangement publications from 6.54% in 2010 to 16.15% in 2020. Allen t.d., Pitt-Catsouphes, and OllierMalaterre are the top three authors in this area while Macquarie University and the University of South Florida, where both of the institutes published 3 articles (0.57%) within the time period 2010 to 2020. In term of countries, United States is leading with 94 published articles (27.73%) followed by Australia with 41 published articles (12.09%). Overall, the findings of this study provide organizational behavior scholars a preliminary head ups of the work arrangement research and its' rising trends spurs the research interest of scholars to further investigate the consequences of work arrangements in other employee's aspects such as productivity and performance.