Evolutionary Pathways of Personality Research in Business

Although the role of personality in business has been characterised in numerous studies, a significant gap remains in the literature concerning the conceptual development, thematic evolution, and interdisciplinary linkages of personality research within the business context. A multifaceted bibliometric approach was employed to map the key developments of personality research in business from 1946 to 2025. A total of 4,048 articles from the Scopus database were analysed to examine publication trends, influential contributors, and collaboration patterns. Latent Dirichlet Allocation, co-occurrence mapping, and association rule mining were employed to identify three key thematic periods: (1) personality as a foundational business construct (1946-2012), (2) the integration of personality in leadership, branding, and entrepreneurship (2013-2020), and (3) the expansion into workplace behaviour, ethics, and digital assessment (2021-2025). The findings showed modest growth in scholarly output, a sustained reliance on structured models such as the Big Five, and an increasing focus on applied areas such as emotional intelligence, narcissism, brand loyalty, and AI-driven personnel assessment. This study contributes an integrated understanding of the field’s intellectual development and offers directions for future research in organisational psychology, management, and marketing.