Entrepreneurship development in universities across Gulf Cooperation Council countries: a systematic review of the research and way forward

Purpose Entrepreneurship has been recognized as a vital tool to combat youth unemployment and rising exclusion, as it is an incredible force that impacts economic development and societal growth by stimulating innovation, job creation and social empowerment. On the other hand, higher education institutions (HEIs) can foster entrepreneurship and thus develop entrepreneurial self-efficacy, self-employment, innovation, enhanced ability to risk-taking and thus result in benefiting people, society, organizations and economy. This prompted the authors to carry out an in-depth investigation of published research on entrepreneurship development and HEIs across Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Design/methodology/approach This study strives to analyze the work carried out until now on entrepreneurship development in HEIs across GCC countries and describe the constructs characterizing it. Bibliometric and content analysis were carried out, integrating citations in Scopus database for last 10 years. Two software packages – Bibliometric R and VOS viewer – were used to investigate the research questions and construct various visualizations of bibliometric networks. Thematic mapping of this multidimensional research area is demonstrated, and evolving trends are identified. Findings Findings revealed that research on entrepreneurship development in HEIs is more prevalent in UAE and Saudi Arabia followed by Oman and Qatar. However, more efforts are required to further consolidate cross-national collaborations among all the GCC countries to obtain a comprehensive overview of the regional context. Originality/value Such a comprehensive bibliometric review coupled with content analysis on entrepreneurship development in HEIs across GCC countries has not yet been published, to the best of the authors’ knowledge.