Trends and insights in emotional intelligence research in business: A Bibliometrix Analysis from 2020 to 2024

Abstract

Emotional intelligence in business continues to change with the dynamism of emerging global challenges and innovations. Awareness of these current trends is very important for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in the field. This article presents a complete bibliometric analysis of emotional intelligence (EI) in the business field from 2020 to 2024. The publication trend, collaboration network, pattern of citations, diversity of content, different types of documents, and core sources were analyzed using the Bibliometrix tool. The outcome of this analysis may prove very valuable on productivity trends, changes in citation impact, and changes in thematic foci. Results reflect increasing interest in EI from 2020 to 2022 and decreasing research output after this year, which can be explained by changes in the research funding landscape and current international events, such as the COVID-19 outbreak. This indicates the importance of international collaborations because the average coauthorship for each paper is high, and a significant part of the coauthorships are international. Published articles in 2021 reflect the publication relevance of EI during this period. The prominent themes are the application of EI to integrate recent technological advances, such as artificial intelligence, and its corollary of application in crisis management.