Systematic literature review? It depends! Limits of the quantitative literature analysis procedures in the management field

Abstract

Systematic literature review, as well as other similar bibliographic survey procedures, have been widely used as tools supposedly capable of making an accurate analysis of how a given topic is treated in the academic-scientific field. Such methodologies make use of the current digital structure of publicity of academic literature, where algorithms and search tools in databases allow accessing thousands of texts, as well as filtering what would be representative samples of what is conventionally known as the 'state of the art'. However, assuming a quantitative bias and a reductionist objectivism, such procedures disregard important qualitative aspects of academic communication, especially in such paradigmatically plural fields as Management. That said, this text aims to discuss such tools, through epistemological criticism. Our main argument is that such procedures originated in fields where the view of science and the academic text is positivist and founded on a homogeneous canon, which justifies the intention to cover the convergence of scientific thought in the original fields of methodologies. However, if we consider the polysemy and epistemological diversity of research in Management, the revisional intention of these methodologies becomes incomplete and/or limited, since the elements of convergence/divergence of thought are of an argumentative nature. Therefore, we plead for a qualitative procedure for the systematization of the reference literature.