Happiness and Creativity in Academic Productivity: A Bibliometric and Systematic Review
Keywords:
Happiness; Well-being; Academic productivity; Creativity; Systematic literature reviewAbstract
While academic productivity is a central concern in higher education, growing performance pressures increasingly threaten faculty well-being and creativity. Rather than producing direct empirical evidence, this study conceptualises existing literature to examine the relationship between happiness, creativity, and academic productivity by combining bibliometric mapping with a qualitative systematic review. Following PRISMA guidelines, 105 Scopus-indexed articles published since 2010 were analysed to map the field's intellectual structure. Results reveal that prior research has largely examined happiness, creativity, institutional resources, and systemic conditions in isolation, yielding fragmented findings. To address this gap, this study proposes an integrative conceptual framework. Within this testable model, happiness acts as a psychological condition enabling creative processes, creativity serves as a mediating mechanism, and institutional and systemic factors operate as crucial contextual moderators. This framework outlines a comprehensive research agenda and offers practical implications, suggesting that fostering faculty well-being may be essential for sustainable research output. A primary limitation is the study's reliance on English-language articles indexed exclusively in Scopus.
https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.25.6.1
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