The Maturation of Management, Spirituality and Religion as a Research Discipline
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This bibliometric analysis examines the ontological and epistemological evolution of the management, spirituality and religion (MSR) field, tracing nascent origins to the contemporary domain of scholarly inquiry. We analyse a corpus of 5,566 publications indexed on the Web of Science using a number of bibliometric indicators including: thematic keywords, geographical distribution, institutional affiliations, publication outlets, seminal contributions and influential scholars within the MSR domain. The analysis illuminates the field’s intellectual foundations by identifying the most impactful contributions and seminal theoretical frameworks. Furthermore, we report the thematic evolution of the field across four decades and establish a conceptual cartography of MSR-related domains. The findings demonstrate a distinct developmental trajectory of the MSR field since 1956, characterized by increasing methodological sophistication, theoretical consolidation and expanding interdisciplinary connections. This study provides insight into theoretical gaps, promising avenues for future inquiry, and insights to inform curriculum development and enhance pedagogical approaches in management education. Consequently, we advance empirically substantiated insights into the field’s maturation from a peripheral specialization into a globally recognized academic discipline with distinctive theoretical contributions. Our study also addresses extant critiques of MSR research and establishes a robust epistemological foundation for advancing future scholarly endeavors in this domain.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.013 | 0.069 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.045 | 0.075 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".