Big data and data science are emerging as a new paradigm and tool within the management research. In such context, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) has launched a major research program since 2015: Big Data driven Management and Decision (BDMD), so as to promote China’s fundamental research on big data. Using text mining, we study textual information of 114 granted projects under the BDMD major research program as well as nearly 6000 articles from 51 leading international journals over the last 8 years. Our comparative analysis is performed at both keyword-level and topic-level. We also attempt to examine a part of literature explicitly claiming big data along with the PAGE framework, the highly-condensed guidance of the BDMD major research program. Our research highlights the dynamic BDMD research landscape, with its focus constantly moving to new challenges due to new technological developments. Our findings are able to reveal the current research interests and the revolution trends in the field of BDMD. Furthermore, the comparative analysis between NSFC grants data and bibliometric data provides a robust roadmap for future research in the BDMD field.