CHAPTER 3

MAN 303
Spring 2023
Critically reviewing the literature
three ways to use literature in your research projectю
1. for the preliminary search that helps you to generate and refine your research ideas and draft your
research proposal,
2. often referred to as the critical review or critical literature review, provides the context and
theoretical framework for your research,
3. to place your research findings within the wider body of knowledge and forms part of your
discussion chapter.

■ You need to show you understand your field and its key theories, concepts and ideas, as well as
the major issues and debates about your topic.
■ In doing this you are establishing what research has been published in your chosen area and, if
possible, identifying any other research that might currently be in progress.
■ Although the literature you read will enhance your subject knowledge and help you to clarify your
research question(s) further, only those that are relevant to your research will be included in your
review. This process is called ‘critically reviewing the literature’.
3.2 The critical review
The purpose and types of critical review
types of review:
■ Integrative review, critiques and synthesises representative literature on a topic in an integrative
way to generate new frameworks and perspectives on a topic.
■ Historical review, which examines the evolution of research on a particular topic over a period
of time to place it in an historical context.
■ Theoretical review, which examines the body of theory that has accumulated in regard to an
issue, concept, theory or phenomenon. Theoretical reviews are often used to establish a lack of
appropriate theories or reveal that current theories are inadequate for explaining new or
emerging research problems.
■ Methodological review, which focuses on research approaches, strategies, data collection
techniques or analysis procedures, rather than the research findings. Methodological reviews are
often used to provide a framework for understanding a method or methodology and to enable
researchers to draw on a wide body of methodological knowledge.
■ Systematic Review, which uses a comprehensive pre-planned strategy for locating, critically
appraising, analysing and synthesising existing research that is pertinent to a clearly formulated
research question to allow conclusions to be reached about what is known.
■ critical review will help you to develop a good understanding and insight into relevant
previous research and the trends that have emerged.
■ you should not expect to start your research without first reading what other researchers
in your area have already found out.
■ deductive approach - research projects in which you will use the literature to help you to
identify theories and ideas that you will test using data.
■ inductive approach - research projects in which you will be planning to explore your
data and to develop theories from them that you will subsequently relate to the literature in
subsequent discussion.
■ It is impossible to review every single piece of the literature before collecting your data.
■ review the most relevant and significant research on your topic.
■ If your review is effective, new findings and theories will emerge that neither you nor
anyone else has thought about (
■ when you write your critical review you will need to show how your findings and the
theories you have developed, or are using, relate to the research that has gone before.
■ This will help you demonstrate that you are familiar with what is already known about
your research topic
Adopting a critical perspective in your
reading
■ critical reading - two: the capacity to evaluate what you read and the capacity to relate
what you read to other information’.

■ five critical questions to employ in critical reading.

1. Why am I reading this?
2. What is the author trying to do in writing this?
3. What is the writer saying that is relevant to what I want to find out?
4. How convincing is what the author is saying?
5. What use can I make of the reading?
The content of the critical review
■ review will need to evaluate the research that has already been undertaken in the
area of your research project, show and explain the relationships between published
research findings and reference the literature in which they were reported.
■ draw out the key points and trends and present them in a logical way which also
shows the relationship to your own research.
■ In doing this you will provide readers of your project report with the necessary
background knowledge to your research question(s) and objectives and establish the
boundaries of your own research.
■ Your review will also enable the readers to see your ideas against the background of
previous published research in the area. This does not necessarily mean that your ideas
must extend, follow or approve those set out in the literature. You may be highly critical
of the earlier research reported in the literature and seek to question or revise it through
your own research.
■ justify your own ideas through clear argument and with reference to the literature
critical review include at least:
 to include the key academic theories within your chosen area of research that are
pertinent to or contextualise your research question;
 to demonstrate that your knowledge of your chosen area is up to date;
 to enable those reading your project report to find the original publications which you
cite through clear complete referencing.
What is really meant by being ‘critical’
about the content
■ critique of rhetoric - appraising or evaluating a problem with effective use of language.
■ critique of tradition - using other literature sources to question and
■ critique of authority - the dominant view portrayed in the literature you are reading
■ critique of objectivity - the knowledge and information you are discussing are not value-
free.

■ Part of this judgement will inevitably mean being able to identify the most relevant and
significant theories and recognised experts.
■ For some research topics there will be a pre-existing, clearly developed theoretical base.
■ For others you will need to integrate a number of different theoretical strands to
develop your understanding.
Structuring and drafting the critical
review
■ The literature review that you write for your project report should be a description
and critical analysis of what other authors have written. To juxtapose different
authors’ ideas and form your own opinions and conclusions based on these.
■ Three common structures of critical review :
 a single chapter;
 a series of chapters (for example in a larger research project);
 occurring throughout the project report as you tackle various issues (for example where
your research project is conducted inductively).
mistakes
■ A common mistake with critical literature reviews, is that they become uncritical listings of previous
research.
■ Often they are little more than annotated bibliographies, individual items being selected on the
subjective findings and conclusions of the researcher.
■ It is crucial that you show discernment in your literature review by including earlier key research of
relevance to your own work, representing this work correctly and referencing it accurately.
■ They just describe what each author has written, one author after another
■ It is much easier to be critical (and more interesting to read) if you take a thematic approach comparing
and, where necessary, contrasting the authors who discuss each theme.

1. start at a more general level before narrowing down to your specific research question(s) and objectives;
2. provide a brief overview of key ideas and themes;
3. summarise, compare and contrast the research of the key authors;
4. narrow down to highlight previous research work most relevant to your own research;
5. provide a detailed account of the findings of this research and show how they are related;
6. highlight those aspects where your own research will provide fresh insights;
7. lead the reader into subsequent sections of your project report, which explore these issues
3.3 Literature sources

The literature sources you are likely to make most use of are often referred to as:
 secondary literature sources - being formally published items such as journals and
books;
 grey (or primary) literature sources - being items produced by all levels of
government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, but
which are not controlled by commercial publishers; including materials such as
reports and conference proceedings.
 Table 3.1 Main literature sources, p 84.
 Table 3.2 Online databases, portals and their coverage, p.88
3.4 Planning your literature search
strategy
■ relevant and up-to-date literature.
■ Most students have found their literature search a time-consuming process, which takes far longer than expected.
■ Time spent planning will be repaid in time saved when searching for relevant literature.
■ Beware, of information overload!
■ One of the easiest ways to avoid this is to start the main search for your critical review with clearly defined
research question(s), objectives and outline proposal
■ search strategy
 the parameters of your search;
 the search terms and phrases you intend to use;
 the online databases and search engines you intend to use;
 the criteria you intend to use to select the relevant and useful studies from all the items you find.

■ such a planned approach is important as it forces you to think carefully about your research strategy and
justify, at least to yourself, why you are doing what you are doing.
Defining the parameters of your search

■ language of publication (e.g. English);

■ subject area (e.g. accountancy);
■ business sector (e.g. manufacturing);
■ geographical area (e.g. Europe);
■ publication period (e.g. the last 10 years);
■ literature type (e.g. refereed journals and books).
Generating your search terms

■ The identification of search terms is the most important part of planning your search for
relevant literature. Search terms are the basic terms that describe your research
question(s) and objectives, and will be used to search the tertiary literature.
 Discussion
 Initial reading, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, handbooks and thesauruses
 Brainstorming
 Relevance trees
3.5 Conducting your literature search

■ searching using online databases;

■ obtaining relevant literature referenced in books and journal articles you have already
read;
■ scanning and browsing secondary literature in your library;
■ general online searching.
Searching using online databases

 Full-text online databases

 Abstracts
 Indexes

■ key words
■ Your access to the majority of online databases will be paid for by a subscription from
your university
Searching

1. make a list of the search terms that describe your research question(s) and objectives;
2. search appropriate online databases;
3. note precise details, including the search strings used, of the actual searches you have undertaken for
each database;
4. note the full reference of each item found; this can normally be done by importing the references
into software for managing bibliographies, such as Endnote™ or Reference Manager™ or research
tools such as ‘Mendeley’ or ‘Zotero’.
5. Wherever possible import the article into your bibliography or research tool or, alternatively,
download it in PDF format and save it on your USB mass storage device using the author, date and a
brief description as a filename. This will help you locate it later. For example, an article by Mark on
the use of web questionnaires might be saved using the filename:
Saunders[2012]web_questionnaire.pdf
Browsing and scanning

To make browsing and scanning easier you should:

 identify when those journals that are the most relevant are published and, where
possible, ensure you receive email ‘alerts’ of their tables of contents (TOCs);
 identify those professional journals that are most relevant and regularly browse them;
 browse new book displays in libraries;
 scan new book reviews in journals and newspapers;
 scan publishers’ new book catalogues where available;
 discuss your research with your project tutor and librarians, who may be aware of other
relevant literature
General online searching

keep full details of the searches you have undertaken, making a note of:
■ the search tool used (often referred to as search engines)
 Table 3.4 Selected online search tools and their coverage, p.100,
■ the precise search undertaken;
■ the date when the search was undertaken;
■ the total number of items retrieved.
3.6 Obtaining and evaluating the
literature
Evaluating the literature

■ beware the quantity of material is enormous and the quality highly variable.
■ ‘How do I know what I’m reading is relevant?’
■ ‘How do I assess the value of what I read?’
■ ‘How do I know when I’ve read enough?’
Assessing relevance

■ Assessing the relevance of the literature you have collected to your research depends on your
research question(s) and objectives.
■ It helps to have thought about and made a note of the criteria for inclusion and exclusion prior to
assessing each item of literature.
■ Try to read all the literature that is most closely related to your research question(s) and objectives.
■ The literature that is most likely to cause problems is that which is less closely related.
■ For some research questions, particularly for new research areas, there is unlikely to be much
closely related literature and so you will have to review more broadly.
■ For research questions where research has been going on for some years, you may be able to focus
on more closely related literature.
■ Remember to make notes about the relevance (and value) of each item as you read it and the
reasons why you came to your conclusion.
Assessing value

■ Assessing the value of the literature you have collected is concerned with the quality
of the research that has been undertaken.
■ It is concerned with issues such as methodological rigour, theory robustness and the
quality of the reasoning or arguments.
■ For refereed journal articles (and some book chapters), the review process means that
peers have assessed the quality of research and suggested amendments before they
are published.
■ Rank peer-reviewed journals according to their quality; higher rankings indicating
better quality journals.
■ There is a circularity in the argument that quality journals contain quality papers which
are known to be quality papers because they appear in quality journals!
Assessing sufficiency

■ Your assessment of whether you have read a sufficient amount is even more complex.
■ It is impossible to read everything, as you would never start to write your critical
review, let alone your project report.
■ Yet you need to be sure that your critical review discusses what research has already
been undertaken and that you have positioned your research project in the wider
context, citing the main writers in the field.
■ One clue that you have achieved this is when further searches provide mainly
references to items you have already read.
3.7 Recording the literature

■ to making notes, three sets of information you need to record.

1. bibliographic details;
2. brief summary of content;
3. supplementary information.

■ Table 3.5 Bibliographic details required, p.107

3.8 Using Systematic Review

■ Systematic Review is a process for reviewing the literature using a comprehensive

preplanned strategy to locate existing literature, evaluate the contribution, analyse
and synthesise the findings and report the evidence to allow conclusions to be
reached about what is known and, also, what is not known
■ Systematic Review has been used widely to evaluate specific medical treatments;
■ Systematic Reviews usually, although not exclusively, focus on policy or practice
questions such as the effectiveness of a particular intervention and the associated
mechanisms with an emphasis on informing action.
■ Systematic Review is only suitable for some research projects,emphasising that it is
time-consuming and the need to involve others in the process.
3.9 Plagiarism
■ There is the argument that plagiarism is an attack upon values of ethical, proper, decent
behaviour – values consistent with a respect for others.
■ it is presenting work or ideas as if they are your own when in reality they are the work or ideas
of someone else, and failing to acknowledge the original source.
1. Stealing material from another source and passing it off as your own, for example:
 buying a paper from a research service, essay bank or term-paper mill (either specially written for
the individual or pre-written);
 copying a whole paper from a source text without proper acknowledgement;
 submitting another student’s work with or without that student’s knowledge (e.g. by copying a file);
2. Submitting a paper written by someone else (e.g. a peer or relative) and passing it off as your own;
3. copying sections of material from one or more source texts, supplying proper documentation
(including the full reference) but leaving out quotation marks, thus giving the impression that the
material has been paraphrased rather than directly quoted;
4. paraphrasing material from one or more source texts without supplying appropriate
documentation.
Task

■ Read box 3.6, p 81

■ Go to the website of the general search engine Google ( www.google.com ). Use the
specialised search services such as ‘Google Scholar’ and ‘Google Finance’ to search for
articles on a topic which you are currently studying as part of your course.
a. Make notes regarding the types of items that each of these services finds.
b. How do these services differ?
c. Which service do you think is likely to prove most useful to your research project?
■ Critically review your literature for the project.
■ Case 3, After the crisis: a systematic and critical review, p. 117