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The previous exercise, where you ranked words in relation to a 'good' literature review, may offer you an insight into your own beliefs about research and literature reviewing. If you believe that reviews should be exploratory and/or creative you will probably find structured or systematic reviews to be constraining. If your purpose is to gain an broad understanding of the literature on a topic such as 'change management' it will be difficult to be comprehensive because the field is large and fragmented. If you only have a few months to complete a review due to a deadline it may be difficult to be thorough and you might need to consider delimiting the scope and boundaries of the review. Read the different descriptions of a 'literature review' presented below. Early in the process it probably feels like, A swamp: you don't know how wide it is, how deep it is or what is hiding under the surface (Greenhalgh, 2003) Which of these apeals the most? Why? An argument: "A reviewer’s critical account designed to convince a particular audience about what published (and possibly also unpublished) theory, research, practice or policy texts indicate is and what is not known about one or more questions framed by the reviewer" (Poulson and Wallace, 2004: 25) A scoping study: "a broad review of a field to study to assess the relevance and size of the literature and to delimit the subject area or topic. Such studies need to consider cross-disciplinary perspectives and alternative ways in which a research topic has previously been tackled. The scoping study may also include a brief overview of the theoretical, practical, and methodological history debates surrounding the field and subfields of study" (Tranfield, Denyer and Smart, 2003). A systematic process: "A review of the evidence on a clearly formulated question that uses systematic and explicit methods to identify, select and critically appraise relevant primary research, and to extract and analyse data from the studies that are included in the review“ (NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, 2001) An exploration - "A process of going up alleys to see if they are blind" (anonymous).A conversation: where you identify who (individuals/authors/papers/books) you want to talk to, what they talking about, what the most interesting things you have to add are, and how you are going to introduce yourself? (Huff 1999). Things to avoid A journalistic review: "like the essays you used to write as a student You would browse through the indexes of books and journals until you came across a paragraph that looked relevant, and copied it out. If anything you found did not fit in with the theory you were proposing, you left it out." (Greenhalgh, 1997: 672) A mind-numbing list of citations and findings that resemble a phone book: "impressive case, lots of numbers, but not much plot" [In contrast] a coherent review emerges only from a coherent conceptual structuring of the topic itself. For most reviews, this requires a guiding theory, a set of competing models, or a point of view about the phenomenon under discussion [Bem 1995, p. 172].
References Bem, D.J. (1995). 'Writing a review article for Psychological Bulletin'. Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 118, No. 2, 172-177. Greenhalgh, T. (1997). 'Papers that summarise other papers (systematic reviews and meta-analyses)'. British Medical Journal, Vol. 315, No. 7109, 672-675. Greenhalgh, T., Robert, G., Macfarlane, F., Bate, P., Kyriakidou, O. and Peacock, R. (2005). 'Storylines of research in diffusion of innovation: a meta-narrative approach to systematic review'. Social Science & Medicine, Vol. 61, 417-430. ' Huff, A.S. (1999). 'Writing for Scholarly Publication'. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (2001). 'Undertaking systematic reviews of research on effectiveness: CRD's guidance for those carrying out or commissioning reviews'. NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination Tranfield, D., Denyer, D. and Smart, P. (2003). ' Towards a methodology for developing evidence informed management knowledge by means of systematic review'. British Journal of Management, Vol. 14, No. 3, 207-222 Wallace, M. and Wray, A. (2011). 'Critical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates' (2nd Edition), London: SAGE The text on this page was created by Professor David Denyer, Professor of Organizational Change, Cranfield School of Management. |
