<p>Employees’ quality of work life (QWL) is a significant issue since work conditions and economics change unexpectedly over time. Although QWL has been widely studied in the management and business fields, a comprehensive understanding of its construction, impact, and outcomes is still limited. This paper aims to unpack the knowledge of the past, present, and future of QWL by combining bibliometric analysis and literature review. Following the PRISMA protocol, we utilized the Web of Science Social Science Citation Index as a database and selected 144 papers published in management and psychology fields between 2004 and 2025 for the following analysis. (1) Through initial statistics analysis, we identify the prominent authors, influential works, leading affiliations, countries, and journals in QWL domain; (2) Nine clusters are identified based on the keywords that map the emergent core themes via content analysis (3) Based on these emergent themes, we offer a comprehensive conceptual framework from individual- and organizational-levels; (4) We determine and present potential avenues for future research by employing the TCCM (Theory, Context, Characteristics, Method) framework. Further, theoretical, and managerial implications were discussed. This research is one of the first to review the past and present development of quality of work life in management and business fields and answer the recent calls to explore the quality of work life integrating with technologies in future research.</p>