Lecture 6
• to appreciate the importance of a literature review
• to know what should be included in a literature review
• to be able to use the skills of critique and evaluation in the literature review
• to be aware of the links between literature, methods and analysis

Lecture 6
• recommended reading
• the importance of the literature review
• how your exploration fits with the known theory
• sources of theory and literature
• how to evaluate sources
• displaying the key skills in a literature review
• the academic funnel
• how much literature is required

Recommended reading:
Chapter 6: Theory and Literature, in the associated book:
Horn, R. (2009) Researching and Writing Dissertations .
London: CIPD

Work-alone experiential activity:
INVESTIGATING A TOPIC
Time allowed: 60 minutes’ preparation
3 minutes’ feedback
Choose a topic area related to your likely dissertation.
Spend exactly 60 minutes investigating the topic, using
20 minutes to read textbooks
20 minutes to read journal sources
20 minutes to search websites.
As you read, summarise your reading using a mind map.
Feedback to the group: show and talk about your mind map.

SUPPORTING AND EMBEDDING YOUR DISSERTATION
WITH KNOWN THEORY AND RESEARCH
Any approach or knowledge you bring to your research will have been discovered or learned in the process of your learning. The literature review must revisit this learning and test the accuracy of what is known, explore it critically, and evaluate its worth.
Your topic area will have been developed from what you know or what you have read. This reading may not have been critical and evaluative, but a literature review must be both of these things.

SUPPORTING AND EMBEDDING YOUR DISSERTATION
WITH KNOWN THEORY AND RESEARCH
As your reading, recording and thinking about known theory develops, the place of your research will be embedded in that reading and knowledge.
The knowledge as represented by theory, research and the critical writing of others will also support your research.
It is possible thus to think of your research as a pearl, slowly growing in an oyster – a small rock pool protects the oyster, and the rock pool is a small extension of a large ocean.
Your research as a pearl needs protection and support from a large and violent ocean of knowledge and activity: without protection it will be swept away.

PROVING YOU KNOW THE RESEARCH AREA
Your literature review will display to your tutors and other readers of your work that you know the theory and knowledge that applies to an area of research.
Even a cursory investigation of a topic should reveal the ‘common’ ways in which any phenomenon is analysed or grounded.
Every topic is located in a body of knowledge. Your knowledge of the area you are researching will be assessed when your dissertation is submitted, and the literature review is the ideal place to display that you are familiar with the body of knowledge related to your dissertation.

PROVIDING AN OPPORTUNITY TO DISPLAY THE
SKILLS OF ANALYSIS, CRITIQUE AND EVALUATION
As noted in Lecture 3, your dissertation will be assessed against a set of criteria that includes analysis, critique and evaluation.
The literature review provides an opportunity to display those skills and accrue marks for doing so.
Quickly review Chapter/Lecture 3 so that you are familiar with each of the skills.
Check the assessment criteria for dissertations.
Typically, critique, analysis and evaluation should take up about half the words in a literature review.

Group activity:
SKILLS MARK-UP
Work in groups of three
Time allowed: 40 minutes’ preparation
20 minutes’ feedback
Look at the section of literature you have been given.
Using three different-coloured highlighters, mark up areas that you consider are critical in red
analytical in green
evaluative in blue
Feedback: lay out the marked-up literature section displaying your coloured highlighting.

Skills mark-up Activity:
When you have finished the Skills mark-up Activity, according to the general rubric half the work should be highlighted.
• If more than half of the text is highlighted the work is consistently displaying the right level of critique, analysis and evaluation.
• If less than half the work is highlighted, you need to investigate which areas are not being displayed.
• It is relatively common in the literature section for the evaluative areas to be quite low, but the critique areas should be high, and the analysis area should represent at least 15% of your writing.

PROVIDING THE BUILDING-BLOCKS OF METHOD,
METHODOLOGY AND DATA ANALYSIS
As your literature review progresses, you will discover theory and other research that can lead directly or indirectly to other important areas of your dissertation.
The dominant philosophical approach will quickly become apparent in any study of literature around a topic.
For instance, if your topic is absence management, the associated knowledge and research that you investigate will have a predominantly deductive stance.
A deductive approach assumes and uses known facts and properties to form an argument or statement. Such an argument might be that lots of short-term absence corresponds to malingering.

PROVIDING THE BUILDING-BLOCKS OF METHOD,
METHODOLOGY AND DATA ANALYSIS
From the literature review the predominant approach will surface, but this approach does not have to be accepted.
It is possible to adopt the typical approach, or to reject it and argue that important new insights will arise if the opposite inductive approach is adopted for your study.
The important element is to be able to argue what the predominant approach is and why your work will adopt it or reject it.
In any research area there will have been studies that have developed a common method. The common approach can be accepted and used by your own research, or you can develop a new or hybrid method.

PROVIDING THE BUILDING-BLOCKS OF METHOD,
METHODOLOGY AND DATA ANALYSIS
In some areas there will be a well-developed research instrument – maybe a questionnaire or interview schedule.
If your research were to investigate stress at work, for instance, you would soon discover that there are a number of competing questionnaires to measure stress at work.
Using a well-developed instrument can have a lot of advantages. It often saves time because the instrument is already in existence and there will already be sets of data and analysis from other research. Your literature review should seek out these commonly-used methods – it shows that you are up to date with the area and it may also provide more reliable data and save time.

PROVIDING THE BUILDING-BLOCKS OF METHOD,
METHODOLOGY AND DATA ANALYSIS
The most likely source of this type of information is journal articles, but many of the professional websites such as those of the CIPD and the HSE have reports of commissioned research.
These have a lot of information about method and data analysis as well as the data results of the research.

PROVIDING THE BUILDING-BLOCKS OF METHOD,
METHODOLOGY AND DATA ANALYSIS
The literature will feature a range of ways in which data from a research in an area has been analysed.
Quantitative data obtained from research and the analysis of that data involving some commonly-used statistical tools are to be found in any journal article that represents quantitative research.
The analysis of qualitative data is a lot more varied. A literature review will discover a vast array of different methods, and therefore of data forms derived from qualitative research.
These varied data-gathering techniques give rise to a vast array of techniques of data analysis which are dealt with specifically in the next lecture.

For the majority of research on business, human resources and personal perspectives topics there is more literature than you will be able to read.
The literature review also reveals to the reader a lot about your thinking around a subject or topic.
For every source of information you come across you will make a decision about how useful the source is in developing both the research and your eventual argument.

You must select the sources you represent in the literature review carefully in order to display a wide range of approaches to your topic, a representative set of methods and data analysis, and a coherent and broad set of philosophical underpinnings.
Through this selection process a reader of your work will be able – easily – to read your stance on the topic area.
They will also read things into the literature you have included and those sources you have not included.

Take the example of absence management that was used before: there are lots of studies on this topic. If you include and comment on and critique a number of quantitative studies, the reader of your work will assume you are a numerate person, comfortable with interpreting and analysing quantitative data.
If on the other hand you do not represent any of the quantitative studies in your literature – even if you then argue that they do not assist the research – the reader will assume you are not numerate.
Your literature review will allow readers of your work to form an opinion about you as a researcher, and also allow your tutors to judge your work.

The literature review is the place to include any secondary sources that you will use in the research study.
You may be planning a comparative study of stress in one organisation – an approach to this would be to compare the organisation with a known group of people.
Secondary sources can also be used to support your argument, or in a reflective stance, to provide evidence of competing or different positions.

On the Health and Safety Executive’s website http://www.hse.gov.uk there are a set of Management
Standards – these suggest the use of the Indicator Tool.
If your research recommendations suggest some form of organisational monitoring, then the point is supported by the HSE Management Standards.
In business, HR and human research there is often extensive secondary research from reliable sources which can be used to inform the process of your own research.

PROVIDING A SYNTHESIS OF LITERATURE THAT CAN
BRING NEW INSIGHTS TO AN AREA OF RESEARCH
When you bring together the efforts of a literature review, it often provides a new insight or view of a research area.
The most potent elements for providing new insights are where ideas and approaches from one subject or research area are brought into another.
For instance, some researchers have brought in the concept of spirituality as a dimension of stress control and regulation. (Brian
Luke Seaward investigates this idea in his book Essentials of
Managing Stress .)

PROVIDING A SYNTHESIS OF LITERATURE THAT CAN
BRING NEW INSIGHTS TO AN AREA OF RESEARCH
For instance, some researchers have brought in the concept of spirituality as a dimension of stress control and regulation.
Brian Luke Seaward investigates this idea in his book Essentials of Managing Stress . If in your literature review you became aware of this book, you would possibly include elements of spirituality and soul in a research study on workplace stress.
In any literature review it is these unforeseen connections of ideas that create new ways of seeing a problem.
My illustrative example is meant to be dramatic – the synthesis you display in a dissertation need not be dramatic, but you should look out for new ways of combining ideas.

Work-alone reflective activity:
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
Time allowed: 20 minutes’ preparation
3 minutes’ feedback
Consider the following areas and indicate whether you feel each is a strength or a weakness of yours:
• finding information
• knowing what is important and what to include
• controlling the amount of information
• recording what has been read and what is important
• understanding the information you have found
• being critical of the theories, research, ideas
• evaluating the literature
Feedback to the group: ‘My academic strengths are . . . My academic weak areas are . . .’

Filters

THE ATTRIBUTES OF SYNTHESISED THEORY
• It is relevant to the aims and objectives and the study.
• It has been critically considered and regarded as good research, theory or data.
• It is selective – it only includes work directly related to the research.
• It is concise, from evaluation, using the best theory for the research study.
• It identifies and addresses gaps in the literature.
• It is comprehensive – it covers the important literature, while also being concise.
• It is well written and well argued.
• It is up to date in that it reviews the latest literature.

A strategy for searching the literature:
SYNTHESISED THEORY

Work-alone reflective activity:
THE USEFULNESS OF TEXTBOOKS
Time allowed: up to 90 minutes’ preparation
5 minutes’ feedback
Carry out the Reflective Activity entitled ‘The usefulness of textbooks’, as described on page 98 of the recommended reading text, and involving at least one other textbook.
Feedback to the group: ‘My reflections on this activity are
. . .’

Group activity:
CASE STUDY: Chris’s literature review
Work in groups of three
Time allowed: 60 minutes’ preparation
10 minutes’ feedback
Read the case study ‘Chris’s literature review’, and provide considered responses in the form of fourfold feedback, a five-point list, and an enumeration of ways to help, as requested at the end.
Feedback as three separate response elements, for collation with the responses of other groups prior to plenary discussion.

Work-alone activity:
METHODOLOGY
Preparation for the next learning session
Prepare two PowerPoint presentation slides setting out:
• the main method you intend to use for your dissertation
• a short critique of this method

on the learning points of this lecture
Try to address the areas in your writing of the literature review that the marker will regard as important.
Reflect on and develop a sound literature review process.
Use a wide range of literature sources to fully develop and evidence your academic argument.
Develop a critical and evaluative stance to the literature.
Recognise and develop the links between theory and methodology.