Psychological Capital Research in Social Sciences: A Bibliometric Analysis

This study aims to identify the publications on psychological capital in social sciences and to identify the features of these publications. Firstly, the Social Sciences Citation Index database was searched for all the publications on “psychological capital” in social sciences. Web of Science categories were selected for social sciences related disciplines to retrieve the most related papers. The retrieved publications were examined in relation to their citations, citation links, co-occurrences of author keywords, bibliographic coupling of the journals, bibliographic coupling of the countries, bibliographic coupling of the authors, bibliographic coupling of the publications, and bibliographic coupling of the institutions. CitNet Explorer and VOS Viewer software were used to visualize and further analyze the characteristics of those publications. A total of 288 publications were retrieved and examined in “psychological capital" literature between 2003 and 2018. Each year has a different number of publications, but the number of research on this concept increased after 2013. “Positive organizational behavior”, “well-being”, “work engagement”, “job satisfaction”, “authentic leadership”, “job performance”, “hope”, “stress”, “optimism”, “resilience”, “leadership”, “performance”, “burnout”, “efficacy”, “subjective well-being”, “leader-member exchange”, and “psychological well-being” were the most studied concepts in the aspect of their relationships with PsyCap. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies has been the top journal, University of Nebraska has been the top institution, and Luthans, F. has been the strongest author in this field. The USA has been the most important country in this field. The research trend and the progress of the concept of psychological capital have been discussed in the paper