Critically reviewing the literature as part of research

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Critically reviewing the literature as part of
research
Professional Development and Research Lecture
7 Lecturer R. Milyankova Tel. [phone]
000 E-mail R.Miliankova_at_gmail.com
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Objectives of this session

• Understand the importance and purpose of critical
  literature review to the research project
• Know what you need to include when writing your
  critical review
• Be aware of the range of primary, secondary and
  tertiary literature sources available
• To generate ideas that will help you in the
  choice of a research topic

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Why critical review?

• Knowledge doesnt exist in a vacuum, and your
  work only has value in relation to other
  peoples. Your work and your findings will be
  significant only to the extent that theyre the
  same as, or different from, other peoples work
  and findings.
• Jankowicz

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The literature review process
Types of literature Articles Reports Books
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The purpose of the critical review

• To help you to refine further your research
  questions and objectives
• To highlight research possibilities that have
  been overlooked implicitly in research to date
• To discover recommendations for further research
• To avoid repeating work that has been done
  already
• To sample current opinions on the topic in
  newspapers, professional and trade journals
• To discover and provide an insight into
  appropriate strategies and methodologies

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Approaches to critical review

• Deductive approach using literature to identify
  theories and ideas that you will test using data
• Inductive approach to explore your data and to
  develop theories from them that you will relate
  to the literature

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The content of the critical review

• To include the key academic theories within your
  chosen area
• To demonstrate that your knowledge in the chosen
  area is up to date
• To show relations to previous research
• To assess strengths and weaknesses of previous
  work and take them into account in your arguments
• To justify your arguments
• To enable readers of your project report to find
  the original work you cite
• N.B. Thus you avoid charges in plagiarism

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What is meant by critical?

• Refer to work by recognized experts in your
  chosen area
• Consider and discuss work that supports and/or
  opposes your ideas
• Make reasoned judgments regarding the value of
  others work to you research
• Support your arguments with valid evidence in a
  logical manner
• Distinguish clearly between fact and opinion

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The structure of the critical review

• From general to specific
• Provide brief overview of key ideas
• Summarize, compare and contrast the key writers
• Narrow down to highlight the most relevant to
  your work
• Provide a detailed account of the findings of
  your work
• Highlight the issues where you will provide fresh
  insights
• Lead the reader into the corresponded sections

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Checklist for evaluating your literature review

• Does your review start at a more general level?
• Does the literature covered relate clearly to
  your research questions and objectives?
• Have you covered the key theories of recognized
  experts in the area?
• Is the literature you have included up to date?
• Have you been objective in the discussions and
  assessment of other peoples work?
• Have you included references that are counter to
  your own opinion?
• Are facts and opinions clearly distinguished?
• Is your argument coherent and cohesive - do the
  ideas link together?
• Have you made reasoned judgements about the value
  of others work to your own?
• Have you justified clearly your own ideas?

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The structure of the critical review
Primary (Grey) Reports Theses E-mails Conference
reports Company reports Some government
publications Unpublished manuscripts

• Secondary
• Newspapers
• Books
• Journals
• Internet
• Some government publications

Tertiary (Search tools) Indexes Abstracts Catalogu
es Encyclopedias Dictionaries Bibliographies Citat
ion indexes
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Planning the literature search

• Define the parameters of your search language,
  subject area, business sector, geographical area,
  publication period, literature type
• Generate key words and search terms
• Discuss your ideas as widely as possible

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Defining parameters

• Language of publication (English)
• Subject area (Accountancy)
• Business sector
• Geographical area (Europe)
• Publication period (last 10 years)
• Literature type (journals and magazines)

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Generating key words (search terms)

• Discussion with colleagues, tutor, librarians
• Initial reading
• Dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopaedias,
  handbooks
• Brainstorming
• Relevance trees

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Relevance trees

• Look similar to an organizational chart
• Hierarchical graph-like arrangements of
  headings and sub-headings, describing your
  research questions and objectives and help you
  decide
• - which key words are relevant to your research
  questions and objectives
• - which areas you will search first and which
  later
• - which areas are more important they have
  more branches

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Relevance tree
Is there a link between benchmarking and TQM
Benchmarking (BM)
TQM
Links between BM and TQM
ISO 9000
Precise standard
Benchmarking theory
Benchmarking practice
Implementation
Techniques
Types
Case studies
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Conducting the search

• Searching using tertiary sources
• Obtaining relevant literature referenced in books
  and journal articles you have already read
• Scanning and browsing secondary literature in the
  library of the University
• Searching using Internet

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Evaluating the literature

• Assessing the relevance take notes for the
  relevance of each item and the reasons why you
  come to this conclusion this will be included
  as a part of your critical review
• Assessing sufficiency ask your project tutor
  for help about both quality and quantity of
  literature read
• Referencing and bibliography
• - The Harvard system
• - The APA system
• - Footnotes (Vancouver system)

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Evaluating the literature

• How recent is the item?
• Is the item likely to have been superseded?
• Is the context sufficiently different to make it
  marginal to your research?
• Have you seen references to this item in other
  items that were useful?
• Does the item support or contradict your
  arguments?
• What are the methodological omissions within the
  work?
• Is the precision sufficient?

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Recording the literatureHarvard system

• Saunders, M., Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (2003)
  Research Methods for Business Students (3rd
  edition), London Pitman.