Generative AI in Management Research After ChatGPT: A Bibliometric Map of Themes, Influence, and Governance

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), particularly since the introduction of ChatGPT, has not only led to a quantitative increase in publications in management and business research but also created a qualitative transformation in research themes and collaborative structures. However, the current literature is insufficient to comprehensively present the epistemic and thematic consequences of this transformation in the field of management. This study aims to fill this gap by examining 316 articles indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index database within the Web of Science Core Collection and published between 2023 and 2025 using bibliometric analysis. The analyses show that normative and governance-oriented themes such as ethics, artificial intelligence (AI) literacy, and agentic AI have become increasingly visible in the management literature in the post-ChatGPT era; rather than displacing performance- and productivity-centered approaches, these normative themes emerged alongside them within an increasingly diversified keyword and thematic structure. The findings reveal that GenAI research in management has evolved from being merely a technological innovation to a research axis that reshapes discussions on organizational responsibility, human–machine interaction, and governance. In this respect, the study goes beyond mapping the current state of the literature and offers theoretical and methodological implications on how GenAI should be positioned in management research.

Received: 18 May 2026 | Revised: 24 June 2026 | Accepted: 15 July 2026

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Author Contribution Statement

Irem Tanyıldızı Baydili: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Resources, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Burak Tasci: Software, Writing–original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Sengul Dogan: Validation, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Turker Tuncer: Validation, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization.