Analysis of Two Decades of Whistleblowing: Bibliometric Analysis of Research History and Future Research Agendas

The importance of ethics and transparency has increased drastically nowadays in organisations; despite all the evolution, whistleblowing remains a major concern in the world. The study undertakes the concept of whistleblowing in the management and social sciences fields in the last 20 years. Since the origin of the term, it has transformed in meaning and context, considering how it has been observed in organisations in both developed and developing nations. The analysis has been done with the help of a bibliometric tool using R to provide various kinds of associations and collaborations between terms, countries, authors, keywords, journals and also co-occurrence using 494 Scopus-indexed articles published between 2004 and 2025. Using techniques such as citation analysis, co-occurrence analysis, thematic mapping, collaboration network analysis and others, the study aims to map the research trends and thematic structure in the whistleblowing literature over the past decades. The analysis has helped in gaining deep insights into the adoption of the concept in management research that would provide for future research agendas. The study comes up with a result which shows that there is a substantial increase in interest in whistleblowing after 2020, with the USA, the UK and Australia as the major contributors. The analysis has also provided detailed academic and managerial implications for better planning and execution of research in this area, which will be helpful for researchers, policymakers and organisations seeking to strengthen ethical governance and reporting mechanisms.