LITERATURE REVIEW Where to start; when, where, how to finish?

1. LITERATURE REVIEW Where to start; when, where, how to finish?

2. Learning outcomes By the end of this session you should: • Understand the importance and purpose of the critical literature review to your research project; • Understand the concept of systematic literature review • To be able to adopt a critical perspective in your reading; • Know what you need to include when writing your critical review; • Understand some of the techniques used to conduct a literature review

3. Reasons for reviewing the literature • To conduct a ‘preliminary’ search of existing material • To organise valuable ideas and findings • To identify other research that may be in progress • To generate research ideas • To develop a critical perspective

4. The literature review process Source: Saunders et al. (2003) Figure 3.1 The literature review process

5. The Critical Review Approaches used Deductive - Develops a conceptual framework from the literature which is then tested using the data Inductive - Explores the data to develop theories which are then tested against the literature

6. The Critical Review Key purposes • To further refine research questions and objectives • To discover recommendations for further research • To avoid repeating work already undertaken • To provide insights into strategies and techniques appropriate to your research objectives Based on Gall et al. (2006)

7. Adopting a critical perspective Class Handouts and Discussion

8. Adopting a critical perspective The most important skills are • The capacity to evaluate what you read • The capacity to relate what you read to other information Wallace and Wray (2006)

9. Some Key Issues to Address • How to identify papers relevant to your topic • How to selectively read and evaluate a paper

10. Structure of the literature review Three common structures • A single chapter • A series of chapters • Throughout the report

11. The key to a critical literature review • Demonstrate that you have read, understood and evaluated your material • Link the different ideas to form a cohesive and coherent argument • Make clear connections to your research objectives and the subsequent empirical material Saunders et al. (2009)

12. Literature sources available Saunders et al. (2009) Figure 3.2 Literature sources available

13. Refereed academic Journals • Articles in refereed academic journals (such as Journal of management studies)are evaluated by peers academic prior to publication, to assess their quality and suitability, they are usually written by experts in the field. • Such articles are written for a more narrow audience of scholars with a particular interest in the field. The language used may be technical or highly specialized as a prior knowledge of the topic will be assumed.

14. The literature search strategy Making the Literature Review “Systematic” Write down • parameters of your search • key words and search terms to be used • databases and search engines to be used • criteria for selection of relevant and useful studies And Discuss these with a tutor (if possible)

15. Defining the parameters of your search: Improving ‘systematicity’ • For most research questions and objectives you will have a good idea of which subject matter is going to be relevant. You will, however, be less clear about the parameters within which you need to search. In particular, you need to be clear about the following (Bell 2005): • Language of publication (e.g. English); • Subject area (e.g. accountancy); • Business sector (e.g. manufacturing); • Geographical area (e.g. Europe); • Publication period (e.g. the last 10 years); • Literature type (e.g. refereed journals and books).

16. Conducting a literature search Searching the Internet Saunders et al. (2003) Figure 3.3 Searching the Internet

17. Conducting a literature search Searching the Internet Saunders et al. (2003) Figure 3.3 Searching the Internet (Continued)