Systematic literature review
strict ‘search and analysis protocol’
Meta-analysis
this merges the results of earlier quantitative studies and presents a quantitative analysis for those
Narrative literature review
the goal is to inform research and demonstrate the gaps in the existing knowledge
Why a narrative literature review?
- Can help you to refine the research ideas
- To obtain insight on your topic/RQ
- To make sure you’re not repeating previously done work
- To position your own research within the existing body of knowledge
Two methods to organize your sourches
- Mindmap
- Relevance tree
Academic literature
About exploring the theory
Professional literature
About exploring the practice
E.g.: managerial problems
Types of academic literature
- Conference and working papers
- Articles in academic journals
- Academic books
- Theses and dissertations
Five steps systematic literature search
- Build an information pool
- Apply filters to reduce the pool size
- Perform a rough assessment of sources in order to reduce the pool size
- Analyze literature in the pool
- Refine filters or stop the search
Snowballing
- Reference tracking
- Citations tracking
Types of professional literature
- reports and white papers
- professional journals
- newspapers
- social media
Good literature quality
- Relevance
- Quality
- Sufficiency
Different types of claims
- Exploratory studies: how large/frequent/important certain things are
- Theory-building studies: how concepts relate to each other
- Theory-testing studies: wheter hypothesis needs to be rejected
- Decision science studies: what the optimal decision of system design is
Academic article quality
- Number of citations is high
- transparently
- reflections on methodological quality and demonstrated effort to ensure it
Academic journal quality
- check journal rating
- ERIM journal list
Professional literature quality
- Look at the author
- Does it discuss alternative points of view
- How is the language
Components of critical approach
- Critique of rhetoric
- Critique of tradition
- Critique of authority
- Critique of objectivity
Critique of rhetoric
assessing language and the validity of the argumentation
Critique of tradition
being skeptical of standard assumptions and views in literature review
Critique of authority
questioning commonly used theories or expert opinions and searching for alternative explanations/opinions
Critique of objectivity
recognizing potential bias and limitations in objectivity of sources and oneself while writing
Different forms of critical review
- Integrative review
- Theoretical review
- Historical review
- Methodological review
- Systematic review
Type 1 error
False positive
Type 2 error
False negative
