Zaitouni Michel, Hewapathirana Gertrude, Mostafa Mohamed, Al Hajj Raghid, ElMelegy Ahmed R
Business Administration Department, Gulf University for Science and Technology, Kuwait.
Business Administration Department, and Academic Hub for Entrepreneurial Advancements and Development (AHEAD), Gulf University for Science and Technology, Kuwait.
Heliyon. 2024 Jul 4;10(14):e34084. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e34084. eCollection 2024 Jul 30.
Work-life balance has gained increasing popularity among scholars and practitioners since the beginning of the century. Despite significant attempts to consolidate this burgeoning field, the scholarly knowledge on work-life balance research remains fragmented and detached due to extant number of publications in the area and the mostly subjective approaches used to encapsulate the literature. As such, the current study presents an objective overview of work-life balance research between 2000 and 2020. Using bibliometric techniques, the authors examined 1190 articles indexed in Scopus database to identify the conceptual structure and current dynamics in the field. During the critical period between the reconceptualization of word-life balance and the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic, the findings reveal that the field was growing exponentially as a multidisciplinary research area. Most of the scholarly work originated in the US, UK, and Australia with a "locally-centralized-globally-discrete" collaboration pattern among scholars. The most relevant and developed research themes included, in addition to work-life balance, topics related to gender and family life. Furthermore, new emerging research directions had evolved beyond the traditional constructs including job security, flexible working hours, individual productivity, and work-life conflicts. The study contributes to the current knowledge on work-life balance by providing critical insights into the evolution of the field and offers potential avenues for scholars who are interested in this critical research domain and the changes it has experienced post pandemic.
自本世纪初以来，工作与生活的平衡在学者和从业者中越来越受欢迎。尽管人们做出了重大努力来巩固这一新兴领域，但由于该领域现有出版物数量众多，且用于概括文献的方法大多主观，关于工作与生活平衡研究的学术知识仍然零散且缺乏系统性。因此，本研究对2000年至2020年间的工作与生活平衡研究进行了客观概述。作者运用文献计量技术，对Scopus数据库中索引的1190篇文章进行了分析，以确定该领域的概念结构和当前动态。在工作与生活平衡概念重新界定到新冠疫情出现的关键时期，研究结果表明，作为一个多学科研究领域，该领域正呈指数级增长。大多数学术研究起源于美国、英国和澳大利亚，学者之间呈现出“局部集中、全球离散”的合作模式。除了工作与生活平衡之外，最相关且发展成熟的研究主题还包括与性别和家庭生活相关的话题。此外，新出现的研究方向已经超越了传统概念，包括工作保障、灵活工作时间、个人生产力和工作与生活冲突等。本研究通过对该领域的发展演变提供关键见解，为当前关于工作与生活平衡的知识做出了贡献，并为对这一关键研究领域及其疫情后所经历变化感兴趣的学者提供了潜在途径。
