Business Research: Apractical
guide for undergraduate and
postgraduate student
Chapter 4:
Searching the literature
Jill Husey and Roger Husey
2.
Aim of thischapter
• To help you to select research topic
• To explain how to carry out a literature research
• To describe potential sources of secondary data
• To illustrate how make citation and references
• To examine the purpose of the literature review
3.
Generating a researchtopic
• Start by trying to identify general subject area
which is of interest to you
• How
a. Brainstorming with colleagues -> use 5W + 1H method
b. Analogy: importing ideas and procedures from other
area where you consider there are similarities
c. Morphological analysis: study of form (drawing up a
table and using to analyze the particular subject)
d. Mind maps: focus on key aspect (not detail)
e. Relevance trees: to develop cluster or related ideas from
a starting concept
4.
Example of Analogy:
Lean manufacturing, lean service, lean logistics,
lean supply chain, lean maintenance, lean
project, lean ……
Risk management in project, in CIM upgrading,
in supply chain, in product development, in ……
5.
Example of Morphologicalanalysis
1. Define key factor or dimensions of the subject
2. List the various attributes of the factors
3. Define all feasible combinations of the attributes
Type of research Methodology Unit of Analysis
Exploratory
Descriptive
Analytical
Quantitative
.
.
.
Cross sectional study
Experimental
Longitudinal
Survey
.
.
.
An individual
An event
An object
A relationship
.
.
.
6.
SPC Design ofExperiment Acceptance Sampling
Histogram
Check sheet
Scatter diagram
Cause effect diagram
Pareto chart
Control chart
Defect concentration
One way
Two way
...
Atribut
Variable
...
7.
Example of Mindmaps
Phenomenological Positivistic
PARADIGM
RESEARCHER DESIGN
RESEARCH
Methodology
Methods
Experience
Outcome
PURPOSE
Data
analysis
Data
collection
Outcome
Knowledge
Exploratory
Analytical Prescriptive
Descriptive
8.
Example of relevancetree
Communication
Workplace Social
Written
Oral Visual
One-way Two-way One-way Two-way One-way Two-way
Presentations
Radio
Audio tape
Conversations
Discussions
Meetings
Books
Articles
Reports
Newspapers
Notices
Diaries?
Letters
Memo
s
Films
Television
Video
Graphics
Images
Body
language
Video
conferencing
Multi-media?
Overview of theliterature research
• To identify as many items of secondary data as
possible which are relevant to your research
topic
13.
Literature review
“...a literaturereview seeks to describe,
summarize, evaluate, clarify and/or integrate the
content of primary reports.”
- Cooper (1988)
“ written summary of the findings from literature
seach”
14.
The purpose
• givesyour reader background information
regarding your own research
• demonstrates your familiarity with research in
your field
• and shows how your work contributes one more
piece in the puzzle of expanding the knowledge
base in your field.
15.
What a LiteratureReview is not:
• A Literature Review is not a book report…
• It is not an Annotated Bibliography – a list of papers with a
summary of their contents and a bibliography.
• Annotated Bibliographies may be organized alphabetically by
title or author, or chronologically by publication date; and such
a list can be useful to a researcher to organize the works they
have read for future reference. But the papers are not organized
around a unifying theme that addresses a central question
posed by the reviewer.
• It is not a collection of papers that necessarily all reach the
same conclusions about a particular topic. Instead the papers
reviewed represent a summary of the approaches and solutions
to a given problem defined by the reviewer. Critical evaluation
by the reviewer is required.
16.
Information Sources
• Peer-reviewedjournal papers
• Conference proceedings
• Books
• Talks (transcript)
• Dissertations
• Government, institutional, and corporate data
▫ For example NASA, NOAA, EPA, NIH, National
Academies
▫ Pew Research, MacArthur Foundation
• Newspaper and magazine articles
• Other media… (Internet, broadcast)
• But not encyclopedic sources, such as Wikipedia,
Britannica, Webster’s Dictionary, etc.
17.
The process ofwriting
a Literature Review
• Formulate a question, or postulate a thesis.
• Search for relevant, pertinent articles.
• Gather the most authoritative data you can find.
▫ Quality (prestige) of the source (such as the publication
or conference)
▫ Reputation of the author
▫ Number of citations for the paper
• Analyze and evaluate the data.
• Create an outline that includes an introduction, the body of
the paper, and a conclusion.
• Write a draft including the bibliography.
• Proofread and write the final draft, paying attention to
proper formatting (i.e. citations, etc.)
18.
Some Questions ToAsk
1. What do we already know in the immediate area concerned?
2. What are the key concepts or the main factors or variables?
3. What are the relationships between the key concepts or variables?
4. What are the existing theories?
5. Where are the inconsistencies in our knowledge and
understanding?
6. What views need to be (further) tested?
7. What evidence is lacking, inconclusive, contradictory, or too
limited?
8. Why study (further) the research problem?
9. What contribution can the present study be expected to make?
10. What research designs or methods seem unsatisfactory?
19.
What do Ineed to be able to do in order to
write a literature review
• Identify your research question
• Identify and locate appropriate information
• Read and critically evaluate the information that
you locate
• File and store your readings and notes
• Plan, organize, and write critically about the
literature that you have located
Editor's Notes
#16 Most authoritative to least authoritative order.