The document provides an overview of conducting a literature review for business research. It defines what a literature review is and its purpose, which includes defining and limiting the research problem, placing the study in historical context, avoiding unnecessary replication, selecting research methods, relating findings to previous knowledge, and developing hypotheses. It also discusses evaluating literature sources for relevance and reliability. The document outlines the structure, organization, and writing of a literature review, including making links between studies, using summary tables, and citing sources.

1. Business Research
(Lecture 5)
Muhammad Fahid Saleem

2. Literature Review
 A body of text that aims to review the critical points of
current knowledge on a particular topic.
 A comprehensive survey of publications in a specific field of
study or related to a particular line of research.
 Non-quantitative summary of existing published literature
made by experts who select and weigh findings available from
the literature.
 A summary and interpretation of research findings reported in
the literature.
 A process and documentation of the current relevant
research literature regarding a particular topic or subject of
interest.

3. Purpose of Literature Review
1. Define and Limit Problem
 Develop familiarity and clarity with the topic
 Limit the research to a subtopic within the larger body of
knowledge.
2. Place study in historical perspective
 Analysis of way in which study relates to existing knowledge
3. Avoid unintentional and unnecessary replication
 Awareness of prior studies so as to avoid unneeded replication
 Replication is reasonable if it is needed to verify prior results,
investigate results that failed to be significant, or relate problem
to a specific site

4. Purpose of Literature Review (Cont.)
1. Select promising methods and measures
 Knowledge of and insight into specific research designs for
investigating a problem
 Awareness of specific instruments, sampling procedures, and
data analyses
2. Relate findings to previous knowledge and suggest
future research needs
 Relating prior research to what is known places current study
in perspective
 This knowledge allows researcher to focus problem on what is
not known
3. Develop research hypotheses
 Suggestions for specific research hypotheses

5. What is Literature
 Books
 Journals
 Conference Papers
 Theses
 Bibliographies
 Internet
 Indexes/Abstracts
 Audio-Visual material
 Government Reports
 News Papers
 Grey Literature
The Fourth International Conference on Grey Literature in Washington, DC, in
October 1999 defined grey literature as follows: "That which is produced on all
levels of government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic
formats, but which is not controlled by commercial publishers”.
Grey literature is not a specific genre of document, but a specific, non-commercial
means of disseminating information. (Wikipedia)

6. Three types of literature
Primary Secondary Tertiary
Reports Newspapers Indexes
Thesis Books Abstracts
Emails Journals Dictionaries
Conference Reports Internet Bibliographies
Company Reports Some Govt. Publications Catalogues

7. Online Searching Techniques
 Boolean Operators
 Phrase Searching
 Truncation/Wildcard
 Proximity Searching
 Focusing/Limiting a Search

8. Boolean Operators
Boolean operators allow you to join terms together, widen a search or exclude
terms from your search results. This means you can be more precise in locating
your information.
AND
OR
NOT

9. Boolean Operators at Emerald

10. Phrase Searching
 It narrows your search down by searching for an exact
phrase or sentence.
 It is particularly useful when searching for a title or a
quotation.
 Usually quotation marks are used to connect the words
together.
 For example
“Towards a healthier Pakistan”

11. Truncation / Wildcard
 These search techniques retrieve information on similar
words by replacing part of the word with a symbol usually a *
or ?.
 However, different databases use different symbols, so check
what is used.
 In truncation the end of the word is replaced.
 For example physiother* will retrieve physiotherapy, physiotherapeutic,
physiotherapist and so on.
 In wildcard searching, letters from inside the word are
replaced.
 For example wom*n will retrieve the terms woman and women.

12. Proximity Searching
 It looks for documents where two or more separately
matching term occurrences are within a specified
distance, where distance is the number of intermediate
words or characters
 For example
 Term A NEAR Term B
 Term A ADJ Term B

13. Focusing / Limiting a Search
There are many ways to focus your search and all search tools
offer different ways of doing this. Some of the ways of limiting
your search are as follows:
 Date
 Language
 Place
 Publication type
 Age groups
 Type of material e.g. you could just need to find case studies

14. General Search Engines
 Google
 Yahoo
 AltaVista
 FAST Search
 MSN Search
 Lycos
 Excite

15. Scholarly Search Engines
 Google Scholar
 Infomine
 Librarians’ Internet Index
 Intute
 Pinakes
 Business Research
 ISI Web of Science

16. Subject Directories
Also called Information Gateways and Virtual Libraries
 Yahoo Directory
 Google Directory
 Librarians’ Internet Index
 About.com
 Infomine
 The WWW Virtual Library
 Specialized Subject Directories
 Abi Logic
 Solid Crawler
 Academic Info
 SOSIG - Social Science Information Gateway

17. Electronic Theses and Dissertations - ETDs
 Networked Digital Library of Theses and
Dissertations
 Catalog of theses and doctoral dissertations contributed by
some 176 universities and 27 institutions worldwide
 British Library EThOS
 250,000+ theses of British universities
 Many are free
 Proquest Dissertations & Theses Database
 World’s most comprehensive collection of dissertations
and theses with over 2.7 million titles

18. Online Databases
 Bibliographic databases
 ERIC, Agricola, Medline, EconLit, PsychINFO
 Numeric databases
 Stat-USA, UN Common Database
 Full text databases
 ScienceDirect, Emerald, JSTOR

19. Free e-books
 Gigapedia
 300,000+ books, the largest e-book repository
 The Online Books Page
 35,000+ books
 Project Gutenberg
 30,000+ books
 Internet Public Library
 20,000+ books

20. HEC – Online Resources
 National Digital Library
 Over 30 databases with over 23,000 journals
 Accessible by 250 institutions in Pakistan
 50,000 e-books
 Links to open access resources
 Pakistan Research Repository
 Full text of over 1800 Pakistani doctoral theses

21. Evaluating Information Sources

22. Evaluating information sources for
relevance – Book
 Skim its index for your key words, then skim the pages on
which those words occur.
 Skim the first and last paragraphs in chapters that use a lot
of your key words.
 Skim introduction, summary chapters, and so on.
 Skim the last chapter, especially the first and last two or
three pages.
 If the source is a collection of articles, skim the editor’s
introduction.
 Check the bibliography for titles relevant to your topic.

23. Evaluating information sources for
relevance – Article
 Read the abstract.
 Skim the introduction and conclusion, or if they are not
marked by headings, skim the first six or seven
paragraphs and the last four or five.
 Skim for section headings, and read the first and last
paragraphs of those sections.
 Check the bibliography for titles relevant to your topic.

24. Evaluating information sources for
relevance – Online
 If it looks like a printed article, follow the steps for a
journal article.
 Skim sections labeled “introduction,” “overview,”
“summary,” or the like. If there are none, look for a
link labeled “About the Site” or something similar.
 If the site has a link labeled “Site Map” or “Index,”
check it for your key words and skim the referenced
pages.
 If the site has a “search” resource, type in your key
words.

25. Use colour post-its to mark relevance
Red - high relevance
Blue – medium relevance
Yellow – low relevance

26. Evaluating information sources for reliability
 Audience
 Authority
 Bias
 Currency
 Scope

27. Evaluating information sources for
reliability (Cont.)
 Audience
 What age group/education level/political affiliation/etc. is the
audience?
 Is this for a person with in-depth knowledge or a layperson?
 Authority
 Does the author’s name appear on the Web page?
 What are his/her credentials?
 Does the author provide contact information?
 Bias
 Is the source objective?
 Could the writer or the organization’s affiliation put a different spin
on the information presented?
 What is the purpose of the source?

28. Evaluating information sources for
reliability (Cont.)
 Currency
 When was the work published?
 When was the work last updated?
 How old are the sources or items in the bibliography?
 How current is the topic?
 If a Web page, do the links work?
 Scope
 What does/doesn’t the work cover?
 Is it an in-depth study (many pages) or superficial (one page)?
 Are sources and statistics cited?
 If a site, does it offer unique info not found in any other
source?

29. Writing and Presenting Literature
Review

30. Literature Review (How)
 Points to note & report about any study
 Main objectives and Sub-objectives
 Any significant Theory in LR
 Methodology
 Population
 Sample
 Limitations
 Nature of Data
 Dimensions
 Variables etc.
 Statistical Test Applied
 Findings

31. Structure of review articles
 Literature reviews are in reality a type of research
 Should conform to the anatomy of a typical scholarly
article
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Methods
 Results
 Discussion
 Conclusion
 References

32. Structure of literature review
 Introduction
 Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such as the
central theme or organizational pattern.
 Body
 Contains your discussion of sources.
 Conclusions/Recommendations
 Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing literature so far.
Where might the discussion proceed?

33. Organization of literature review
 A general organization looks like a funnel
 Broader topics
 Subtopics
 Studies like yours

34. How to organize studies
 Chronological
 By publication date
 By trend
 Thematic
 A structure which considers different themes
 Methodological
 Focuses on the methods of the researcher, e.g., qualitative
versus quantitative approaches

35. Making links between studies
 Agreements
 Similarly, author B points to…
 Likewise, author C makes the case that…
 Author D also makes this point…
 Again, it is possible to see how author E agrees with
author D…
 Disagreements
 However, author B points to…
 On the other hand, author C makes the case that…
 Conversely, Author D argues…
 Nevertheless, what author E suggests…

36. Summary table
 It is useful to prepare.
 Such a table provides a quick overview that allows the
reviewer to make sense of a large mass of information.
 The tables could include columns with headings such as
 Author
 type of study
 Sample
 Design
 data collection approach
 key findings

37. Citation Sample Environment Method Conclusions
Atmospherics in service environments
Summary table of literature
Colour
Bellizzi, Crowley and 125 Adults Furniture store Laboratory Warm and cool colours created different emotional
Hasty (1983) experiment responses. Customers view red retail environments as
Photographic more negative and unpleasant than blue.
slide
simulations
Bellizzi, & Hite 70 Adult women Televisions Laboratory Study based on PAD affect measures and approach-
(1992) 107 Students shown with experiments avoidance behaviours.
different colour Photographic More positive retail outcomes occurred in blue
backgrounds slide environments than red.
Furniture stores simulations
Music
Smith and Curnow 1100 Retail store Field Time in store reduced with loud music but level of sales
(1966) Supermarket experiment did not.
shoppers
Milliman (1982) 216 Shoppers Supermarket Field The tempo of background music influenced the pace at
experiment which customers shopped. Slow tempo music slowed
customers down but resulted in increased volume of
sales.
Hui, Dubé and Chebat 116 Students Bank branch Laboratory The positive impact of music on approach behaviours is
(1997) - waiting for experiment mediated by an emotional evaluation of the environment
service. Video and the emotional response to waiting. Pleasurable music
simulation produced longer perceived waiting times.
Lighting
Areni and Kim (1994) 171 Shoppers Wine store Field The investigation found that brighter in-store lighting
experiment influenced shoppers to examine and handle more of the
merchandise in the store
Summers and Hebert 2367 Customers Hardware store Field Confirmed Areni and Kims (1994) results. Increased
(2001) Apparel store experiment levels of lighting will produce arousal and pleasure and
increase the approach behaviours of customers.
37

38. Citation styles
 Information prominent citation
Example:
 For viscoelastic fluids, the behaviour of the time-dependent stresses in
the transient shear flows is also very important (Boger et al., 1974).
 Author prominent citation
Examples:
 Close (1983) developed a simplified theory using an analogy between
heat and mass transfer and the equivalent heat transfer only case.
 Several authors have suggested that automated testing should be
more readily accepted (Balcer, 1989; Stahl, 1989; Carver & Tai,
1991).

39. Active or passive voice
 You should use, where appropriate, both active and
passive voice
 As a general rule, use active voice unless there is good
reason not to

40. Reporting verbs
 Argue  Note
 Assert  Object
 Assume  Observe
 Challenge  Persuade
 Claim  Propose
 Contend  Prove
 Contradict  Purport
 Describe  Recommend
 Dispute  Refute
 Emphasize  Reject
 Establish  Remark
 Examine  Suggest
 Find  Support
 Maintain

41. Verb tenses – Present
 A statement about what the thesis, chapter or section
does
Examples:
 This thesis presents a report of an investigation into …….
 This chapter thus provides a basis for the next.
 In this section, the results from the first set of experiments are reported.
 A statement of a generally accepted scientific fact
Examples:
 There are three factors that control the concentration of aluminum in
seawater.
 The finite rate coefficients have an effect on heat transfer through a
horizontal porous layer.

42. Verb tenses – Present
 A review of current research work, or research work
of immediate relevance to your study.
Example:
 Schulze (2002) concludes that hydraulic rate has a significant effect on
future performance.
 Comments, explanations and evaluative statements
made by you when you are reviewing previous studies.
Examples:
 Therefore, this sequential approach is impractical in the real world where
projects are typically large and the activities from one stage may be carried
out in parallel with the activities of another stage.
 The reason for this anomalous result is that the tests were done at low
hydraulic rates at which the plastic packing was not completely wetted.

43. Verb tenses – Past
 Report the contents, findings or conclusions of
past research
Examples:
 Haberfield (1998) showed that the velocity of many enzyme
reactions was slowed down if the end product had an increased
paramagnetism.
 Allington (1999) found that the temperatures varied
significantly over time.

44. Verb tenses – Present perfect
 In citations where the focus is on the research area of
several authors
Examples:
 Several studies have provided support for the suggestion that the amount
of phonological recoding that is carried out depends on orthographic depth
(Frost, 1994; Smart et al, 1997; Katz & Feldman, 2001, 2002).
 Joint roughness has been characterized by a number of authors (Renger,
1990; Feker & Rengers, 1997; Wu & Ali, 2000).
 To generalize about the extent of the previous
research
Examples:
 Many studies have been conducted in this field.
 Few researchers have examined this technique.
 There has been extensive research into.........

45. The Writing Process
 Rough Draft
 Final Draft
 Edit
 Edit Again

46. Show others
Have someone else look at your literature review for
 Clarity
 Can they understand what you’re trying say?
 Flow
 Does the organization make sense?
 Completeness
 Are there areas left out?
 Questions left unanswered?
 Statements without citations?

47. A Good Literature Review is:
 Focused - The topic should be narrow. You should only present ideas and
only report on studies that are closely related to topic.
 Concise - Ideas should be presented economically. Don’t take any more
space than you need to present your ideas.
 Logical - The flow within and among paragraphs should be a smooth,
logical progression from one idea to the next
 Developed - Don’t leave the story half told.
 Integrative - Your paper should stress how the ideas in the studies are
related. Focus on the big picture. What commonality do all the studies
share? How are some studies different than others? Your paper should
stress how all the studies reviewed contribute to your topic.
 Current - Your review should focus on work being done on the cutting
edge of your topic

48. Pitfalls
 Vagueness due to too much or inappropriate
generalizations
 Limited range
 Insufficient information
 Irrelevant material
 Omission of contrasting view
 Omission of recent work

49. Common errors in reviewing literature
 Hurrying through review to get started could mean
that you will miss something that will improve your
research.
 Relying too heavily upon secondary sources.
 Concentrating on findings rather than methods.
 Overlooking sources other than academic journals.
Don’t forget newspaper articles, magazines, blogs,
etc.
 Searching too broad or too narrow of a topic.
 Inaccuracy in the compiling of bibliographic
information.

50. When should I cite (Other than literature
Review)?
Is it your idea? Yes
NO
Is it common knowledge? Do not cite
No
Cite it!!
50

51. Performance Appraisal (Sequence)
 Introduction (Introductory remarks about)
 History and philosophy of …..
 Reasons for (Importance) ………
 Trends in (Global & Subcontinent)
 History & Trends in Punjab (Pak)
 The Act or Policy of……
 Problems and Issues in ……
 Gaps in the Literature
 Your Objective