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University departments are strategic, necessary and important intermediary bodies between rectoral administrative teams and teaching and research staff. In this paper, we ask what scientific evidence is offered by research into management of university departments, along six major axes: aspects that facilitate or hinder department management, the advantages and disadvantages of being a department head, and achievements and failures. A systematic analysis was performed of the scientific literature found on the Web of Science and Scopus, with the analysis of 31 articles. The results revealed facilitating factors such as collaboration; and factors that hinder, such as limited autonomy; advantages such as feeling constantly challenged; and disadvantages such as the involvement it requires; achievements such as driving new ideas; and failures such as the difficulty of changing departmental cultures. The conclusions reveal that future studies should focus on examining the challenges of departmental management and the successes and difficulties encountered in achieving them in order to gain a more complete picture of the pros and cons of departmental management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]