Big data and performance measurement research: trends, evolution and future opportunities

Abstract

Current literature recognised big data as a digital revolution affecting all organisational processes. To obtain a competitive advantage from the use of big data, an efficient integration in a performance measurement system (PMS) is needed, but it is still a “great challenge” in performance measurement research. This paper aims to review the big data and performance measurement studies to identify the publications’ trends and future research opportunities. The authors reviewed 873 documents on big data and performance carrying out an extensive bibliometric analysis using two main techniques, i.e. performance analysis and science mapping. Results point to a significant increase in the number of publications on big data and performance, highlighting a shortage of studies on business, management and accounting areas, and on how big data can improve performance measurement. Future research opportunities are identified. They regard the development of further research to explain how performance measurement field can effectively integrate big data into a PMS and describe the main themes related to big data in performance measurement literature. This paper gives a holistic view of big data and performance measurement research through the inclusion of numerous contributions on different research streams. It also encourages further study for developing concrete tools.