ScScopus is among the largest curated abstracts and citation databases, with extensive global and regional coverage of scientific journals, conference proceedings, and books, ensuring that only the highest quality data is indexed through rigorous content selection and reassessment by an independent content selection and Advisory Board. In addition, extensive quality assurance processes continuously monitor and improve all data elements in Scopus ( BAAS et al., 2020). As a result, the content constantly expands and enriches, whose titles, even if already indexed, are reevaluated to exclude journals of low quality or those that must comply with good practices and the integrity of science.

More than 3500 academic and government organizations and hundreds of funding and evaluation bodies use Scopus. Its data refer to 105 countries, 40 languages, and large renowned publishers such as Elsevier, Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Sage Publications. As research becomes increasingly global, interdisciplinary, and collaborative, using Scopus allows for covering essential publications from around the world in bibliometric surveys.

Data were collected from the Scopus database on February 11, 2023, concerning the following topics: title, abstract, and keywords. In order to achieve the objectives of the article, we selected two datasets according to the protocols below.

• Overview and evolution of the concept (sample 1): since it is a construct, the term “Political Skill” must be entered together because this is how the organizational literature uses them; it also avoids a large number of situations in which the context and area of study do not present a link between the descriptors, since “political” often refers to public or party politics, and “skill” is a term that recurs to a myriad of areas diverse from the scope proposed in this study. To exemplify, a search with the English terms “Political” and “Skill” separately results in 11.257 works dating from the year 1945 and covering areas such as chemistry, medicine, education, and political science in publications ranging from astronomy to engineering and immunology. The selection of the portfolio of sample 1 used searches with the descriptor “Political Skill” in the singular and plural in English, Portuguese, and Spanish. The dataset was systematically revised to remove documents in which the term “political” referred to public policy. The final result is a set of 797 publications.

• Overview of PSI studies (sample 2): for this portfolio, we first looked for the article that introduces the PSI measurement instrument, “Development and validation of the political skill inventory” ( FERRIS et al., 2005). From this result, all 807 citations to this study were selected and exported for analysis.

The data with the parameters previously outlined for the study portfolio were collected from the Scopus database and processed in Vosviewer version 1.6.19 ( VAN ECK; WALTMAN, 2010) and RStudio’s Bibliometrix package version 4.1 ( ARIA; CUCCURULLO, 2017). In the analyses, we treated the following information: annual growth of publications on the subject; main sources; thematic map; main keywords related to the topic (co-occurrence); principal authors; coauthorship network, prominent publications of the most fruitful author; major recent publications.

The first sample of the research comprises 797 publications, most concentrated in 637 articles (80%), and the others distributed in 66 books chapter (8%), 43 reviews (5%), 32 conference papers (4%), and 19 books (2%). The results come from 139 different sources, covering the main areas classified in Scopus as Business, Management and Accounting, Social Sciences, and Psychology. We decided to exclude retractions of articles, errata, and notes for not presenting complete content. Table 1 shows the five sources with the most publications on the subject. They have a high impact factor, considering the CiteScore and JCR metrics – both of great relevance and use.

Table 1 -
Main sources

As for the annual growth of publications on the subject, the results range from seminal studies to the current production and cover a period from 1958 to 2022, as shown in Figure 1, in which we also pointed out some of the references discussed in this article.

Figure 1 -
Annual evolution of the number of publications
Source: Elaborated by the authors with data from Scopus

In the initial years, the role of political skill is approached mainly under the prism of the ability to articulate in the pursuit of objectives, as, for example, in the construction of an electric power distribution system ( MCDONALD, 1958) or the participation of students in the public governance of educational institutions ( CHESLER, 1973). However, in this period, the concept still did not have a typical organizational characterization, which was gradually built in the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., Pfeffer, 1981; MINTZBERG 1983; YOUNG 1989; BERGER 1991; RUSSELL; EBY 1993), evolving to more robust definitions with more empirical approaches such as that of FERRIS et al. ( 1999).

Until 2001, the annual average of publications was three articles per year. However, the theme showed significant growth in the following years, especially between 2004 and 2005, when the first instruments to measure PSO appeared ( AHEARN et al., 2004; FERRIS et al., 2005). Since then, research permeated typical organizational issues, meta-analyses, and psychometric validations and evolved into new themes such as narcissism, silencing, and mentoring ( GONZÁLEZ et al., 2020; HAMSTRA et al., 2021; LIU et al., 2022; MUNYON et al., 2015; TREADWAY et al., 2007). In the last five years, there has been a constant increase in the number of works linked to Political Skills, reaching an annual average of 56 publications per year. Table 2 groups the result of the initial years and production groupings every five years.

Table 2 -
Average number of publications per period

To provide an overview of the leading research interests involving PSO, we searched among the 1502 keywords in the database for the 250 most used with at least 15 occurrences to build a thematic map ( Figure 2). Two dimensions delimit the structure and classification of research topic groupings: centrality and density. The first defines the importance of a theme in developing the theoretical field, and the second refers to the internal cohesion of the words composing a theme ( COBO et al., 2011).

Figure 2 -
Thematic Map of PSO field
Source: Prepared by the authors with the Bibliometrix package

The upper left quadrant encompasses very specialized and peripheral subjects to the theme. Thus, issues related to “gender”, “narcissism”, and “trust” are investigated in isolation in this scientific field. Finally, the lower left quadrant presents declining or emerging themes ( COBO et al., 2011). The low centrality and density of “reputation”, and “psychopathy” indicates that fewer researchers address these issues. On the other hand, “stress”, “leader political skill” and “impression management” are objects of emerging studies in the area. Table 3 brings the scope of subjects in this last cluster.

Table 3 -
Emerging themes in the PSO field

The themes in the upper right quadrant are well-developed and essential for structuring a field of research. They are known as the motor themes of the specialty, as they have strong centrality and high density. In addition, the presence of themes in this quadrant implies that they are externally related to concepts applicable to other closely related themes. Table 4 brings the scope of these themes and authors with relevant contributions to such knowledge.

Table 4 -
Motor Themes in the PSO field

Finally, in the Basic Themes cluster, located in the lower right quadrant of Figure 2, there are the basic and transversal themes for that field ( COBO et al., 2011), detailed in Table 5 : career success, job satisfaction, and social networks.

Table 5 -
Basic themes in PSO field

Source: Elaborated by the authors

The filter shows publications distributed in 53 countries. The United States, China, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Australia have the most collaborations. Figure 3 illustrates the world panorama: red lines indicate the production of articles in international partnerships, and the thickness represents the intensity of publications in partnership. In the database used, no collaborations in South America were identified, except Brazil, in which bibliometrix reports three partnerships ( MAHER et al., 2018; PERREWÉ et al., 2004, 2005), all with the United States, which highlights a significant gap regarding internationalization via cross-cultural approaches.

Figure 3 -
Map of researcher/country collaboration
Source: Prepared by the author with the Bibliometrix package

About the most fruitful authors, the sample includes the work of 165 researchers, highlighting Gerald R. Ferris, with 10% of the publications indicated in the search, affiliated with the Florida State University and author of the main measure of political skill to date, the PSI ( FERRIS et al., 2005). Table 6 presents the ten most prolific authors considering the number of publications within the search criteria and the h-index of each researcher. As for affiliations, there is a predominance of the USA and German institutions.

A well-articulated coauthorship network among the researchers in the sample indicates the importance of networking for the evolution of studies on the concept. Ferris, Blickle, Treadway, Perrewé, and Hochwarter stand out regarding productivity in the subject and terms of networking. Figure 4 brings the links between the main authors. Larger circles and names, as well as more prominent colors, indicate stronger and recurring connections.

Table 6 -
Number of publications by author (top 10)

Figure 4 -
Visualization of the coauthorship network (sample 1)
Source: Scopus database. Prepared by the author with Vosviewer software

I The h-index is a proposal to quantify the productivity and impact of scientists based on their most cited articles. In short, the h-index represents the number of articles with citations greater than or equal to this number.

Paying attention to the publications in which the most prolific author, Gerald

R. Ferris, we can highlight that the study that presents the development of PSI is the most cited. The other contributions bring evidence of the importance of the construct PSO as an intrinsic factor to the organizational reality, with relationships and predictive effects in several other behaviors related to the work environment. Table 7 presents the ten most cited works among the 78 mentioned in this author’s consultation and summarizes the findings within the theme of this bibliometry.

Table 7 -
Gerald R. Ferris’s most cited publications (authorship and co-authorship)

Table 7 -
Gerald R. Ferris’s most cited publications (authorship and co-authorship)

Source: Scopus database

Table 7 and Figure 4 allow us to position Gerald R. Ferris as one of the main references on the subject because he has: seminal conceptualization studies, a vast coauthorship network, and constant productivity in different contexts

Organizational studies recurrently use quantitative strategies to investigate the relationships between concepts and problems typical of this area of knowledge. The emergence of the PSI has enormously contributed to the increase in research on the role of political skills in the work environment. The publication “Development and validation of the political skill inventory” ( FERRIS et al., 2005) with the development of a tool to measure PSO has been referenced 807 times since 2005 ( Figure 5), with an average of 45 citations per year, and is currently the most widely used political skill measurement instrument in the world. This second sample comprises 704 articles (87%), 69 books chapter (9%), 19 conference papers (2%), and 15 books (2%).

Figure 5 -
Evolution of citations to the Political Skill Inventory
Source: Elaborated by the authors

Subsequent empirical studies have supported the construct validity and criterion- related validity of the PSI ( FERRIS et al., 2008) as well as its cross-cultural generalizability involving Germany, Russia, Turkey, China, the United States, and Spain ( BLICKLE et al., 2011; GONZÁLEZ et al., 2020; LVINA et al., 2012; SHI; CHEN, 2012). A reduced version of the PSI with eight items was created by VIGODA-GADOT; MEISLER ( 2010) and used in studies with civil servants in Israel and designers in China ( WANG; LIU, 2021). We also identified a 12-items adapted version by BOLANDER et al. ( 2015a), later applied in a more significant number of contexts. Unfortunately, in those versions, the occurrence of psychometric validation of the instrument was not evident.

We investigated a specific clipping of the empirical production with the PSI in Latin America from a systematic search to identify the place of collection of samples in the documents of the dataset. In Portuguese, we identified three studies with the classic PSO approach. The first two investigated the concept in the context of a stress-related program in three large oil companies ( PERREWÉ et al., 2004, 2005) but still

using the initial scale of FERRIS et al. ( 1999). The most recent one addresses the PSO’s predictive role in impression management and uses a sample of human resources professionals ( MAHER et al., 2018). In the latter case, the measurement instrument was the PSI ( FERRIS et al., 2005). In the three articles, the questionnaires underwent translation/back-translation processes, but there is no indication of psychometric validation. Finally, in Spanish, it was possible to identify only one investigation among young entrepreneurs in Mexico ( LÓPEZ-LEMUS, 2019). In this case, we found a scale validated with Confirmatory Factor Analysis.

In order to verify the current state of academic productions related to the development of the PSI, we analyzed the keywords of publications that cite the instrument in 2021 and 2022. As a result, it is possible to identify new co-occurrences, such as mindfulness ( DIETL; REB, 2021) and adaptive performance ( KRANEFELD; BLICKLE, 2022), signaling the investigation of new concepts regarding PSO. The graphical analysis of the co-occurrences ( Figure 6) had keywords with at least two occurrences as selection criteria.

Figure 6 -
Graphical analysis of the co-occurrence of the keywords in the 2021-2022 publications
Source: Prepared by the author with Vosviewer software

The co-occurrences present clusters centered on classic issues from organizational literature, such as job performance, proactivity ( TWEMLOW; TIMS; KHAPOVA, 2022), and leadership ( ROSE et al., 2022). In addition, the use of PSI also appears in new approaches to social capital ( ZHAO et al., 2022), self-efficacy ( JAWAHAR; MOHAMMED, 2022), and Machiavellianism ( GENAU et al., 2022). Finally, terms linked to the core of the Political Skill concept, such as networking and interpersonal influence, remain among the most identified keywords ( QAMAR; SALEEM; MAHER, 2022; WANG; LIU; FENG, 2022).

The most recent uses of PSI appear in journals with good metrics linked to Organizational Psychology or Human Resource Development. The contexts studied span Europe, the United States, and Asia. The research subjects are from different areas, such as nurses, employees of technical areas, and public service, but there is a relative predominance in studies with leaders. Table 8 brings recent publications with PSI applications in 2021 and 2022 in high-impact journals with at least two citations.

Table 8 -
Recent publications with PSI application

Table 8 -
Recent publications with PSI application

Scopus database

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