Extended Summary

The aim of this study is to examine the international literature on the concept of career plateau through a bibliometric analysis in order to reveal the scientific development process of the concept, its main research areas, leading authors, and emerging trends for future research. Although studies on career plateau have increased in recent years, bibliometric mappings that comprehensively focus on the overall body of literature remain limited. This study was conducted to address this gap.
The literature indicates that the concept of career plateau has received relatively limited attention at either quantitative or qualitative levels, particularly in developing countries. Moreover, the majority of existing studies have focused on the private sector, while only a limited number of studies have addressed career plateaus in the public sector.
The concept of career plateau emerged in the study of Ference et al. (1977: 602). Accordingly, a plateau is defined as the point in a career where the likelihood of further hierarchical promotion is very low. Career plateau is a multidimensional phenomenon that arises from the interaction of individual characteristics, organizational structures, and environmental conditions. Recent comprehensive reviews have demonstrated that career plateau has consequences at both the individual and organizational levels.
In bibliometric approaches, the ultimate aim is to obtain quantitative data and numerical indicators regarding research performance. Through bibliometrics, quantitative findings can be generated on the productivity of countries, authors, organizations, and journals, as well as on research gaps, scientific collaborations, and the impact of outputs produced within a field.
Data collection was carried out in 2026, and the scope of the study was limited to publications released up to the end of 2025. The screening process was conducted in the Web of Science Core Collection database using the Advanced Search interface with the Topic (TS) field.
The query TS=(“career plateau” OR “career plateauing”) was executed.
Within the data selection process, publications from 2026 were excluded, and only the document types Article and Review Article were retained. Consequently, the analyses were performed on a total of 122 publications.
The literature mapping provides researchers with a a comprehensive overview of career plateau research. To reveal the structure of the career plateau literature from different perspectives, various bibliometric analysis techniques available in the VOSviewer software were employed. In this context, co-authorship, citation (author, country, organization, and source), keyword co-occurrence, bibliographic coupling (document and author), and co-citation analyses were conducted.
According to the Web of Science categories, research on career plateau is predominantly concentrated in the fields of Management, Applied Psychology, and Business. According to the Web of Science database, publications on career plateau date back to 1980, with a noticeable increase observed from 2020 onward. While earlier studies primarily focused on the theoretical foundations of the concept, recent years have witnessed thematic and methodological shifts in career plateau research.
The findings indicate that the career plateau literature, which initially focused primarily on career stagnation and the lack of hierarchical advancement, has gradually evolved into a broader field encompassing organizational behavior topics such as employee attitudes, employee well-being, work engagement, burnout, and turnover intention. In addition, the co-authorship analysis revealed that international research collaborations remain relatively limited, whereas the citation, bibliographic coupling, and co-citation analyses demonstrated that career plateau research has been built upon a strong theoretical foundation.
The study also demonstrates that the career plateau literature is concentrated around certain researchers, countries, organizations, and academic journals. In particular, the United States maintains its leading position in terms of scientific output and citation impact, while journals in the fields of career management and organizational behavior—most notably the Journal of Vocational Behavior—play a central role in knowledge production. Keyword analysis further reveals that research trends have diversified around the axes of subjective career plateau, employee behaviors, and employee well-being.
This study contributes to the literature not only by examining the relationships among specific variables but also by providing a holistic evaluation of authors, countries, organizations, academic journals, conceptual structures, and intellectual networks. The findings are expected to systematically present the existing body of knowledge for researchers working on career plateau, guide the planning of future studies, and inform decision-making processes in career management practices.
Beyond its contribution to the literature, this study offers practical insights for practitioners in areas such as human resource policies, career management programs, and organizational training. As a limitation, the data source was restricted to the Web of Science database. Future studies may present a more comprehensive bibliometric map of the field by incorporating other databases. In addition, only VOSviewer was employed as a bibliometric mapping tool in this study. Future research may benefit from using different bibliometric analysis software to further enrich the literature.
In conclusion, this comprehensive bibliometric overview of the career plateau literature provides an important reference for future theoretical and applied research.