Resumo

Shadow IT usage is increasing within the organizations, calling the attention of managers and researchers. Shadow IT represents all hardware, software, or any other solutions used by employees to perform work tasks that have not received any formal approval (Rentrop & Zimmermann, 2012; Walters, 2013; Silic & Back, 2014). Previously, some others studies have been performed using the bibliometric method with the objective of examining the patterns and the evolution of a topic within the academic literature.

The overall aim of this study is to perform a bibliometric analysis of the shadow IT literature considering the following criteria: 1) the trends of research literature production; 2) the most prolific authors and countries; 3) the theories and methods used in the papers; and 4) a thematic analysis related to the most frequent terms in the paper’s title, abstract and keywords.

The literature review of this study provides an overview about the phenomenon called shadow IT. We highlight here the definition of shadow IT, its instances and a brief discussion about its consequences.

We divided the research into two stages to achieve the objective of the study. Firstly, the papers were selected from several databases, considering the criteria of inclusion and exclusion, which are explained below. Secondly, the data collection and the bibliometric analysis were performed using the software Excel and VOSviewer.

The data analysis shows that the trend of scientific literature production is positive once the number of publications is increasing. Almost 70 percent of the whole publication dated from the last 3 years (2014, 2015, 2016). Therefore, shadow IT can be still considered an unexplored topic, although it is gaining notoriety in the academia. Related to the thematic analysis, we found that the thematic of shadow IT studies is changing over time, providing a picture of the evolution of shadow IT literature.

The study reveals that the literature about shadow IT is not abundant, mainly in journals, and the majority of the papers are very recent, being more than 70 percent of the whole publication dated from the last 3 years. Thus, this study concludes that shadow IT can be still considered an unexplored topic, although it is gaining notoriety in the academia in the last years. In addition, the study shows a thematic analysis of the patterns and trends in the shadow IT literature, which add to comprehend how the topic is evolving over time.

Rentrop, C., & Zimmermann, S. (2012). Shadow IT Evaluation Model. Proceeding of The ICDS 2012: The Sixth International Conference on Digital Society. Silic, M., & Back, A. (2014). Shadow IT–A view from behind the curtain.Computers & Security, 45, 274-283. Walters, R. (2013). Bringing IT out of the shadows. Network Security,2013(4), 5-11.