Sustainability and role conflict: A bibliometric analysis of research themes, trends, and future research directions: 2013-2022

. Information Technology (IT) Sector is known for its fast paced and dynamic work environment, which often leads to role conflict among IT professionals. This paper presents a bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review of the phenomenon of role conflict in the IT sector. The study analyses a total 77 academic papers published till 2022, indexed in Scopus and Web of Science database. The bibliometric analysis identifies the most influential authors, journals and keywords related to the topic of role conflict in the IT sector. The systematic literature review identifies and synthesizes the major themes, theoretical perspectives and research method used in the literature on role conflict in the IT sector. The findings suggests that role conflict in the IT sector is a complex phenomenon that can result from a variety of factors including conflicting expectations, unclear job responsibilities, and organisational, and environmental factors that contribute to role conflict, as well as the strategies that can be used to manage and reduce it. The study concludes with recommendations for future research and practical implications for organisations seeking to mitigate the negative effects of role conflict on their employees and performance.


Introduction
Role conflict is a common phenomenon in organizations that occurs when employees experience competing demands or expectations from different sources in their work roles.Negative effects including stress at work, a decline in job satisfaction, poor performance, and even attrition.Role conflict has been extensively studied throughout the years in the areas of organisational behaviour and human resource management.In recent years, bibliometric analysis has emerged as a valuable tool for systematically mapping and analysing research in various fields.Bibliometric analysis provides a quantitative approach to identifying the most productive authors, institutions, and countries in a given field, as well as the most cited papers and journals, and the main research topics and trends.While previous review studies have been conducted on Role conflict, they have been narrowly focused on specific occupations, journals, online databases and time periods and there is a need for a more comprehensive and systematic review of literature covering recent time periods on research on role conflict in the IT sector.Some examples of systematic literature reviews on role conflict are as follows: "The Relationship Between Role Conflict and Job Satisfaction: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis" by [1].Role conflict had a negative impact on job satisfaction, according to a metaanalysis by [1], and experienced nurses were more susceptible to role conflict and ambiguity, both of which had a negative effect on job satisfaction.Some bibliometric review examples related to role conflict in literature: Bibliometric analysis of international research from 2000 to 2015 on "Role Conflict and Ambiguity" by [2].It offers a bibliometric study of work done between 2000 and 2015 on role conflict and ambiguity, concentrating on the most successful researchers, organisations, and nations, as well as the most widely read papers and journals.
The article "Bibliometric analysis of role conflict and ambiguity research: A comparative study of four major journals" by [8].It offers a bibliometric analysis of role conflict and ambiguity research published in four major journals (Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Academy of Management Journal, and Organisational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes) between 1979 and 2017, highlighting patterns and trends in this field of study.
According to the results of these bibliometric evaluations, there has been an increase in recent years in the amount of study on role conflict and ambiguity, with an emphasis on the causes, effects, and moderators of these phenomena.The emphasis is increasingly being placed on organisational behaviour and psychology, as well as the healthcare and service sectors.The findings also emphasise the value of multidisciplinary research in this field and the demand for more cross-cultural and longitudinal studies.These studies did not provide a thorough knowledge of the content and themes of the study on role conflict in the IT sector.The purpose of this paper is to map the present state of research on role conflict in the IT industry using bibliometric analysis of publications from the online Scopus database.

Role Conflict
When someone must simultaneously fulfil two or more roles that are incompatible, stress or tension results.It is a typical experience in organisations and has been extensively researched in the literature on organisational behaviour and psychology.Job ambiguity, job overload, and personality factors were some of the antecedents of role conflict that [2] discovered.Other antecedents were organisational structure and design.Role conflict has been demonstrated to have a number of detrimental effects, including lower performance, emotional weariness, and work discontent.
Role conflict and job stress were both linked to higher levels of stress, according to a study by [2], and the link between the two was stronger for people who were more involved in their jobs.Additionally, they discovered that role ambiguity and role overload served as mediators between the impacts of role conflict and job stress.
Role conflict was found to negatively affect job satisfaction and that this link was mediated by locus of control in a study on the effect of role conflict on job satisfaction [3].Particularly, people who had an internal locus of control were less likely to experience role conflict-related job dissatisfaction.
Other research have concentrated on the moderating impacts of elements like social support, coping mechanisms, and occupational autonomy in addition to these antecedents and outcomes.For instance, a study by [4] discovered that those with higher levels of social support were less likely to experience the detrimental impacts of role conflict on their job satisfaction.The literature on role conflict emphasises the significance of creating organisational structures and roles that reduce the likelihood of conflict.
The significance of distinguishing between task ambiguity and role conflict was emphasised in another review by [6].Task ambiguity denotes unclear job requirements, whereas role conflict results from conflicting expectations placed on a worker by several sources.The authors made the case that role ambiguity, particularly role conflict, can negatively affect physical, mental, and behavioural health as well as job happiness.

Causes and Consequences of Role Conflict
This theme focuses on identifying the factors that contribute to role conflict in different contexts, such as organizational, family, and social contexts.The research in this area also examines the effect of role conflict on organizational and individual consequences, such as job satisfaction, stress, burnout, turnover, and performance.

Cross-cultural and gender Differences
This theme examines how role conflict is experienced and managed by individuals from different cultural and gender backgrounds.The research in this area explores the cultural and gender-specific factors that contribute to role conflict and the coping strategies and interventions that are effective for different groups.

Role Conflict and Technology
This theme focuses on the role of technology in creating or reducing role conflict.The research in this area examines how technology, such as telecommuting, virtual teams, and mobile devices, affects the boundary between work and personal life and how it impacts role conflict.

Research Methodology
The following steps were followed:

Keyword Search
The online database Scopus is a comprehensive online database that indexes peer-reviewed literature from across many fields of research, including psychology and management, which are relevant to the study of role conflict.It provides a vast amount of data and features for bibliometric analysis, such as citation counts, author affiliations, journal metrics, and cocitation analysis.Using Scopus for bibliometric analysis of role conflict research allows for a systematic and comprehensive approach to identifying key publications, authors, and institutions in the field, as well as the relationships between them.

Article Selection
Based on the keyword search, researchers select relevant articles based on inclusion criteria such as publication year, language, and relevance to the research topic.The time period 2013-2022 was selected for the study.The search is limited to articles published in subject areas such as social sciences, business, environment, and economics.Finally, the time frame for the search is limited to articles published between the years 2009 to 2023 and in English language.

Data Extraction
Researchers extract bibliographic data from the selected articles such as author names, publication titles, abstracts, and citation count.

Data Analysis
The retrieved data is analysed by researchers using a variety of bibliometric techniques, including co-citation analysis and network analysis, to spot patterns and trends in the literature.Bibliometric methods including citation analysis, co-authorship analysis, and content analysis can be utilised to conduct author, journal, article, and nation productivity analyses for role conflict research.The most productive authors, publications, and papers in the topic of role conflict research can be found via citation analysis.Co-authorship analysis can be used to identify the most productive collaborations among authors.Content analysis can be used to identify the main themes and topics in role conflict research.By analysing the content of articles, it is possible to identify the most prevalent themes and sub-themes, and to track changes in research trends over time.To map the intellectual and knowledge structure of this field, Trending words analysis was used to identify the most used words in titles or abstracts of articles related to role conflict and to identify the most popular research topics, as well as the evolution of the research area over time.A tree map was used to display the frequency of keywords or research themes in a visual and hierarchical way to help to identify the most important themes and sub-themes in the research area.A word cloud was used to visualize the recurrence of keywords or research themes.Co-citation network analysis was used to identify the most important articles and prominent authors in the field of role conflict and identify the main research themes and sub-themes; Thematic mapping was used to identify the main research themes and sub-themes in the field of role conflict.By identifying the co-occurrence of keywords in titles and abstracts, researchers can construct a thematic map that visualizes the main research themes and sub-themes in the field.Visualization tools such as VOS viewer was used to display the results of the bibliometric analysis in the form of maps, graphs, or tables.

Interpretation
The results of the bibliometric analysis were analysed to draw conclusions and suggest recommendations for future research.

Research Methodology
Based Table 1, the dataset includes 77 documents from 1985 to 2023, sourced from 57 journals, books, and other publications.The dataset has an annual growth rate of 2.93%, and the average age of the documents is 9.17 years.On average, each document has 21.04 citations, with a total of 4155 references.
The 122 Keywords Plus (ID) and 204 Author's Keywords (DE) presented show that the paper covers a wide range of topics.18 of the 177 authors in the dataset are the only authors of any given document.The dataset also reveals that, whereas 58 papers were written by authors working collaboratively with an average of 2.44 co-authors per document, 19 publications were solely created by their authors.International co-authors made up 22.08% of the total.59 articles, 11 book chapters, 5 conference papers, 1 review, and 1 brief survey make up the dataset.Based on the dataset and the abundance of Keywords Plus and Author's Keywords, we may infer that the 77 publications span a broad spectrum of subject matter.
The fact that only 18 authors produced single-authored documents indicates that there is a high level of collaboration among authors in the dataset.The average number of co-authors per document (2.44) further supports this conclusion.22.08% of the co-authors were international, which suggests that the research in the dataset has a global perspective.The dataset is dominated by articles, but also includes book chapters, conference papers, a review, and a short survey which indicates the developed status of research in this field.Short survey 1

Average Citations Per Year
Table 2 shows the mean number of citations per article (MeanTCperArt) for different years in the dataset, as well as the number of articles (N) and the mean number of citations per year (MeanTCperYear) for each year.The last column, CitableYears, indicates the number of years between the publication year and the current year (2023) during which the articles could potentially be cited.
From the table 2, we can see that the mean number of citations per article varies widely between years.In terms of the number of articles per year, there is also significant variation.
The years with the highest number of articles are 2009 and 2015, with 4 and 14 articles, respectively.However, several years have only one or two articles.The mean number of citations per year also varies, with some years having higher citation rates than others.
Finally, the CitableYears column indicates that many of the articles in the dataset have been available for a significant amount of time and could potentially continue to be cited for years to come.The single article from 1985 has been potentially citable for 39 years (from 1985 to 2023).

Sources' Local Impact
Table 3 lists the h-index, g-index, and m-index values as well as the total citations (TC), papers (NP), and year of first publication (PY_start) for a number of the dataset's journals and conferences.Based on the quantity of publications and the quantity of citations those articles have earned, the h-index is a metric that assesses the productivity of a researcher and provides information about his work and its significance.
The International Journal of Hospitality Management, which was first published in 2009, has the highest h-index of 5 and the most citations overall (336), according to table 3. The hindices and total citations for the other journals and conferences are lower, with the Accounting and Finance journal having the second-highest total of 58 citations.Despite having lower h-indices and total citation counts than the other papers, they nonetheless contribute significantly to our understanding of the subject of role conflict.
Overall, these sources demonstrate that role conflict in IT is a relevant topic in a variety of fields, including hospitality management, human resource management, stress management, psychology, quality management, and industrial engineering.Researchers in these fields have produced valuable insights into the reasons and outcomes of role conflict in IT , as well as ways to manage and reduce it in the workplace.
« Table 3 The research on role conflict in organizations has also benefited greatly from the work of Pei-Lee Teh and Chen-Chen Yong.In their research, Teh and Yong have looked at the causes and effects of role conflict as well as the coping mechanisms that people employ.They discovered that employee role conflict was significantly predicted by work-family conflict and perceived organizational support.She also discovered that role conflict was linked to unfavourable outcomes including job unhappiness and quitting intention.
This research may be helpful in directing the creation of strategies to lessen the negative effects of role conflict and enhance workplace results.

Authors Collaboration Network
Nine clusters of author's collaboration network could be identified.
Cluster 1: The goal of the study "Organizationally Induced Work Stress: The Role of Employee Bureaucratic Orientation" by [7] was to ascertain how employee bureaucratic orientation and organizationally generated work stress are related.Particularly, employees were more likely to suffer stress due to workload, role ambiguity, and interpersonal conflict if they strongly associated with the policies and procedures of their firm [8][9][10][11][12][13][14] .
Cluster 2: Al-Kahtani N.S. and Allam Z.'s research sought to understand the associations between sociobiographical factors (age, gender, educational attainment, marital status, and organizational tenure) and role ambiguity and conflict.According to the study's findings, role ambiguity and role conflict were significantly negatively correlated with age and educational level.It was shown that there was no significant association between gender or marital status and role ambiguity or conflict.The level of role ambiguity and conflict was found to be significantly positively correlated with organizational tenure.
Cluster 3: The goal of the study by [7] was to determine how stress and burnout among workers in the hotel business are related to socio-emotional and operational demands.The results showed a strong correlation between operational and socio-emotional demands and stress, which in turn showed a favourable correlation with burnout.According to the study, the good impact of social support on employees' coping methods may be the cause of this unfavourable link.
Cluster 4: In their research on the conceptual TQM model, Rad M. and Ebrahimi Z. F. have worked together to highlight the significance of staff involvement, customer happiness, and continuous improvement in achieving quality results.The TQM methodology can foster a sense of ownership and accountability among employees, which can improve job satisfaction and lessen the stress associated with certain roles.
Cluster 5: The impact of role stress and work engagement on job satisfaction among Spanish workers was examined in two studies by Orgambdez-Ramos A. and Borrego-Alés Y.While the first article focuses on the mediating role of work engagement in this relationship, the second article explores the antecedents of job satisfaction as well as the predictive power of work engagement and role stress.
Cluster 6: The paper by [9] titled "Relationship between role stress and job performance in salespeople employed by travel agents in Taiwan" examines the connection between role stress and job performance in Taiwanese travel agent salespeople.The study discovered that while role overload was not substantially connected to job performance, role ambiguity and role conflict were.The authors contend that improving job performance among salespeople in the travel sector may be achieved by eliminating role ambiguity and role conflict.
Cluster 7: Role stress and inter-domain conflict are two detrimental workplace outcomes that are examined in a paper by Leach, Brashear, and Boles that was published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science in 2015.According to the authors, bad work relationships, which are defined by a lack of support and trust amongst coworkers, can increase role stress and conflict between various job domains.The study gives recommendations for managers looking to enhance employee well-being and lessen conflict in the workplace.
Cluster 8: From a role theory viewpoint, the three publications by Teh P.-L.and Yong C.-C. centre on the connection between Total Quality Management (TQM) and role stressors, particularly role conflict and role ambiguity.The studies research the impact of strict TQM on lowering role stressors and examine the multidimensional and mediated interactions between TQM and role stressors.
Cluster 9: The conference proceeding article by [7]'s main theme the impact of work-family conflicts, role ambiguity, work stress, and performance (study on female employees in Yogyakarta special region) are discussed in Proceedings of the 32nd International Business Information Management Association Conference, IBIMA 2018 -Vision 2020: Sustainable Economic Development and Application of Innovation Management from Regional expansion to Global Growth.The study explores the effects of job ambiguity, work stress, and work-family conflicts on performance and offers suggestions for how organizations may control these issues to boost worker productivity.The significance of managing work-family problems and establishing work-life balance for female employees is also emphasized.

Trending Keywords
Based on the data it appears that the trends for keywords of role ambiguities, role conflicts, job satisfaction, design/methodology/approach, human resource management, information management, literature reviews, personnel, role ambiguity, and role conflict have been monitored from 2018 to 2023.
The metrics for most of these keywords have remained relatively constant over the years, with only slight changes in some cases.There has been an increase in role ambiguities and role conflicts from 2018 to 2023.In 2018, "ROLE AMBIGUITIES" appeared 5 times in the dataset, "ROLE CONFLICTS" appeared 4 times, "JOB SATISFACTION" appeared 2 times, and so on.
"ROLE CONFLICTS" appears to increase over time, from 4 in 2018 to 5 in 2023.This suggests that these concepts are becoming more relevant or prevalent over time.Thus, there is growing concern or interest in the issues related to role conflict within the dataset.

Trending Topics
From the figure2, it appears that role conflict was the most trending topic between 2012 and 2017 with highest frequency in 2014 while role ambiguity has been a trending topic from 2011 to 2020 with highest frequency in 2016.

Keywords Co Occurrence Network
Cluster one consists of keywords of Role conflict, role ambiguity, and job satisfaction which are individualistic and are all related to their perception of their job and their ability to perform their job effectively depicts in Fig. 3.
Each of these three variables has the potential to affect a person's capacity for successful job performance and overall job happiness.Clear role expectations and a favourable work environment can improve job satisfaction and decrease role ambiguity and conflict, whereas role conflict and role ambiguity can cause stress and lower job satisfaction.

Co Citation Network Analysis
An author co-citation network analysis is a method used to identify and visualize the relationships between authors based on their co-citation patterns in the literature.This approach involves analyzing the references cited in a set of publications and identifying which authors are frequently cited together.The resulting network provides a visual representation of the intellectual structure of a research field, highlighting the most influential authors and their contributions.
Several of the authors such as Jackson, Jex, and Rizzo, are well-known experts in the field of occupational psychology and have published extensively on topics related to role conflict and other workplace stressors.Their research has helped to shape our knowledge of how individuals and organizations can manage and reduce the negative effects of role conflict on employee well-being and organizational performance.
Role conflict has also been researched at the intersection of marketing and organizational behaviour.
Babakus and Zhang have explored how role conflict impacts employees who work in marketing or sales roles, and how this can in turn affect the customer experience

Thematic Map
The quadrant 2 in the thematic map is comprised of role conflict, role ambiguity, and human resource management.The human resource management concepts of role conflict and role

Conclusion
The analysis of the no of publications and citation data suggests that the extent of interest and impact of research on the topic of study has varied over time.These variations could be due to differences in the quality of research, the relevance of the topics addressed, or the effectiveness of dissemination strategies.Research on role conflict in most productive journals has explored various aspects of the phenomenon, including the causes of role conflict, the impact of role conflict on job satisfaction and performance, and strategies for managing and mitigating role conflict in the workplace.
Overall, while role conflict is not a primary focus of most of these publications, several of these journals have published valuable and impactful research on this topic, contributing to our understanding of this important phenomenon and its implications for individuals and organizations.The International Journal of Hospitality Management appears to be the most influential publication in terms of citations and h-index, with a focus on the hospitality industry.These findings suggest that role conflict is a topic of interest to researchers in various fields and that further research could benefit from exploring its impact on different industries and work settings.It appears that research on the impact of role conflict, stresses, and ambiguity on work attitudes and behaviours, particularly in the setting of the hotel and retail industries, has been a key focus based on the most widely cited writers in the subject.

Future Research Directions
Role conflict and related issues in organizational behaviour and psychology could be studied in the following ways, according to the analysis presented: Examine the impact of role conflict and ambiguity in various professions and sectors.There is much to learn about the particular difficulties that various professions confront in handling multiple and conflicting roles, even while some studies have examined role conflict in specific occupational groups, such as healthcare professionals and salespeople.
Examine how individual differences affect how role conflict and ambiguity are experienced.More research is needed to fully understand how individual differences in personality, values, and other factors influence the experience of role conflict and ambiguity, even though some studies have looked at moderating factors including gender and personal traits.
Investigate the connection between role conflict and additional concepts like burnout and turnover.More research is required to comprehend the broader implications of role conflict for human and organizational outcomes, even though some studies have looked at the impact of role conflict on work satisfaction and performance.
Lack of longitudinal studies : Most research on role conflict and ambiguity is cross-sectional in nature, which hinders our ability to understand how these phenomena evolve over time and how they might be influenced by other factors.

"Fig. 2 .
Trending Topics" , 011 (2023) E3S Web of Conferences ICMPC 2023 https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/20234300118686 430 /doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/20234300118686 430 ambiguity can have a large impact on employee performance, job satisfaction, and overall organizational effectiveness.Role conflict and job satisfaction are two themes that are either emerging or diminishing in quadrant 3 of the thematic map shown in Fig.4.Job satisfaction may suffer as a result of role conflict.Conflicting demands or expectations in the workplace can make an individual stressed and frustrated, which lowers their level of job satisfaction.Effective human resource management can play a critical role in addressing role conflict and improving job satisfaction.This can be achieved through measures such as providing clear job descriptions, setting realistic expectations, and providing support and resources to help employees manage their workload and responsibilities."Fig.4. Thematic Map" /doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/20234300118686 430 /doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/20234300118686 430

Most Relevant Author Based on No. of Publications Zahra
Ebrahimi and Rad RH have co-authored three articles and made major contributions to the research on role conflict in organizations.Ebrahimi has investigated how people encounter role conflict when they are asked to carry out competing requests from various sources while performing their organizational tasks.Their research has also revealed how personal and environmental factors might affect how role conflict is felt.Role conflict can be influenced by contextual elements including corporate culture and support from coworkers and superiors.