Literature Review

What is a literature review (or survey) paper?

State-of-the art literature review articles (or survey papers) examine the relevant academic literature published on a topic in an academic discipline (e.g., the concept of intuition in management research) or in a specific field of research.
They provide a structured overview of the extent literature on the selected topic, and discuss the promising new directions of research or offer some recommendations.

Literature review papers aim at producing a comprehensive review of a body of knowledge on a topic, and a critical appraisal of the past, present and future debates in the field.
They tell readers at least three things:
i) what do we already know about the topic or field of study?
ii) what can be do critically said about what we know?
iii) what are areas of research that are worth pursuing?

Literature review papers help researchers to gain a good understanding of a new field of study, or to update their knowledge of a field of study.

Types of literature review papers

There exist various types of review papers.
Researchers can adopt a historical approach and review a concept or a field of study over a period of time, starting with the seminal works and finishing with the most recent pieces of work.

They can conduct a systematic literature review.
In this case, they need to systematically identify and appraise all the articles available on a topic during a given period of time in a given set of journals.
Meta-analysis papers are systematic literature review papers that use statistical methods to appraise and synthesise the knowledge created on a specific topic.

How can I access the academic literature published on a topic?

Researchers access the relevant academic literature by searching electronic sources, such as EBSCO, the Web of Science, PROQUEST.
It is crucial to rigorously define the boundaries (or scope) of the review and to clearly explain the parameters of the search, the reasons for including or excluding some papers, etc.

It is useful to check the reference lists of the papers identified in order to be comprehensive.
Books, unpublished work and some academic papers are indeed not available on electronic sources.

Where to find literature review papers in the field of management research?

While most academic paper includes a literature review section, not all academic journals in the field of management publish literature review papers.

The International Journal of Management Reviews (IJMR) is a scientific journal dedicated to the publication of literature reviews in the field of management.

The Academy of Management Review (AMR) used to also publish literature reviews, but it now tends to publish mainly Theory development papers.