Purpose/significanceThe pursuit of public interests is the starting point and initial motivation of the research on human resource management in public sector. It is meaningful to study the research results about human resource management in foreign public sector and reveal hot spots and frontiers of the field

Method/processThis study uses Citespace to deal with 601 samples selected from the field, grasping the hot spot in the field by cluster analysis which is helpful to understand the knowledge base, and finding the subject frontiers through the keyword analysis and burst detection.

Result/conclusionIt finds out that the topics of human resource practice, civil service reform, employment relationship, public service motivation, high-performance work system and trust relationship are the focuses of human resources research in foreign public sector in recent years, and the subject frontiers are mainly manifested in two aspects: the discussion of public nature and the organization behavior.