A quantitative and qualitative review of what meta-analyses have contributed to our understanding of human resource management

•We conducted a content analysis of 407 meta-analyses from HR journals.•The most frequently meta-analyzed topics were performance and attitudes.•Also frequent were diversity/demographics, personality, withdrawal, and job characteristics.•Meta-analyses have been used to summarize relationships and to test theories.•Meta-analyses have also examined moderators.

In this paper we review the contribution that researchers have made to the field of human resource management (HRM) using the method of meta-analysis. First, we summarized results of a content analysis of the most frequently studied HRM topics and topic combinations found in 407 papers published in the major HRM peer-reviewed outlets. Specifically, we found that the most frequently studied topics were performance, attitudes, diversity/demographics, personality, withdrawal, and job characteristics. Second, we used the ISI Thomson Web of Science database to conduct a citation analysis of the 100 most impactful meta-analytic HRM papers. Among the top 10, two focused on justice and two on turnover. Third, we provided a narrative review that noted some important meta-analytic contributions to HRM knowledge. This discussion was organized according to a 2 × 2 framework depicting whether a paper's purpose was to test a theory or was more descriptive/exploratory, and whether a paper's purpose was mainly to cumulate effect sizes or test moderators. This narrative review provided examples that illustrates the breadth of the many contributions made with meta-analysis.