RESEARCH DESIGN:

Literature Review, Theoretical

Framework, and Hypotheses
Development
 Literature Review
• Is an integral part of the research process.
• Go thru existing literature to acquaint yourself with the
available body of knowledge in your area of interest.
• Helps to establish the theoretical roots of your study
• Clarify your ideas and focus to research problem.
• Helps you to establish the links between what your are
proposing to examine and what has already been studied.
• Develop and improve research methodology
• Enhance and consolidate your own knowledge base
• Contextualize your findings by integrating your findings with
the existing body of knowledge (to support or contradict
earlier research).
Bridging clarity and focus to your research
problem
• Only undertake a literature search with some idea of the
problem or what you wish to investigate.
• Helps you understand the subject area better.
• Helps you to conceptualize your research problem clearly and
precisely.
• Learn aspect of your subject area that have been examined by
others.
• Identify what suggestions they have made what gaps they have
identified.
• Gain better insights into your own research questions.
• Identify your research gaps in the existing body of knowledge
thereby enhancing its relevance.
 Improve Research Methodology
• Tells if others have used procedures and
methods similar to the ones that you are
proposing.
• What procedures and methods they are
proposing.
• What problems do they encounter.
• Helps you to identify and select the best
methodology that suited your research
questions.
 Broadening your knowledge base in your
research area

• Read widely around the subject area.

• Know what other researchers have found in
regards to the same or similar research questions
• Be able to identify the unit of analysis.
• Be able to identify the theories that previous
researchers have used.
• Understand how your findings fit into the existing
body of knowledge.
 Contextualize your findings
• How you findings fit the existing body of
knowledge?
• How do answers to your research questions
compare with what others have found?
• What contribution you have made to the
existing body of knowledge?
• Important to place your findings in the context
of what is already known in your field of
inquiry.
 How to review the literature
• Search for the existing literature in your area
of study
• Review the selected literature.
• Develop a theoretical framework.
• Develop a conceptual framework.
 A Framework
After completing you preliminary information
gathering, literature review search and defining the
research problem, you are ready to develop a
framework.
• A framework offers a model of how to make logical
sense of the relationships among the several factors
that have been identified as important to the problem.
• Framework discusses the interrelationships among the
concepts and/or variables that are deemed to be
integral to the dynamic of the situation being
investigated.
• Explain the theory underlying the concepts.
 Why the need to a framework?
• Helps to formulate research questions.
• Develop research objectives to examine whether
the relationships formulated are valid or not.
• Identify concepts and variables that are
important for the research.
• In sum, it defines concepts, explain theories
underlying the concepts, elaborate the
relationships, describe the nature and the
direction of the relationship.
Process of Building Theoretical Framework
1. Discovering that the problem you wish to
investigate has its roots in a number of theories
such as Resource Based View Theory, Economic
Theory, and Transaction Cost Theory.
2. Coming up with a theory that provides an
explanation for the relationships between the
variables in your model.
3. Introducing definitions of the concepts or
variables in your model.
4. Developing a conceptual model that provides a
descriptive representation of your theory.
 Conceptual Framework
• Is the basis of your research problem.
• Stems from the theoretical framework and
usually focuses on the sections which become
the basis or your study.
• Describes the aspects you selected from the
theoretical framework to become the basis of
your enquiry.
 Concepts
• Is an idea expressed as a symbol or in words.
• Make sure that the concept is
operationalizable.
• If the concepts are difficult to operationalize,
you will have to define these issues as clearly
as possible, acknowledge that the description
of the concepts have not yet been
discovered.
 Variables
• Anything that can take on differing or varying
values.
• Can be observed and measured.
• Can differ at various time for the same object
or at the same time for different object.
• Examples are production units, absenteeism,
motivation, psychological contract violation,
trust, human capital, individual capabilities.
 Types of Variables
• The independent variable (also known as the
predictor variable)
• The dependent variable (also known as the
criterion variable)
• The moderating variable
• The intervening variable
 Independent Variable (IV)
• Influence the DV in either positive or negative
way.
• When the IV is present, the DV also is present.
• Each unit of increase in IV, there is an increase
or decrease in DV.
• To establish causal relationship, the IV is
manipulated.
 Dependent Variable (DV)
• The variable of primary interest to the researcher.
• Goal is to understand and describe the dependent
variable, or to explain its variability or predict it.
• Main variable the lends itself as a viable factor for
investigation.
• Example: A Human Resource director is concerned
that the employees are not loyal to the organization
and in fact, switch their loyalties to other
institutions.
DV in this case is organizational loyalty.
 Examples

New Product Share Market

Success Price

IV DV

Managerial Values Power Distance

IV DV
 Moderating Variable
• Has strong contingent effect on the IV and DV
relationship.
• The present of the third variable (the
moderating variable) modifies the original
relationship between the IV and DV and the
relationship holds true for some categories of
the sample but not for other categories.
 Example
Number of books Reading abilities

IV DV

Parents’
literacy

Moderating variable
 Intervening Variable
• One that surfaces between the time the IV
operates to influence the DV and its impact on
the DV.

• It is both the product IV and a cause of the DV

• Thus, a time dimension to the intervening

variable.
 Example

Time: t1 t2 t3

Creative Organizational
Workforce diversity
synergy effectiveness

IV INTERVENING DV
VARIABLE
 Hypothesis
• A tentative, yet testable, statement which predict
what you expect to ding in your empirical data.
• A logically conjectured relationship between two
or more variables expressed in the form of
testable statement.
• Testing the hypotheses and confirming the
conjectured relationship, it is expected that the
solutions can found to correct the problem
encountered.
 Hypothesis cont…
• There are 3 types of hypothesis:
– If-then statement
– Directional and non-directional
– Null and alternate
 If-then statement
– Is a testable statement of the relationship
between variables.
– Test whether there are differences between two
groups (or more) with respect to any variable or
variables.

H1: Employees who are more healthy will take sick leave less

frequently.
H1: If employees are more healthy, then they will take sick
leave less frequently.
 Directional and non-directional hypotheses

 Directional
– Relationship between two variables or comparing two
groups, terms such as positive, negative, more than or less
than are used.
– The direction of the relationship between the variables is
indicated.
– Whenever the direction of the relationship is known through
previous studies, it is better to develop a directional
hypotheses for clearer discussions.
H1: The greater the stress experienced in the job, the lower
the job satisfaction of employees.
H1: Women are more motivated than men.
 Directional and non-directional hypotheses

 Non-directional hypotheses
– Postulate a relationship or difference, but offer no indication of the
direction of these relationship of differences.
– Although there will be differences between two groups, we may not
able to say which group will be more and which less on the variable.
– This type of hypothesis is formulated because the relationship or
differences have never been explored and thus there is no basis for
indicating the direction or due to conflicting findings in previous
research studies on the variables.

H1: There is a relationship between age and job

satisfaction.
H1: There is a difference between culture of Western and
Asian employees.
 Null and alternate hypotheses

 Null hypothesis
– A proposition that states a definitive, exact relationship between two
variables. No (significant) relationship between two variables or no
(significant) difference between two groups.
– Is presumed true until statistical evidence in the form of a hypothesis
test indicated otherwise.
 Alternate hypothesis
– A statement expressing a relationship between two variables or
indicating differences between groups.

• Thus, Ho (null) hypothesis set up to be rejected in order to

support an alternate hypothesis Ha (alternate).

• Appropriate statistical test are t-test and F-test.

 Examples
 Null hypotheses
Ho: There is no relationship between stress experienced
on the job and the job satisfaction of employees.

 Alternate hypotheses
Ha: There is a relationship between stress experienced
on the job and the job satisfaction of employees.

Ho: p=0 (Null)

Ha: p≠0 (alternate)
 Examples
• The greater the extent of gender stereotyping in organizations,
the fewer will be the number of women at the top.
• Male managers have more access to critical information than
women manager in the same ranks.
• There will be a significant positive correlation between access
to information and chances for promotion to top level position.
• The greater the extent of gender-role stereotyping, the less
access there will be to critical information for women.
• Gender-role stereotyping and access to critical information will
both significantly explain the variance in promotional
opportunities for women to top-level positions.
Example of headings for literature review
• Introduction
• Resource based theory
• The theory of social capital
• Social capital in an organisational context
• The definition of social capital.
• The Dimension of social capital.
• Measurement of social capital.
• The definition of knowledge sharing
• Measurement of knowledge sharing.
• Relationship between social capital and knowledge sharing.
• Problems and issue in knowledge sharing
• Gaps in the literature