Exploring healthcare governance literature: systematic review and paths for future research

The paper aims to illustrate the stance of existing research on governance in healthcare organizations (hereafter HCOs), in order to appreciate the structure of literature and its evolution. More specifically, thorough a keywords analysis of 91 articles published in 1985-2010 timeframe, the article attempts to understand how setting peculiarities affect the healthcare governance field and to provide some suggestions for future research. The findings enlighten the existence of three main research streams, as well as the absence of a research evolution. The novelty of the paper relies on its contributions for academics by providing a keywords map as a useful tool to understand greatest concentration areas and vice versa never investigated issues whereon focusing future efforts.