Mapping inspiration in human resources:  A systematic review of themes and approaches

Background: This study was motivated by the need to invigorate research on inspiration, especially within the domain of management. The authors’ objective was to devise a unifying structure for theory building and provide an overview of emergent constructs on inspiration research. Thus, the incremental contribution of the study is that the authors reviewed extant relevant literature and enhanced the focus on research on inspiration in management. Methods: We performed a literature search on empirical studies on inspiration from 15 June to 31 August 2022. We retrieved English articles published between 2003 and 2022. The information sources were Ebscohost, ProQuest, Science Direct, and Scopus. Risk of bias was assessed regarding review methods and the relevance of review to the research questions. We developed a data extraction sheet for the data collection process, considering the systematic review goals to ensure that all the pertinent data was retrieved. Results: Six out of 224 articles were identified for the final review. The excluded articles did not meet the either one or all of the inclusion criteria. The results revealed that there is a vast knowledge gap awaiting empirical research which can have a far-reaching impact on society and management; for instance, the impact of inspiration on performance and the role of moderators such as spirituality, visioning capability, gender variation, and linguistic proficiency. Conclusion: This study recommends that research on inspiration focuses to crystallize inspiration as a construct, identify various dimensions of inspiration, and then firm up a general theory of inspiration with robust empirical evidence. There is a need to expand the scope of the IS by developing and trying out newer competing scales.