People analytics research and practice: a review of international conferences

Purpose This paper aims to analyze 54 People Analytics (PA) conferences with a view to mapping the discussions around PA, industries/sectors that currently lead in PA practices and PA opinion makers. Design/methodology/approach A scoping approach was adopted to examine the emerging topic of PA. This is one of the first methodological attempts to analyze a number of business/management conferences together. Findings The findings illustrate a broad geography of existing PA knowledge hubs and the relative PA maturity of organizations from some sectors. Within organizations, discussion on PA takes place at the top levels. The results also indicate a growing interest in and readiness to embrace PA on the part of the professional community and enthusiasm among some management academics about making PA the center of the HR profession. The findings reveal the most frequently discussed conference topics, and those that are currently overlooked in extant published work, guaranteeing future research and practice. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first methodological attempt to analyze numerous PA-related business/management conferences together.