Slide 3.

Chapter 3
Critically reviewing the literature

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.2

You and your supervisor submit a paper, which

unfortunately gets rejected because the paper
missed a reference to some very similar work.
What went wrong?

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.3

How many papers should one expect

to read as background reading for an
MS thesis? When should one be
reading these ? Do you need to
understand them all in detail ?

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.4

What is literature review?

• A summary of all papers in the area?
• A summary of papers you’ve read?
• A document to show how bad other
research is?
• An argument for your research?
• Something you write after you’ve done
your research?

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.5

What is literature review?

You make the case for

your research

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.6

What is literature review

“… a systematic…method for identifying, evaluating and

interpreting the …work produced by researchers,
scholars and practitioners.”

FINK, A., 1998. Conducting literature research reviews: from paper to the internet.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.7

What is literature review

Novice researchers tend to approach the literature review
as nothing more than a collection of summaries of papers
or an elaborated bibliography of multiple research
manuscripts
(Webster & Watson, 2002).

A meaningful literature review

is much more.

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.8

The literature review

• Many researchers spend more than half their time
reading.– You can learn a lot more quickly from other
people's work than from doing your own.

• A literature review
– Helps you learn everything about your subject
– Ensures that you are not “reinventing the wheel”
– Helps you learn about the people in the field
• Important for networking
– Convey the depth and breadth of research that has been
accomplished on a subject
– Describe methodologies used
– Describe existing data sets
– ….
Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.9

Goals
• To demonstrate to readers and examiners that
we are familiar with the field
• To provide an overview of current knowledge in
a particular area of application
• To review other studies critically
• To highlight a gap in areas of application
• To provide a context for our current study and
to locate it within a specific field
– How the proposed research contributes something
new to the overall Bank of Knowledge or advances
the research field’s knowledge.

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.10

Before
entering
the maze

The literature Be sure of

what you are
looking for

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.11

Sources of literature
• Books
• Patents
• Journals
• Conference Papers
• Theses
• Abstracts
• Electronic Databases
• Government publications
• Interviews and other unpublished research
• …..

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.12

Sources of literature

Must be familiar with reputed

journals and conferences in your
area

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.13

Small Homework

Find atleast 2 reputed conferences

and 2 reputed journals in the area
you prefer to work in

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.14

The literature review process

Figure 3.1 The literature review process Source: Saunders et al. (2003)
Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.15

Literature search
• Literature search is the process of querying
the scholarly literature databases in order to
gather research manuscripts related to the
phenomenon under investigation.

• The major contributions are likely to be in

the leading journals – It makes sense,
therefore, to start with them

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.16

Where to look for….

• Google Scholar
– http://www.scholar.google.com
• ACM Digital Library
– http://www.acm.org/dl
• IEEE Digital Library
– http://www.computer.org/publications/dlib/
• Online Libraries

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.17

Google scholar
• Google Scholar provides a simple way to
search for scholarly literature.
• Search across many disciplines and sources:
peer-reviewed papers, theses, books,
abstracts and articles, from academic
publishers, professional societies, preprint
repositories, universities and other scholarly
organizations.
Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.18

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.19

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.20

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.21

Literature search

• Search Strategies
– Keyword searching

– Backward searching

– Forward searching

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.22

Keyword search
• Querying of scholarly databases by the use of a specific word or
phrase (i.e. “keyword”) when attempting to find relevant literature

• Keyword search should be just the initial, not the main step for a
literature search

• Keyword search does not yield all that is available from the literature

• Use of technology specific terms or ‘buzzwords’ that appear and

disappear from literature.
– Phishing – a form of computer crime
– Searching using this keyword may provide little or no prior work on
computer crimes in scholarly literature

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.23

Keyword search
• Not too broad
• Not too narrow
• Think of all possibly synonyms
• Make sure to follow the search engines ‘rules’ in
combining the key words
• AND = Narrow

• OR = Expand

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.24

Backward search
• Using an effective keyword search will
produce some initial insight

• Backward literature search

– Backward references search
– Backward authors search
– Previously used keywords.

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.25

Backward search
• Backward References Search
– Reviewing the references of the articles yielded
from the keyword search
– Example
• You enter a keyword and download the first three articles
• Download and review the references listed in each of
these articles
– A second level backward references search can also
be done by pulling the ‘references of the
references’.

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.26

Backward search
• Backward Authors Search
– Reviewing what the authors have published
prior to the article.
– May search through author name
– Visit authors home page etc.

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.27

Backward search
• Previously used keywords
– Reviewing the keywords noted in the articles yielded
from the keyword search
– For example after reviewing the following article:

– You may then look for Text-Independent or Text-

Dependent writer identification
Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.28

Forward search
• Can be divided into two specific sub-steps:
– Forward references search
– Forward authors search

• Forward references search

– Reviewing additional articles that have cited the article
• Forward authors search
– Reviewing what the authors have published following
the article

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.29

Assessment
• Assess the quality of the information source:
– Refereed journal article?
– Conference proceedings?
– Corporate report?
• Assess the standing of the author
– Academic?
– Journalist?
– Government employee?
• Is the work in their major field of research?

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.30

Assessment
• Consider whether your sources are current

• Some disciplines require that you use

information that is as current as possible.
– For example Treatments for medical problems are
constantly changing according to the latest studies.
Information even two years old could be obsolete.

• Humanities, history, or social sciences, a survey

of the history of the literature may be is needed
– How perspectives have changed through the years
or within a certain time period.
Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.31

Information management

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.32

How will you manage the

material you download?

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.33

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.34

Reviewing the literature

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.35

Types of reviews
• Systematic reviews:
– Use explicit and rigorous methods to identify, critically
appraise, and synthesize relevant studies

• Narrative reviews:
– Summaries of research

• Meta-analysis:
– Quantitative review using statistical analyses

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.36

Caution

Do NOT collect 100

papers before you start
reading

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.37

Reviewing the literature

• Three phases to reading a paper:
• First: See if there's anything of interest– Scan the title, then the
abstract, then -- if you haven't completely lost interest already --
glance at the introduction and conclusions.

• Second: Find the part that has the good stuff– Most fifteen page
papers could profitably be rewritten as one-page papers; you need to
look for the page that has the exciting stuff.

• Third: Go back and read the whole paper through if it seems

worthwhile

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.38

Reviewing the literature

• Read with a question in mind
– How can I use this? Does this really do what the author
claims? What if...?

– Most of the understanding is in figuring out the motivations,

the choices the authors made

– Whether the assumptions and formalizations are realistic

– What directions the work suggests, the problems lying just

over the horizon, the patterns of difficulty that keep coming
up in the author's research program etc.

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.39

Reviewing the literature

• When you read a paper that excites you, make
few copies and give them to people you think
will be interested in it.

• Whenever you write something yourself,

distribute copies of a draft to interested people.

• Conferences – How to meet people? Walk up to

someone whose paper you've liked, say “I really
liked your paper”, and ask a question.
Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.40

Reviewing the literature –

levels of mastery
• Levels of mastery
– Know the literature
– Comprehend the literature
– Analyze the literature
– Synthesize the literature
– Evaluate the literature

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.41

Know the literature

• Knowledge level is commonly demonstrated
by activities such as listing, defining,
describing

• At the very least, the researcher must

demonstrate that he or she has read the article
and extracted meaningful information from it

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.42

Know the literature

• Points to the literature but does not demonstrate

mastery at the knowledge level.

• Although the citation certainly tells that these authors

had something to say about individual and group
marks for in-group activities, the readers really don’t
get any idea what these references said.

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.43

Know the literature

Knowledge level mastery

• From this example it is clear that the citation provides

some relevant facts about the Buchy and Quinlan article:
it was a report of some research, and that one of the
conclusions from that research was that students
participating in tutorial groups reported that the group
activity made them more attuned to the learning process.

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.44

Comprehend the literature

• Comprehension is demonstrated by activities
such as summarizing, differentiating,
interpreting, and contrasting.

• Researcher demonstrates that not only can he

or she repeat what was included in the article
but also knows the meaning and significance
of the information being reported.

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.45

Comprehend the literature

Pre-comprehension level

Comprehension level

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.46

Analyze the literature

• Analysis is demonstrated by activities
such as relating, and classifying and
explaining (why the information
presented is important)
• Example1
– Identify the major concepts relevant to the
study
– Place the citation in the correct category

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.47

Synthesizing the literature

• Synthesis entails activities such as
combining, integrating, rearranging and
generalizing

• The essence of synthesis is to assemble the

literature being reviewed for a given concept
into a whole that exceeds the sum of its
parts.
Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.48

Synthesizing the literature

Lack of synthesis – facts are presented as

almost a series of isolated “bullet points”

Synthesis level mastery

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.49

Evaluating the literature

• Evaluation includes activities such as
assessing, deciding, recommending,
selecting, judging, supporting, and
concluding.

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.50

Writing the literature Review

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.51

Writing the literature review

• Write as you read…….
– Write a brief summary of each paper you read
– List your findings, critics etc.
– This will help you in writing the literature
review

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.52

Writing the literature review

• Find Models – Look for other literature reviews in your
area of interest and read them to get a sense of the types
of themes you might want to employ to organize your
final review.

• You can simply put the word "review" in your search

engine along with your other topic terms to find articles
of this type on the Internet or in an electronic database.

• The bibliography or reference section of sources you've

already read may mention such review articles as well.

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.53

Organization
• Develop an organization – Global as well as local
levels
• Atleast three basic elements in a review
– Introduction – Central theme or organizational pattern

– Body - Discussion of sources that is organized either

chronologically, thematically or methodologically

– Conclusions/Recommendations – What you have

drawn from reviewing literature.

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.54

Organizing the sources

• Chronological
– Arranging events in their order of occurrence in time
– By Publication
• Order your sources by publication chronology – i.e. the order in which they are
published
– By Trend
• Subsections according to eras/trends
• For example – If you are doing research on handwriting you may distinguish the
following periods
– Proto-writing 4000-3000 BC
– Bronze Age writing 3000 – 1500 BC
– Iron Age writing 1000 BC – 500 AD
– Medieval writing – 500 – 1500 AD
– Modern writing

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.55

Organizing the sources

• Thematic
– Organized around a topic or issue, rather than
the progression of time
– Progression of time may still be an important
factor in a thematic review
– Example
• Handwriting recognition
– Online or Offline
– Arabic or English

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.56

Organizing the sources

• Methodological
– Focuses on the proposed methodologoy
– Example – Handwriting recognition
• Segmentation based approaches – first segment into
characters and then reconize
• Segmentation free approaches – recognize the
complete words

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.57

Writing the literature review

• Bringing other writers into your writing – Keep your own voice
– Ideas are of other people – start and end each paragraph with your own
words

• Rephrasing in our own words & adding an acknowledgement

– Summary, Paraphrasing – Beware of plagarism
– Common norm in science and engineering

• Direct quotation and acknowledgement

– Less common in science and engineering

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.58

Writing the literature review

• Integrate other studies into your own text, rather than
read as a series of disconnected voices of other
researchers

• Avoid narrative accounts – Find a way of grouping

studies

• For each study discussed

– General idea of study
– Strengths and weaknesses
– If relevant, relationship with to the present study

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.59

acknowledges criticises explores observes shows

admits deals with expresses points out /to signals
agrees decides finds predicts states
alleges defines focuses presumes studies
argues demonstrates highlights proves suggests
assumes denies hypothesises proposes tries to
identify
believes depicts identifies provides sums up
evidence for
challenges determines implies questions underlines
claims diagnoses indicates recognises views
classifies discovers infers reports wonders
comments doubts interprets reveals
concentrates emphasises makes the says
on point
concludes establishes maintains seeks to
explain
considers explains notes seeks to
identify

Verbs for reporting other scientists’ findings

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.60

Writing the literature review

• Position towards the sources
– Reporting verb indicates your position towards
the cited source
– Selecting a particular verb involves taking a
particular position in relation to other scientists’
ideas
– Strong level of agreement – strongly negative
stance

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.61

Writing the literature review

found concludes claims
shows neglects

POSITIVE NEUTRAL NEGATIVE/CRITICAL

• Show can be seen as positive as it reports an observation

or finding as a proven fact

• Claims disassociates the writer from the position of the

author cited. This allows the writer to establish a critical
perspective and follow with a counterargument.

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.62

Comparing different studies

• Discussion – Critical Analysis
• Strong and week points of each study
• Quantitative Comparison
Study Methodology/ Features Data set Performance
– Summarize in.. tables/charts
.. .. ..
.. .. .. ..
.. .. .. ..
.. .. .. ..

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.63

Quantitative comparison

63
Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.64

The Critical Review (1)

• Demonstrate awareness of the current state of

knowledge in your subject

• Know its limitations

• Clearly understand and be able to demonstrate how

your research fits in this wider context

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.65

The Critical Review (2)

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)

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.66

Adopting a critical perspective (1)

Skills for effective reading
• Previewing
– which is looking around the text before you start reading in order to establish
precisely its purpose and how it may inform your literature search
• Annotating
– conducting a dialogue with yourself, the author, and the issues and ideas at
stake
• Summarising
– The best way to determine that you’ve really got the point is to be able to state
it in your own words. Outlining the argument of a text is a version of
– annotating, and can be done quite informally in the margins of the text.
• Comparing and contrasting
– Ask yourself how your thinking been altered by this reading or how has it
affected your response to the issues and themes your research?

Harvard College Library (2006)

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Slide 3.67

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.68

Adopting a critical perspective (2)

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)

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.69

Adopting a critical perspective (3)

Questions to ask yourself
Wallace and Wray (2006)

1. Why am I reading this? (helps to focus on your subject)

2. What is the author trying to do in writing this? (helps deciding how

valuable for your purpose)

3. What is the writer saying that is relevant to what I want to find out?

4. How convincing is this?

5. What use can I make of this reading?

Adapted from Wallace and Wray (2006)

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.70

Content of the critical review

You will need to

• Include key academic theories

• Demonstrate current knowledge of the area

• Use clear referencing for the reader to find the

original cited publications

• Acknowledge the research of others

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.71

Is your literature review critical?

Checklists Box 3.2 and Box 3.3

Complete the checklists to evaluate your

literature review

Saunders et al. (2009)

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Slide 3.72

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.73

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.74

Structure of the literature review

• Start at a more general level before narrowing down to your specific
research question(s) and objectives;
• Provide a brief overview of key ideas and themes;
• Summarize, compare and contrast the research of the key writers;
• Narrow down to highlight previous research work most relevant to your
own research;
• Provide a detailed account of the findings of this research and show how
they are related;
• Highlight those aspects where your own research will provide fresh
insights;
• Lead the reader into subsequent sections of your project report, which
explore these issues.

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.75

Conducting a literature search (3)

• Printed sources

• Databases – use of Boolean logic and free

text searching (Table 3.3)

• Scanning and browsing

• Searching the Internet

Saunders et al. (2009)

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.76

Recording the literature

Make notes for each item you read

Record –

• Biographic details

• Brief summary of content

• Supplementary information

Sharp et al. (2002)

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.77

Plagiarism
Four common forms

• Stealing material from another source and passing it off

as your own

• Submitting material written by someone else

• Copying material without quotation marks

• Paraphrasing material without documentation

Adapted from Park (2003), cited in Easterby-Smith et al. (2008)

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.78

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.79

Reviewing the Literature: What

A literature review situates your research into
the larger research context by
• Reviewing previous research
• Synthesizing it into a summary of “what is and isn’t known”
• Relating it to your research question
• Identifying points of controversy
• Suggesting questions for further research (Taylor, 2008, p. 1)

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.80

Level of Detail
Degree Level of Detail Expected
Master’s  Is analytical and summative
 Covers methodological issues, research techniques
and topics
 May also cover theoretical issues

Doctorate  Provides analytical synthesis

 Covers all known literature on the subject
 Links ideas conceptually across and within theories
 Provides summative and formative evaluation of
previous work on problem
 Provides deep and broad discussion of philosophical
traditions relevant to problem (social sciences)
(Hart,1998)
Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.81

Common Criticisms of Literature Reviews

• The review is a chronology of work done in the area; the
writer has not organized the review thematically
• The writer separates research from different disciplines,
rather than reviewing across disciplines
• Some sections sound too much like the original author
• The writer accurately summarizes the research, but fails to
take a stand on the research or come to conclusions about the
contributions and limitations of the research
• The writer fails to shape the literature review to demonstrate
the need for his or her research
(adapted from Swales & Feak, 2000, p.149)
Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.82

Reviewing the Literature: How

• Organize your review thematically
– look at key concepts in your research
– use subsections with informative headings
– group related pieces of research

• Move from broad to highly relevant work, from

theoretical to empirical, from known to unknown
(Tornquist, 1986)

• Describe highly relevant work in more detail

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.83

Literature Review – planning

• Try mapping your key concepts

& bodies of research Define concepts
• e.g., study on gender differences in online learning for students enrolled
in a distance nursing program

Research theory
Learning
on gender & Gender Research
styles on online
learning
learning
Learning
styles Delivery
modes
• Develop an outline
• Write first, edit later
Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.84

Use Appropriate Tenses:

• Researcher actions - past tense

• Smith (2003) studied…; Pell (2004) found…

• Research in general – present perfect

• Research has shown…;…has been studied

• Conclusions drawn - present tense

• Response time depends on…(Pell, 2004)

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.85

Using Sources Effectively

• Don’t paraphrase by using the original sentence structure

and changing words here and there; that is plagiarism
even if you cite the source

• Use quotation marks around wording taken from a source

• Quote only when the original wording—not just the idea—

is important

• Use sources to support your points—not to make them

• Whether you paraphrase or quote, always cite the source

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.86

Paraphrasing too Closely

(Example from Zobel, 2004, p. 217-218)

Original (Barlman & Trey, 2001): The impact of viruses has

become a major issue in many large organizations, but most
still rely on individual users maintaining virus definitions,
with no internal firewalls to protect one user from another.

Unacceptable paraphrase:
Viruses have become a major issue in many large
organizations, but most organizations still rely on users
maintaining virus definitions on their individual computers,
with no internal firewalls to protect one computer from
another (Barlman & Trey, 2001).

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.87

Summary: Chapter 3

The critical literature review

• Sets the research in context

• Leads the reader into later sections of the report

• Begins at a general level and narrows to specific

topics

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
Slide 3.88

Summary: Chapter 3

A literature search requires

• Three main categories of sources

• Clearly defined research questions and
objectives
• Defined parameters
• Use of techniques – ( brainstorming and
relevance trees)

Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009