Leadership styles and job satisfaction: Bibliometric and scientometric analysis

The study examines leadership styles and job satisfaction research by retrieving and analyzing the publications within management field. The study reviews the last 53 years of leadership styles and job satisfaction research in the field of management from 1970 to 2023. Leadership styles and job satisfaction studies is voluminous but fragmented across sectors and regions, with inconsistent theoretical grounding and unclear structural linkages among outlets, authors, and themes. This study contributes to bridge this gap by conducting a scientometric and a content analysis of leadership styles and job satisfaction studies. A total of 509 articles from the Scopus database were used in this study. The review uncovered most prolific journals, authorships, article citations, countries, institutions and co-occurrence network of keywords. Further, qualitative analysis revealed six leadership styles and job satisfaction themes: leadership styles and employee performance, job satisfaction and employee performance, concepts, methodologies, theories and models, and areas of study. This study serves as a reference for both scholars and practitioners in leadership styles and job satisfaction studies. It also provides pointers for future research on leadership styles and job satisfaction. • Bibliometric and Scientometric Analysis. • 509 documents from reputable databases. • Etymology and evolution of leadership styles and job satisfaction research. • Current trends in leadership styles and job satisfaction research. • Future directions in leadership styles and job satisfaction research.