Comprehensive review of literature survey articles on ERP

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight the current status of enterprise resource planning (ERP) field and address some issues in literature reviews, the authors conduct a comprehensive literature survey of extensive literature reviews of ERP in organizational contexts and map all the existing research issues that have been mentioned. Design/methodology/approach – Two groups of keywords are set to search papers through academic search engine and academic databases. Total 86 literature reviews have been accumulated and categorized into three main categories and five sub-categories. The authors adopt multi-method approach to analyze the survey result. It consists of review type, geographical area, publication type, theory, and process approach. Findings – Literature reviews need more continuity, objectivity, and integrality. More efforts should be made to increase methodologically sound and theoretically grounded research. In ERP research field, the topics in the post-implementation phase are heating up recently but still in its initial stage as well as small and medium enterprises research. The development of ERP in specific area or industry is considered to be critical. More longitudinal case study should be launched. Looking for the distribution of research across geographical areas is a potential perspective of researching as well. Originality/value – This is the first comprehensive research that aims to analyze all the literature review in ERP field. The specific analysis provides critical detail for researchers to find the needed research. The discussion of this paper can be very valuable and helpful for assisting researchers to find their directions, and contributing to the development of literature reviews in ERP research field.