organization literature review

The Literature Review: 5. Organizing the Literature Review

1. Introduction
2. Why Do a Literature Review?
3. Methods for Searching the Literature
4. Analysing the Literature
5. Organizing the Literature Review
6. Writing the Review

1. Organizing Principles

A literature review is a piece of discursive prose, not a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature after another. It should have a single organizing principle:

Thematic - organize around a topic or issue
Chronological - sections for each vital time period
Methodological - focus on the methods used by the researchers/writers

4. Selected Online Resources

Literature Review in Education & Behavioral Sciences This is an interactive tutorial from Adelphi University Libraries on how to conduct a literature review in education and the behavioural sciences using library databases
Writing Literature Reviews This tutorial is from the Writing section of Monash University's Language and Learning Online site
The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting It This guide is from the Health Services Writing Centre at the University of Toronto
Learn How to Write a Review of the Literature This guide is part of the Writer's Handbook provided by the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

2. Structure of the Literature Review

Although your literature review will rely heavily on the sources you read for its information, you should dictate the structure of the review. It is important that the concepts are presented in an order that makes sense of the context of your research project.

There may be clear divisions on the sets of ideas you want to discuss, in which case your structure may be fairly clear. This is an ideal situation. In most cases, there will be several different possible structures for your review.

Similarly to the structure of the research report itself, the literature review consists of:

Introduction

Introduction - profile of the study

Define or identify the general topic to provide the context for reviewing the literature
Outline why the topic is important
Identify overall trends in what has been published about the topic
Identify conflicts in theory, methodology, evidence, and conclusions
Identify gaps in research and scholarlship
Explain the criteria to be used in analysing and comparing the literature
Describe the organization of the review (the sequence)
If necessary, state why certain literature is or is not included (scope)

Body - summative, comparative, and evaluative discussion of literature reviewed

For a thematic review:

organize the review into paragraphs that present themes and identify trends relevant to your topic
each paragraph should deal with a different theme - you need to synthesize several of your readings into each paragraph in such a way that there is a clear connection between the sources
don't try to list all the materials you have identified in your literature search

From each of the section summaries:

summarize the main agreements and disagreements in the literature
summarize the general conclusions that have been drawn
establish where your own research fits in the context of the existing literature

5. A Final Checklist

Have you indicated the purpose of the review?
Have you emphasized recent developments?
Is there a logic to the way you organized the material?
Does the amount of detail included on an issue relate to its importance?
Have you been sufficiently critical of design and methodological issues?
Have you indicated when results were conflicting or inconclusive and discussed possible reasons?
Has your summary of the current literature contributed to the reader's understanding of the problems?

3. Tips on Structure

A common error in literature reviews is for writers to present material from one author, followed by information from another, then another.... The way in which you group authors and link ideas will help avoid this problem. To group authors who draw similar conclusions, you can use linking words such as:

additionally

When authors disagree, linking words that indicate contrast will show how you have analysed their work. Words such as:

on the other hand
nonetheless

will indicate to your reader how you have analysed the material. At other times, you may want to qualify an author's work (using such words as specifically, usually, or generally ) or use an example ( thus, namely, to illustrate ). In this way you ensure that you are synthesizing the material, not just describing the work already carried out in your field.

Another major problem is that literature reviews are often written as if they stand alone, without links to the rest of the paper. There needs to be a clear relationship between the literature review and the methodology to follow.

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Organizing and Creating Information

Citation and Attribution

What Is a Literature Review?

Review the literature, write the literature review, further reading, learning objectives, attribution.

This guide is designed to:

Identify the sections and purpose of a literature review in academic writing
Review practical strategies and organizational methods for preparing a literature review

A literature review is a summary and synthesis of scholarly research on a specific topic. It should answer questions such as:

What research has been done on the topic?
Who are the key researchers and experts in the field?
What are the common theories and methodologies?
Are there challenges, controversies, and contradictions?
Are there gaps in the research that your approach addresses?

The process of reviewing existing research allows you to fine-tune your research question and contextualize your own work. Preparing a literature review is a cyclical process. You may find that the research question you begin with evolves as you learn more about the topic.

Once you have defined your research question , focus on learning what other scholars have written on the topic.

In order to do a thorough search of the literature on the topic, define the basic criteria:

Databases and journals: Look at the subject guide related to your topic for recommended databases. Review the tutorial on finding articles for tips.
Books: Search BruKnow, the Library's catalog. Steps to searching ebooks are covered in the Finding Ebooks tutorial .
What time period should it cover? Is currency important?
Do I know of primary and secondary sources that I can use as a way to find other information?
What should I be aware of when looking at popular, trade, and scholarly resources ?

One strategy is to review bibliographies for sources that relate to your interest. For more on this technique, look at the tutorial on finding articles when you have a citation .

Tip: Use a Synthesis Matrix

As you read sources, themes will emerge that will help you to organize the review. You can use a simple Synthesis Matrix to track your notes as you read. From this work, a concept map emerges that provides an overview of the literature and ways in which it connects. Working with Zotero to capture the citations, you build the structure for writing your literature review.

How do I know when I am done?

A key indicator for knowing when you are done is running into the same articles and materials. With no new information being uncovered, you are likely exhausting your current search and should modify search terms or search different catalogs or databases. It is also possible that you have reached a point when you can start writing the literature review.

Tip: Manage Your Citations

These citation management tools also create citations, footnotes, and bibliographies with just a few clicks:

Zotero Tutorial

Endnote Tutorial

Your literature review should be focused on the topic defined in your research question. It should be written in a logical, structured way and maintain an objective perspective and use a formal voice.

Review the Summary Table you created for themes and connecting ideas. Use the following guidelines to prepare an outline of the main points you want to make.

Synthesize previous research on the topic.
Aim to include both summary and synthesis.
Include literature that supports your research question as well as that which offers a different perspective.
Avoid relying on one author or publication too heavily.
Select an organizational structure, such as chronological, methodological, and thematic.

The three elements of a literature review are introduction, body, and conclusion.

Introduction

Define the topic of the literature review, including any terminology.
Introduce the central theme and organization of the literature review.
Summarize the state of research on the topic.
Frame the literature review with your research question.
Focus on ways to have the body of literature tell its own story. Do not add your own interpretations at this point.
Look for patterns and find ways to tie the pieces together.
Summarize instead of quote.
Weave the points together rather than list summaries of each source.
Include the most important sources, not everything you have read.
Summarize the review of the literature.
Identify areas of further research on the topic.
Connect the review with your research.
DeCarlo, M. (2018). 4.1 What is a literature review? In Scientific Inquiry in Social Work. Open Social Work Education. https://scientificinquiryinsocialwork.pressbooks.com/chapter/4-1-what-is-a-literature-review/
Literature Reviews (n.d.) https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/literature-reviews/ Accessed Nov. 10, 2021

This guide was designed to:

Identify the sections and purpose of a literature review in academic writing
Review practical strategies and organizational methods for preparing a literature review

Content on this page adapted from:

Frederiksen, L. and Phelps, S. (2017). Literature Reviews for Education and Nursing Graduate Students. Licensed CC BY 4.0

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Last Updated: Jan 9, 2024 3:05 PM
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Library Intranet

Literature Review Guide: How to organise the review

What is a Literature Review?
How to start?
Search strategies and Databases
Examples of Literature Reviews
How to organise the review
Library summary
Emerald Infographic

How to structure your literature review (ignore the monotone voice as advice is good)

How to structure and write your literature review

Chronological, ie. by date of publication or trend
Methodological
Use Cooper's taxonomy to explore and determine what elements and categories to incorporate into your review
Revise and proofread your review to ensure your arguments, supporting evidence and writing is clear and precise

Cronin, P., Ryan, F. & Coughlan, M. (2008). Undertaking a literature review: A step-by-step approach . British Journal of Nursing, 17 (1), pp.38-43.

Different ways to organise a Literature Review

CHRONOLOGICAL (by date): This is one of the most common ways, especially for topics that have been talked about for a long time and have changed over their history. Organise it in stages of how the topic has changed: the first definitions of it, then major time periods of change as researchers talked about it, then how it is thought about today.

BROAD-TO-SPECIFIC : Another approach is to start with a section on the general type of issue you're reviewing, then narrow down to increasingly specific issues in the literature until you reach the articles that are most specifically similar to your research question, thesis statement, hypothesis, or proposal. This can be a good way to introduce a lot of background and related facets of your topic when there is not much directly on your topic but you are tying together many related, broader articles.

MAJOR MODELS or MAJOR THEORIES : When there are multiple models or prominent theories, it is a good idea to outline the theories or models that are applied the most in your articles. That way you can group the articles you read by the theoretical framework that each prefers, to get a good overview of the prominent approaches to your concept.

PROMINENT AUTHORS : If a certain researcher started a field, and there are several famous people who developed it more, a good approach can be grouping the famous author/researchers and what each is known to have said about the topic. You can then organise other authors into groups by which famous authors' ideas they are following. With this organisation it can help to look at the citations your articles list in them, to see if there is one author that appears over and over.

CONTRASTING SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT : If you find a dominant argument comes up in your research, with researchers taking two sides and talking about how the other is wrong, you may want to group your literature review by those schools of thought and contrast the differences in their approaches and ideas.

Ways to structure your Literature Review

Different ways to organise your literature review include:

Topical order (by main topics or issues, showing relationship to the main problem or topic)
Chronological order (simplest of all, organise by dates of published literature)
Problem-cause-solution order
General to specific order
Known to unknown order
Comparison and contrast order
Specific to general order
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Literature Reviews

"How To" Books
Examples of Literature Reviews
Collecting Resources for a Literature Review
Organizing the Literature Review
Writing the Literature Review
Endnote This link opens in a new window
Evaluating Websites

Organization

Organization of your Literature Review

What is the most effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc., that your review needs to include? What order should you present them?

Just like most academic papers, literature reviews must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper.

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 and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each).

Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing the literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed?

Once you have the basic categories in place, then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the body of your paper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further.

To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario and then three typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:

You've decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This is because you've just finished reading Moby Dick, and you wonder if that whale's portrayal is really real. You start with some articles about the physiology of sperm whales in biology journals written in the 1980's. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed on whales in the early 18th century. So you check those out. Then you look up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales have been portrayed in other forms of art, such as in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, as the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to do. This makes you wonder about American whaling methods during the time portrayed in Moby Dick, so you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his novel.

Chronological

If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the book on sperm whales in other art (1968), and finally the biology articles (1980s) and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century. But there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. And notice that even though the sources on sperm whales in other art and on American whaling are written recently, they are about other subjects/objects that were created much earlier. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus.

By publication

Order your sources chronologically by publication if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a change in dissection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies.

Another way to organize sources chronologically is to examine the sources under a trend, such as the history of whaling. Then your review would have subsections according to eras within this period. For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Using this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century apart.

Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. While the study focuses on one topic, harpoon technology, it will still be organized chronologically. The only difference here between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology.

More authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. For instance, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as "evil" in cultural documents. The subsections might include how they are personified, how their proportions are exaggerated, and their behaviors misunderstood. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made.

Methodological

A methodological approach differs from the two above in that the focusing factor usually does not have to do with the content of the material. Instead, it focuses on the "methods" of the researcher or writer. For the sperm whale project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of whales in American, British, and French art work. Or the review might focus on the economic impact of whaling on a community. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed.

Once you've decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. They should arise out of your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period. A thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue.

Sometimes, though, you might need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. Put in only what is necessary. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider:

Current Situation: Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.

History: The chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.

Methods and/or Standards: The criteria you used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Questions for Further Research: What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

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USC Libraries
Research Guides

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

5. The Literature Review
Purpose of Guide
Design Flaws to Avoid
Independent and Dependent Variables
Glossary of Research Terms
Reading Research Effectively
Narrowing a Topic Idea
Broadening a Topic Idea
Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
Academic Writing Style
Applying Critical Thinking
Choosing a Title
Making an Outline
Paragraph Development
Research Process Video Series
Executive Summary
The C.A.R.S. Model
Background Information
The Research Problem/Question
Theoretical Framework
Citation Tracking
Content Alert Services
Evaluating Sources
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Tiertiary Sources
Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
Qualitative Methods
Quantitative Methods
Insiderness
Using Non-Textual Elements
Limitations of the Study
Common Grammar Mistakes
Writing Concisely
Avoiding Plagiarism
Footnotes or Endnotes?
Further Readings
Generative AI and Writing
USC Libraries Tutorials and Other Guides
Bibliography

A literature review surveys prior research published in books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated. Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have used in researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within existing scholarship about the topic.

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . Fourth edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2014.

Importance of a Good Literature Review

A literature review may consist of simply a summary of key sources, but in the social sciences, a literature review usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories . A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that informs how you are planning to investigate a research problem. The analytical features of a literature review might:

Give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations,
Trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates,
Depending on the situation, evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant research, or
Usually in the conclusion of a literature review, identify where gaps exist in how a problem has been researched to date.

Given this, the purpose of a literature review is to:

Place each work in the context of its contribution to understanding the research problem being studied.
Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration.
Identify new ways to interpret prior research.
Reveal any gaps that exist in the literature.
Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies.
Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort.
Point the way in fulfilling a need for additional research.
Locate your own research within the context of existing literature [very important].

Types of Literature Reviews

It is important to think of knowledge in a given field as consisting of three layers. First, there are the primary studies that researchers conduct and publish. Second are the reviews of those studies that summarize and offer new interpretations built from and often extending beyond the primary studies. Third, there are the perceptions, conclusions, opinion, and interpretations that are shared informally among scholars that become part of the body of epistemological traditions within the field.

In composing a literature review, it is important to note that it is often this third layer of knowledge that is cited as "true" even though it often has only a loose relationship to the primary studies and secondary literature reviews. Given this, while literature reviews are designed to provide an overview and synthesis of pertinent sources you have explored, there are a number of approaches you could adopt depending upon the type of analysis underpinning your study.

Argumentative Review This form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply embedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature. The purpose is to develop a body of literature that establishes a contrarian viewpoint. Given the value-laden nature of some social science research [e.g., educational reform; immigration control], argumentative approaches to analyzing the literature can be a legitimate and important form of discourse. However, note that they can also introduce problems of bias when they are used to make summary claims of the sort found in systematic reviews [see below].

Integrative Review Considered a form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated. The body of literature includes all studies that address related or identical hypotheses or research problems. A well-done integrative review meets the same standards as primary research in regard to clarity, rigor, and replication. This is the most common form of review in the social sciences.

Historical Review Few things rest in isolation from historical precedent. Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period of time, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, phenomena emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and to identify the likely directions for future research.

Methodological Review A review does not always focus on what someone said [findings], but how they came about saying what they say [method of analysis]. Reviewing methods of analysis provides a framework of understanding at different levels [i.e. those of theory, substantive fields, research approaches, and data collection and analysis techniques], how researchers draw upon a wide variety of knowledge ranging from the conceptual level to practical documents for use in fieldwork in the areas of ontological and epistemological consideration, quantitative and qualitative integration, sampling, interviewing, data collection, and data analysis. This approach helps highlight ethical issues which you should be aware of and consider as you go through your own study.

Systematic Review This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect, report, and analyze data from the studies that are included in the review. The goal is to deliberately document, critically evaluate, and summarize scientifically all of the research about a clearly defined research problem . Typically it focuses on a very specific empirical question, often posed in a cause-and-effect form, such as "To what extent does A contribute to B?" This type of literature review is primarily applied to examining prior research studies in clinical medicine and allied health fields, but it is increasingly being used in the social sciences.

Theoretical Review The purpose of this form is to examine the corpus of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue, concept, theory, phenomena. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the existing theories have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested. Often this form is used to help establish a lack of appropriate theories or reveal that current theories are inadequate for explaining new or emerging research problems. The unit of analysis can focus on a theoretical concept or a whole theory or framework.

NOTE : Most often the literature review will incorporate some combination of types. For example, a review that examines literature supporting or refuting an argument, assumption, or philosophical problem related to the research problem will also need to include writing supported by sources that establish the history of these arguments in the literature.

Baumeister, Roy F. and Mark R. Leary. "Writing Narrative Literature Reviews." Review of General Psychology 1 (September 1997): 311-320; Mark R. Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Kennedy, Mary M. "Defining a Literature." Educational Researcher 36 (April 2007): 139-147; Petticrew, Mark and Helen Roberts. Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide . Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2006; Torracro, Richard. "Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples." Human Resource Development Review 4 (September 2005): 356-367; Rocco, Tonette S. and Maria S. Plakhotnik. "Literature Reviews, Conceptual Frameworks, and Theoretical Frameworks: Terms, Functions, and Distinctions." Human Ressource Development Review 8 (March 2008): 120-130; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

Structure and Writing Style

I. Thinking About Your Literature Review

The structure of a literature review should include the following in support of understanding the research problem :

An overview of the subject, issue, or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of the literature review,
Division of works under review into themes or categories [e.g. works that support a particular position, those against, and those offering alternative approaches entirely],
An explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others,
Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, are most convincing of their opinions, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research.

The critical evaluation of each work should consider :

Provenance -- what are the author's credentials? Are the author's arguments supported by evidence [e.g. primary historical material, case studies, narratives, statistics, recent scientific findings]?
Methodology -- were the techniques used to identify, gather, and analyze the data appropriate to addressing the research problem? Was the sample size appropriate? Were the results effectively interpreted and reported?
Objectivity -- is the author's perspective even-handed or prejudicial? Is contrary data considered or is certain pertinent information ignored to prove the author's point?
Persuasiveness -- which of the author's theses are most convincing or least convincing?
Validity -- are the author's arguments and conclusions convincing? Does the work ultimately contribute in any significant way to an understanding of the subject?

II. Development of the Literature Review

Four Basic Stages of Writing 1. Problem formulation -- which topic or field is being examined and what are its component issues? 2. Literature search -- finding materials relevant to the subject being explored. 3. Data evaluation -- determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic. 4. Analysis and interpretation -- discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature.

Consider the following issues before writing the literature review: Clarify If your assignment is not specific about what form your literature review should take, seek clarification from your professor by asking these questions: 1. Roughly how many sources would be appropriate to include? 2. What types of sources should I review (books, journal articles, websites; scholarly versus popular sources)? 3. Should I summarize, synthesize, or critique sources by discussing a common theme or issue? 4. Should I evaluate the sources in any way beyond evaluating how they relate to understanding the research problem? 5. Should I provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history? Find Models Use the exercise of reviewing the literature to examine how authors in your discipline or area of interest have composed their literature review sections. Read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or to identify ways to organize your final review. The bibliography or reference section of sources you've already read, such as required readings in the course syllabus, are also excellent entry points into your own research. Narrow the Topic The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to obtain a good survey of relevant resources. Your professor will probably not expect you to read everything that's available about the topic, but you'll make the act of reviewing easier if you first limit scope of the research problem. A good strategy is to begin by searching the USC Libraries Catalog for recent books about the topic and review the table of contents for chapters that focuses on specific issues. You can also review the indexes of books to find references to specific issues that can serve as the focus of your research. For example, a book surveying the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may include a chapter on the role Egypt has played in mediating the conflict, or look in the index for the pages where Egypt is mentioned in the text. Consider Whether Your Sources are Current Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. This is particularly true in disciplines in medicine and the sciences where research conducted becomes obsolete very quickly as new discoveries are made. However, when writing a review in the social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be required. In other words, a complete understanding the research problem requires you to deliberately examine how knowledge and perspectives have changed over time. Sort through other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to explore what is considered by scholars to be a "hot topic" and what is not.

III. Ways to Organize Your Literature Review

Chronology of Events If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials according to when they were published. This approach should only be followed if a clear path of research building on previous research can be identified and that these trends follow a clear chronological order of development. For example, a literature review that focuses on continuing research about the emergence of German economic power after the fall of the Soviet Union. By Publication Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on environmental studies of brown fields if the progression revealed, for example, a change in the soil collection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies. Thematic [“conceptual categories”] A thematic literature review is the most common approach to summarizing prior research in the social and behavioral sciences. Thematic reviews are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time, although the progression of time may still be incorporated into a thematic review. For example, a review of the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics could focus on the development of online political satire. While the study focuses on one topic, the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics, it would still be organized chronologically reflecting technological developments in media. The difference in this example between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: themes related to the role of the Internet in presidential politics. Note that more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point being made. Methodological A methodological approach focuses on the methods utilized by the researcher. For the Internet in American presidential politics project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of American presidents on American, British, and French websites. Or the review might focus on the fundraising impact of the Internet on a particular political party. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed.

Other Sections of Your Literature Review Once you've decided on the organizational method for your literature review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out because they arise from your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period; a thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue. However, sometimes you may need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. However, only include what is necessary for the reader to locate your study within the larger scholarship about the research problem.

Here are examples of other sections, usually in the form of a single paragraph, you may need to include depending on the type of review you write:

Current Situation : Information necessary to understand the current topic or focus of the literature review.
Sources Used : Describes the methods and resources [e.g., databases] you used to identify the literature you reviewed.
History : The chronological progression of the field, the research literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
Selection Methods : Criteria you used to select (and perhaps exclude) sources in your literature review. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed [i.e., scholarly] sources.
Standards : Description of the way in which you present your information.
Questions for Further Research : What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

IV. Writing Your Literature Review

Once you've settled on how to organize your literature review, you're ready to write each section. When writing your review, keep in mind these issues.

Use Evidence A literature review section is, in this sense, just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence [citations] that demonstrates that what you are saying is valid. Be Selective Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the research problem, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological. Related items that provide additional information, but that are not key to understanding the research problem, can be included in a list of further readings . Use Quotes Sparingly Some short quotes are appropriate if you want to emphasize a point, or if what an author stated cannot be easily paraphrased. Sometimes you may need to quote certain terminology that was coined by the author, is not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. Do not use extensive quotes as a substitute for using your own words in reviewing the literature. Summarize and Synthesize Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each thematic paragraph as well as throughout the review. Recapitulate important features of a research study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study's significance and relating it to your own work and the work of others. Keep Your Own Voice While the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice [the writer's] should remain front and center. For example, weave references to other sources into what you are writing but maintain your own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with your own ideas and wording. Use Caution When Paraphrasing When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author's information or opinions accurately and in your own words. Even when paraphrasing an author’s work, you still must provide a citation to that work.

V. Common Mistakes to Avoid

These are the most common mistakes made in reviewing social science research literature.

Sources in your literature review do not clearly relate to the research problem;
You do not take sufficient time to define and identify the most relevant sources to use in the literature review related to the research problem;
Relies exclusively on secondary analytical sources rather than including relevant primary research studies or data;
Uncritically accepts another researcher's findings and interpretations as valid, rather than examining critically all aspects of the research design and analysis;
Does not describe the search procedures that were used in identifying the literature to review;
Reports isolated statistical results rather than synthesizing them in chi-squared or meta-analytic methods; and,
Only includes research that validates assumptions and does not consider contrary findings and alternative interpretations found in the literature.

Cook, Kathleen E. and Elise Murowchick. “Do Literature Review Skills Transfer from One Course to Another?” Psychology Learning and Teaching 13 (March 2014): 3-11; Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . London: SAGE, 2011; Literature Review Handout. Online Writing Center. Liberty University; Literature Reviews. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2016; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012; Randolph, Justus J. “A Guide to Writing the Dissertation Literature Review." Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation. vol. 14, June 2009; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016; Taylor, Dena. The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Writing a Literature Review. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra.

Writing Tip

Break Out of Your Disciplinary Box!

Thinking interdisciplinarily about a research problem can be a rewarding exercise in applying new ideas, theories, or concepts to an old problem. For example, what might cultural anthropologists say about the continuing conflict in the Middle East? In what ways might geographers view the need for better distribution of social service agencies in large cities than how social workers might study the issue? You don’t want to substitute a thorough review of core research literature in your discipline for studies conducted in other fields of study. However, particularly in the social sciences, thinking about research problems from multiple vectors is a key strategy for finding new solutions to a problem or gaining a new perspective. Consult with a librarian about identifying research databases in other disciplines; almost every field of study has at least one comprehensive database devoted to indexing its research literature.

Frodeman, Robert. The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity . New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Another Writing Tip

Don't Just Review for Content!

While conducting a review of the literature, maximize the time you devote to writing this part of your paper by thinking broadly about what you should be looking for and evaluating. Review not just what scholars are saying, but how are they saying it. Some questions to ask:

How are they organizing their ideas?
What methods have they used to study the problem?
What theories have been used to explain, predict, or understand their research problem?
What sources have they cited to support their conclusions?
How have they used non-textual elements [e.g., charts, graphs, figures, etc.] to illustrate key points?

When you begin to write your literature review section, you'll be glad you dug deeper into how the research was designed and constructed because it establishes a means for developing more substantial analysis and interpretation of the research problem.

Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1 998.

Yet Another Writing Tip

When Do I Know I Can Stop Looking and Move On?

Here are several strategies you can utilize to assess whether you've thoroughly reviewed the literature:

Look for repeating patterns in the research findings . If the same thing is being said, just by different people, then this likely demonstrates that the research problem has hit a conceptual dead end. At this point consider: Does your study extend current research? Does it forge a new path? Or, does is merely add more of the same thing being said?
Look at sources the authors cite to in their work . If you begin to see the same researchers cited again and again, then this is often an indication that no new ideas have been generated to address the research problem.
Search Google Scholar to identify who has subsequently cited leading scholars already identified in your literature review [see next sub-tab]. This is called citation tracking and there are a number of sources that can help you identify who has cited whom, particularly scholars from outside of your discipline. Here again, if the same authors are being cited again and again, this may indicate no new literature has been written on the topic.

Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2016; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

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How To Structure Your Literature Review

3 options to help structure your chapter.

By: Amy Rommelspacher (PhD) | Reviewer: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | November 2020 (Updated May 2023)

Writing the literature review chapter can seem pretty daunting when you’re piecing together your dissertation or thesis. As we’ve discussed before , a good literature review needs to achieve a few very important objectives – it should:

Demonstrate your knowledge of the research topic
Identify the gaps in the literature and show how your research links to these
Provide the foundation for your conceptual framework (if you have one)
Inform your own methodology and research design

To achieve this, your literature review needs a well-thought-out structure . Get the structure of your literature review chapter wrong and you’ll struggle to achieve these objectives. Don’t worry though – in this post, we’ll look at how to structure your literature review for maximum impact (and marks!).

But wait – is this the right time?

Deciding on the structure of your literature review should come towards the end of the literature review process – after you have collected and digested the literature, but before you start writing the chapter.

In other words, you need to first develop a rich understanding of the literature before you even attempt to map out a structure. There’s no use trying to develop a structure before you’ve fully wrapped your head around the existing research.

Equally importantly, you need to have a structure in place before you start writing , or your literature review will most likely end up a rambling, disjointed mess.

Importantly, don’t feel that once you’ve defined a structure you can’t iterate on it. It’s perfectly natural to adjust as you engage in the writing process. As we’ve discussed before , writing is a way of developing your thinking, so it’s quite common for your thinking to change – and therefore, for your chapter structure to change – as you write.

Need a helping hand?

Like any other chapter in your thesis or dissertation, your literature review needs to have a clear, logical structure. At a minimum, it should have three essential components – an introduction , a body and a conclusion .

Let’s take a closer look at each of these.

1: The Introduction Section

Just like any good introduction, the introduction section of your literature review should introduce the purpose and layout (organisation) of the chapter. In other words, your introduction needs to give the reader a taste of what’s to come, and how you’re going to lay that out. Essentially, you should provide the reader with a high-level roadmap of your chapter to give them a taste of the journey that lies ahead.

Here’s an example of the layout visualised in a literature review introduction:

Example of literature review outline structure

Your introduction should also outline your topic (including any tricky terminology or jargon) and provide an explanation of the scope of your literature review – in other words, what you will and won’t be covering (the delimitations ). This helps ringfence your review and achieve a clear focus . The clearer and narrower your focus, the deeper you can dive into the topic (which is typically where the magic lies).

Depending on the nature of your project, you could also present your stance or point of view at this stage. In other words, after grappling with the literature you’ll have an opinion about what the trends and concerns are in the field as well as what’s lacking. The introduction section can then present these ideas so that it is clear to examiners that you’re aware of how your research connects with existing knowledge .

2: The Body Section

The body of your literature review is the centre of your work. This is where you’ll present, analyse, evaluate and synthesise the existing research. In other words, this is where you’re going to earn (or lose) the most marks. Therefore, it’s important to carefully think about how you will organise your discussion to present it in a clear way.

The body of your literature review should do just as the description of this chapter suggests. It should “review” the literature – in other words, identify, analyse, and synthesise it. So, when thinking about structuring your literature review, you need to think about which structural approach will provide the best “review” for your specific type of research and objectives (we’ll get to this shortly).

There are (broadly speaking) three options for organising your literature review.

The body section of your literature review is the where you'll present, analyse, evaluate and synthesise the existing research.

Option 1: Chronological (according to date)

Organising the literature chronologically is one of the simplest ways to structure your literature review. You start with what was published first and work your way through the literature until you reach the work published most recently. Pretty straightforward.

The benefit of this option is that it makes it easy to discuss the developments and debates in the field as they emerged over time. Organising your literature chronologically also allows you to highlight how specific articles or pieces of work might have changed the course of the field – in other words, which research has had the most impact . Therefore, this approach is very useful when your research is aimed at understanding how the topic has unfolded over time and is often used by scholars in the field of history. That said, this approach can be utilised by anyone that wants to explore change over time .

Adopting the chronological structure allows you to discuss the developments and debates in the field as they emerged over time.

For example , if a student of politics is investigating how the understanding of democracy has evolved over time, they could use the chronological approach to provide a narrative that demonstrates how this understanding has changed through the ages.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you structure your literature review chronologically.

What is the earliest literature published relating to this topic?
How has the field changed over time? Why?
What are the most recent discoveries/theories?

In some ways, chronology plays a part whichever way you decide to structure your literature review, because you will always, to a certain extent, be analysing how the literature has developed. However, with the chronological approach, the emphasis is very firmly on how the discussion has evolved over time , as opposed to how all the literature links together (which we’ll discuss next ).

Option 2: Thematic (grouped by theme)

The thematic approach to structuring a literature review means organising your literature by theme or category – for example, by independent variables (i.e. factors that have an impact on a specific outcome).

As you’ve been collecting and synthesising literature , you’ll likely have started seeing some themes or patterns emerging. You can then use these themes or patterns as a structure for your body discussion. The thematic approach is the most common approach and is useful for structuring literature reviews in most fields.

For example, if you were researching which factors contributed towards people trusting an organisation, you might find themes such as consumers’ perceptions of an organisation’s competence, benevolence and integrity. Structuring your literature review thematically would mean structuring your literature review’s body section to discuss each of these themes, one section at a time.

The thematic structure allows you to organise your literature by theme or category – e.g. by independent variables.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when structuring your literature review by themes:

Are there any patterns that have come to light in the literature?
What are the central themes and categories used by the researchers?
Do I have enough evidence of these themes?

PS – you can see an example of a thematically structured literature review in our literature review sample walkthrough video here.

Option 3: Methodological

The methodological option is a way of structuring your literature review by the research methodologies used . In other words, organising your discussion based on the angle from which each piece of research was approached – for example, qualitative , quantitative or mixed methodologies.

Structuring your literature review by methodology can be useful if you are drawing research from a variety of disciplines and are critiquing different methodologies. The point of this approach is to question how existing research has been conducted, as opposed to what the conclusions and/or findings the research were.

The methodological structure allows you to organise your chapter by the analysis method used - e.g. qual, quant or mixed.

For example, a sociologist might centre their research around critiquing specific fieldwork practices. Their literature review will then be a summary of the fieldwork methodologies used by different studies.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself when structuring your literature review according to methodology:

Which methodologies have been utilised in this field?
Which methodology is the most popular (and why)?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the various methodologies?
How can the existing methodologies inform my own methodology?

3: The Conclusion Section

Once you’ve completed the body section of your literature review using one of the structural approaches we discussed above, you’ll need to “wrap up” your literature review and pull all the pieces together to set the direction for the rest of your dissertation or thesis.

The conclusion is where you’ll present the key findings of your literature review. In this section, you should emphasise the research that is especially important to your research questions and highlight the gaps that exist in the literature. Based on this, you need to make it clear what you will add to the literature – in other words, justify your own research by showing how it will help fill one or more of the gaps you just identified.

Last but not least, if it’s your intention to develop a conceptual framework for your dissertation or thesis, the conclusion section is a good place to present this.

In the conclusion section, you’ll need to present the key findings of your literature review and highlight the gaps that exist in the literature. Based on this, you'll need to make it clear what your study will add to the literature.

Example: Thematically Structured Review

In the video below, we unpack a literature review chapter so that you can see an example of a thematically structure review in practice.

Let’s Recap

In this article, we’ve discussed how to structure your literature review for maximum impact. Here’s a quick recap of what you need to keep in mind when deciding on your literature review structure:

Just like other chapters, your literature review needs a clear introduction , body and conclusion .
The introduction section should provide an overview of what you will discuss in your literature review.
The body section of your literature review can be organised by chronology , theme or methodology . The right structural approach depends on what you’re trying to achieve with your research.
The conclusion section should draw together the key findings of your literature review and link them to your research questions.

If you’re ready to get started, be sure to download our free literature review template to fast-track your chapter outline.

Psst… there’s more!

This post is an extract from our bestselling short course, Literature Review Bootcamp . If you want to work smart, you don't want to miss this .

You Might Also Like:

Literature review 101 - how to find articles

27 Comments

Great work. This is exactly what I was looking for and helps a lot together with your previous post on literature review. One last thing is missing: a link to a great literature chapter of an journal article (maybe with comments of the different sections in this review chapter). Do you know any great literature review chapters?

I agree with you Marin… A great piece

I agree with Marin. This would be quite helpful if you annotate a nicely structured literature from previously published research articles.

Awesome article for my research.

I thank you immensely for this wonderful guide

It is indeed thought and supportive work for the futurist researcher and students

Very educative and good time to get guide. Thank you

Great work, very insightful. Thank you.

Thanks for this wonderful presentation. My question is that do I put all the variables into a single conceptual framework or each hypothesis will have it own conceptual framework?

Thank you very much, very helpful

This is very educative and precise . Thank you very much for dropping this kind of write up .

Pheeww, so damn helpful, thank you for this informative piece.

I’m doing a research project topic ; stool analysis for parasitic worm (enteric) worm, how do I structure it, thanks.

comprehensive explanation. Help us by pasting the URL of some good “literature review” for better understanding.

great piece. thanks for the awesome explanation. it is really worth sharing. I have a little question, if anyone can help me out, which of the options in the body of literature can be best fit if you are writing an architectural thesis that deals with design?

I am doing a research on nanofluids how can l structure it?

Beautifully clear.nThank you!

Lucid! Thankyou!

Brilliant work, well understood, many thanks

I like how this was so clear with simple language 😊😊 thank you so much 😊 for these information 😊

Insightful. I was struggling to come up with a sensible literature review but this has been really helpful. Thank you!

You have given thought-provoking information about the review of the literature.

Thank you. It has made my own research better and to impart your work to students I teach

I learnt a lot from this teaching. It’s a great piece.

I am doing research on EFL teacher motivation for his/her job. How Can I structure it? Is there any detailed template, additional to this?

You are so cool! I do not think I’ve read through something like this before. So nice to find somebody with some genuine thoughts on this issue. Seriously.. thank you for starting this up. This site is one thing that is required on the internet, someone with a little originality!

I’m asked to do conceptual, theoretical and empirical literature, and i just don’t know how to structure it

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Literature Review
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There are different methods to organize and present the materials collected for the literature review.

The list below goes over different organizational frameworks that can be used to present the research conducted. If you are not sure what method to use, check with your professor.

Chronological: The chronological framework organizes the literature in the order in which they are published. For example, if you were writing about a specific teaching method, you would begin with the materials that first introduced the method. You would then follow with case studies applying that method. You would conclude your review with contemporary papers that may even give a historical perspective on the method from when it was first conceived and how it is applied today.
by publication: This framework is useful if you notice a series of articles that are written in response to one another that are all within one publication. You still follow chronological order, but you break it so that the articles responding to one another are grouped together.
by trend: This framework looks at specific trends and organizes them chronologically. For example, if you were looking at the history of assistive technology in helping students with disabilities, you may organize the reviews by what disability was being treated, and then present the history of using assistive technology to treat that particular disability in chronological order.
Thematic: The thematic framework is similar to organizing by trend, except that you are not organizing the reviews in the order that they were published. This does not mean that you do not consider the timeline for how a topic or issue developed, but that you will not focus on organizing your reviews chronologically. Rather, the emphasis will be on the themes you find within the topic or issue — such as commonalities — and from there you fit your reviews into the separate ideas in which they fit. For example, if the review topic was arts-based research, your review may focus on different ways artistic inquiry was used to understand the creative process, focusing then on the concepts rather than the development.
Methodological: The method or practice applied in a case study can be the basis for organizing a literature review. This framework focuses on how the author(s) or the person(s) administering a study applied similar methods as another study. As a result, the types of literature in a literature review that applies the methodological framework tends to review similar materials. For example, if you reviewed methods used to treat post traumatic stress syndrome, the review would organize the studies by the methods used to treat the patients and not the order that the studies were published.

Note: After choosing the organizational framework for the literature review, it should be easier to write because you should have a clear idea of what sections you need to include in the paper. For example, a chronological review will have subsections for each vital time period. A thematic review will have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue.

In some cases the literature does not quite fit the framework you have chosen. In this case, you should determine where it makes sense to place the literature and confirm this choice with your professor.

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Literature review.

Collecting Resources for a Literature Review
Organizing the Literature Review
Writing the Literature Review
Examples of Literature Reviews

Organization

Organization of your Literature Review

What is the most effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc., that your review needs to include? What order should you present them?

Basic Outline of a 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 and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each).

Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing the literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed ? ( " Literature Reviews" from The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill )

Organizing the Body

Once you have the basic categories in place, then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the body of your paper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further.

To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario and then three typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:

Chronological

By publication

Methodological

( "Literature Reviews" from The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill )

Other Sections to Include in a Literature Review

Sometimes, though, you might need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. Put in only what is necessary. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider:

Current Situation: Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.

Questions for Further Research: What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

( " Literature Reviews" from The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill )

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Literature Review: Conducting & Writing

Organizing/Writing
Steps for Conducting a Lit Review
Finding "The Literature"

Consider Organization

Literature review synthesis matrix, composing your literature review, managing citations / zotero.

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Sample Literature Reviews

Presentation on Synthesizing a Literature Review

You've got a focus, and you've narrowed it down to a thesis statement. Now what is the most effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc., that your review needs to include? And in what order should you present them? Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level:

First, cover the basic categories Just like most academic papers, literature reviews also must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper. 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 and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each). Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed? Organizing the body Once you have the basic categories in place, then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the body of your paper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further. To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario and then three typical ways of organizing the sources into a review: You've decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This is because you've just finished reading Moby Dick , and you wonder if that whale's portrayal is really real. You start with some articles about the physiology of sperm whales in biology journals written in the 2020's. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed on whales in the early 18th century. So you check those out. Then you look up a book written in 2021 with information on how sperm whales have been portrayed in other forms of art, such as in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, as the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to do. This makes you wonder about American whaling methods during the time portrayed in Moby Dick , so you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his novel. Chronological If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the book on sperm whales in other art (2021), and finally the biology articles (2000s) and the recent articles (last five years) on American whaling of the 19th century. But there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. And notice that even though the sources on sperm whales in other art and on American whaling are written recently, they are about other subjects/objects that were created much earlier. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus. By publication Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a change in dissection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies. By trend A better way to organize the above sources chronologically is to examine the sources under another trend, such as the history of whaling. Then your review would have subsections according to eras within this period. For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Under this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote more than a century apart.

But more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. For instance, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as "evil" in cultural documents. The subsections might include how they are personified, how their proportions are exaggerated, and their behaviors misunderstood. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made.

Methodological

Current Situation : Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.

History : The chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.

Methods and/or Standards : The criteria you used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Questions for Further Research : What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

(Adapted from "Literature Reviews" from The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill )

This synthesis matrix in Excel can help you get a jumpstart on finding ways in which the literature differs and is the same.

Synthesis Matrix

O nce you've settled on a general pattern of organization, you're ready to write each section. There are a few guidelines you should follow during the writing stage. Here is a sample paragraph from a literature review about sexism and language to illuminate the following discussion:

However, other studies have shown that even gender-neutral antecedents are more likely to produce masculine images than feminine ones (Gastil, 1990). Hamilton (1988) asked students to complete sentences that required them to fill in pronouns that agreed with gender-neutral antecedents such as "writer," "pedestrian," and "persons." The students were asked to describe any image they had when writing the sentence. Hamilton found that people imagined 3.3 men to each woman in the masculine "generic" condition and 1.5 men per woman in the unbiased condition. Thus, while ambient sexism accounted for some of the masculine bias, sexist language amplified the effect. (Source: Erika Falk and Jordan Mills, "Why Sexist Language Affects Persuasion: The Role of Homophily, Intended Audience, and Offense," Women and Language19:2.

Use evidence

In the example above, the writers refer to several other sources when making their point. A literature review in this sense is just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence to show that what you are saying is valid.

Be selective

Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the review's focus, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological.

Use quotes sparingly

Falk and Mills do not use any direct quotes. That is because the survey nature of the literature review does not allow for in-depth discussion or detailed quotes from the text. Some short quotes here and there are okay, though if you want to emphasize a point, or if what the author said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. Notice that Falk and Mills do quote certain terms that were coined by the author, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. But if you find yourself wanting to put in more quotes, check with your instructor.

Summarize and synthesize

Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph as well as throughout the review. The authors here recapitulate important features of Hamilton's study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study's significance and relating it to their own work.

Keep your own voice

While the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice (the writer's) should remain front and center. Notice that Falk and Mills weave references to other sources into their own text, but they still maintain their own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with their own ideas and their own words. The sources support what Falk and Mills are saying.

Use caution when paraphrasing

When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author's information or opinions accurately and in your own words. In the preceding example, Falk and Mills either directly refer in the text to the author of their source, such as Hamilton, or they provide ample notation in the text when the ideas they are mentioning are not their own, for example, Gastil's. For more information, please see our handout on plagiarism .

Use a citation manager to manage citations from journals, books, documents, and internet sites.

A good one to use is Zotero. Instructions on using it can be found in the following guide:

Zotero Guide

Content for this section of the guide was taken from Literature Reviews from The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , under the guidelines of their Creative Commons License.

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Conducting a Literature Review

Getting Started
Define your Research Question
Finding Sources
Evaluating Sources

Organizing the Review

Cite and Manage your Sources

Introduction

Organizing your literature review involves examining the sources you have and determining how they best fit together to form a coherent and complete narrative. However you choose to do this, the goal should be to organize your literature in a way that naturally flows and makes sense to your reader.

Additional Resources

Literature Review: Conducting & Writing by the University of West Florida Libraries
Literature Reviews: Organizing Your Research by the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Hunt Library

A literature review is structured similarly to other research essays, opening with an introduction that explains the topic and summarizes how the review will be conducted, several body paragraphs organized to share your findings, and a concluding paragraph.

There are many different ways to organize the body of your review. Some possible approaches are listed below.

Subtopic/Theme

While they all share the same overarching topic, each source approaches it in a slightly different way, valuing certain aspects or methods more than others. For example, with a literature review about the impacts of the Affordable Care Act, some literature might focus on the demographic changes in access to healthcare, or the actions taken by private health insurance companies, or even the way healthcare is discussed in politics. By combining sources that discuss the same subtopics, you can organize your review to show how the articles overlap and complement one another to create a more complete view of the existing research.

For a thematic literature review, each body paragraph would consist of one of these themes, or subtopics, and the literature associated with it.

Alternatively, you can group your resources by their relevance to your research question. Again using the ACA as an example, it might be a good idea to begin with the sources that most broadly address the impacts of the Affordable Care Act and then order the literature by increasing specificity.

Methodology

It may be the case that your literature can be neatly defined into different types of research, such as different methods to treat an illness or ways to test a hypothesis. Examining the literature by the ways in which the authors tried to answer questions associated with the topic is a useful way to compare and contrast research results, as well as identify potential strengths or weaknesses in the methodologies used.

Varying Opinions/Problem & Solution(s)

Your various sources might not all come to the same conclusions about the topic; in fact, especially with controversial subject matter, there may be widely differing opinions on the issues and how best to approach them. Related to the thematic review, this type of literature review structure uses the first body paragraph to pose a question, then each of the body paragraphs illustrating the differing answers found in the literature. It is an excellent way to address arguments and counter-arguments if your topic is hotly contested in academic and popular works.

If you find yourself struggling to differentiate your sources by topic or relevance because they are all about equal in these regards, it might be a good idea to organize them chronologically.

There are two major types of chronology literature reviews tend to be grouped by:

Publication date : Start with the earliest-published research and finish with the most current
By trend : Organize sources into eras based on the time period and relative events associated with the topic. For example, regarding the Affordable Care Act, it could be split into the time before the ACA was passed, the immediate aftermath (2010-2011), Obama's second term (2012-2016), etc.

Using a Synthesis Matrix

A literature review doesn't merely summarize the current research on a topic: part of your responsibility is to take this information and make something new out of it that can be used by future researchers. This process of combining other sources of information and making an original argument out of them is called synthesis , which literally means "the combination of ideas to form a theory or system." You will synthesize the literature you've selected for review to form an argument about where more research needs to be done on your topic.

One of the most important elements of synthesis in a literature review is analysis: rather than simply repeating the results of each source you've found, you are going to analyze it for similarities to your other resources, limitations and strengths of the methodology, and an examination of the conclusions drawn by the author(s) compared to the rest of the research on the topic. This is why proper organization of the literature is so important; it will allow you to group your sources by theme so that they can be more easily compared and contrasted.

In addition to the recommendations elsewhere on this page, a common method for preparing to organize your literature is by using a synthesis matrix. This is a tool to help pick out the most important aspects of each source and see where the most common themes lie.

With the major information organized like this, it is easy to see which resources used similar methods of research, which had similar or differing results, and when chronologically the research was conducted. Grouping the literature by any of these similarities could be a useful way to organize your review.

How to Synthesize Your Literature Review by Britt McGowan & UWF Libraries
Synthesizing Sources by Purdue Online Writing Lab

Questions the Literature Review Should Answer

The University of the West Indies (linked below) provides a useful checklist of questions that a good literature review should address. When outlining your review, pay attention to how you will answer the following:

These will likely be answered throughout your body paragraphs, but it might be worthwhile to address some of these in the conclusion instead or in addition.

Organizing the Literature Review by the University of the West Indies

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UConn Library
Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
Introduction

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide — Introduction

Getting Started
How to Pick a Topic
Strategies to Find Sources
Evaluating Sources & Lit. Reviews
Tips for Writing Literature Reviews
Writing Literature Review: Useful Sites
Citation Resources
Other Academic Writings

What are Literature Reviews?

So, what is a literature review? "A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries." Taylor, D. The literature review: A few tips on conducting it . University of Toronto Health Sciences Writing Centre.

Goals of Literature Reviews

What are the goals of creating a Literature Review? A literature could be written to accomplish different aims:

To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
Identify a problem in a field of research

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1997). Writing narrative literature reviews . Review of General Psychology , 1 (3), 311-320.

What kinds of sources require a Literature Review?

A research paper assigned in a course
A thesis or dissertation
A grant proposal
An article intended for publication in a journal

All these instances require you to collect what has been written about your research topic so that you can demonstrate how your own research sheds new light on the topic.

Types of Literature Reviews

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Narrative review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section which summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.

Example : Predictors and Outcomes of U.S. Quality Maternity Leave: A Review and Conceptual Framework: 10.1177/08948453211037398

Systematic review : "The authors of a systematic review use a specific procedure to search the research literature, select the studies to include in their review, and critically evaluate the studies they find." (p. 139). Nelson, L. K. (2013). Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders . Plural Publishing.

Example : The effect of leave policies on increasing fertility: a systematic review: 10.1057/s41599-022-01270-w

Meta-analysis : "Meta-analysis is a method of reviewing research findings in a quantitative fashion by transforming the data from individual studies into what is called an effect size and then pooling and analyzing this information. The basic goal in meta-analysis is to explain why different outcomes have occurred in different studies." (p. 197). Roberts, M. C., & Ilardi, S. S. (2003). Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology . Blackwell Publishing.

Example : Employment Instability and Fertility in Europe: A Meta-Analysis: 10.1215/00703370-9164737

Meta-synthesis : "Qualitative meta-synthesis is a type of qualitative study that uses as data the findings from other qualitative studies linked by the same or related topic." (p.312). Zimmer, L. (2006). Qualitative meta-synthesis: A question of dialoguing with texts . Journal of Advanced Nursing , 53 (3), 311-318.

Example : Women’s perspectives on career successes and barriers: A qualitative meta-synthesis: 10.1177/05390184221113735

Literature Reviews in the Health Sciences

UConn Health subject guide on systematic reviews Explanation of the different review types used in health sciences literature as well as tools to help you find the right review type
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Last Updated: Sep 21, 2022 2:16 PM
URL: https://guides.lib.uconn.edu/literaturereview

Reserve a study room
Library Account
Undergraduate Students
Graduate Students
Faculty & Staff

How to Conduct a Literature Review (Health Sciences and Beyond)

What is a Literature Review?
Developing a Research Question
Selection Criteria
Database Search
Documenting Your Search

Review Matrix

Reference Management

Using a spreadsheet or table to organize the key elements (e.g. subjects, methodologies, results) of articles/books you plan to use in your literature review can be helpful. This is called a review matrix.

When you create a review matrix, the first few columns should include (1) the authors, title, journal, (2) publication year, and (3) purpose of the paper. The remaining columns should identify important aspects of each study such as methodology and findings.

Click on the image below to view a sample review matrix.

You can also download this template as a Microsoft Excel file .

The information on this page is from the book below. The 5th edition is available online through VCU Libraries.

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Last Updated: Mar 15, 2024 12:22 PM
URL: https://guides.library.vcu.edu/health-sciences-lit-review

The Writing Center • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Literature Reviews

What this handout is about.

This handout will explain what literature reviews are and offer insights into the form and construction of literature reviews in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

Introduction

OK. You’ve got to write a literature review. You dust off a novel and a book of poetry, settle down in your chair, and get ready to issue a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” as you leaf through the pages. “Literature review” done. Right?

Wrong! The “literature” of a literature review refers to any collection of materials on a topic, not necessarily the great literary texts of the world. “Literature” could be anything from a set of government pamphlets on British colonial methods in Africa to scholarly articles on the treatment of a torn ACL. And a review does not necessarily mean that your reader wants you to give your personal opinion on whether or not you liked these sources.

What is a literature review, then?

A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.

A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

But how is a literature review different from an academic research paper?

The main focus of an academic research paper is to develop a new argument, and a research paper is likely to contain a literature review as one of its parts. In a research paper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that you contribute. The focus of a literature review, however, is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new contributions.

Why do we write literature reviews?

Literature reviews provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic. If you have limited time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping stone. For professionals, they are useful reports that keep them up to date with what is current in the field. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Literature reviews also provide a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most research papers.

Who writes these things, anyway?

Literature reviews are written occasionally in the humanities, but mostly in the sciences and social sciences; in experiment and lab reports, they constitute a section of the paper. Sometimes a literature review is written as a paper in itself.

Let’s get to it! What should I do before writing the literature review?

If your assignment is not very specific, seek clarification from your instructor:

Roughly how many sources should you include?
What types of sources (books, journal articles, websites)?
Should you summarize, synthesize, or critique your sources by discussing a common theme or issue?
Should you evaluate your sources?
Should you provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history?

Find models

Look for other literature reviews in your area of interest or in the discipline and read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or ways to organize your final review. You can simply put the word “review” in your search engine along with your other topic terms to find articles of this type on the Internet or in an electronic database. The bibliography or reference section of sources you’ve already read are also excellent entry points into your own research.

Narrow your topic

There are hundreds or even thousands of articles and books on most areas of study. The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to get a good survey of the material. Your instructor will probably not expect you to read everything that’s out there on the topic, but you’ll make your job easier if you first limit your scope.

Keep in mind that UNC Libraries have research guides and to databases relevant to many fields of study. You can reach out to the subject librarian for a consultation: https://library.unc.edu/support/consultations/ .

And don’t forget to tap into your professor’s (or other professors’) knowledge in the field. Ask your professor questions such as: “If you had to read only one book from the 90’s on topic X, what would it be?” Questions such as this help you to find and determine quickly the most seminal pieces in the field.

Consider whether your sources are current

Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. In the sciences, for instance, treatments for medical problems are constantly changing according to the latest studies. Information even two years old could be obsolete. However, if you are writing a review in the humanities, history, or social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be what is needed, because what is important is how perspectives have changed through the years or within a certain time period. Try sorting through some other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to consider what is currently of interest to scholars in this field and what is not.

Strategies for writing the literature review

Find a focus.

A literature review, like a term paper, is usually organized around ideas, not the sources themselves as an annotated bibliography would be organized. This means that you will not just simply list your sources and go into detail about each one of them, one at a time. No. As you read widely but selectively in your topic area, consider instead what themes or issues connect your sources together. Do they present one or different solutions? Is there an aspect of the field that is missing? How well do they present the material and do they portray it according to an appropriate theory? Do they reveal a trend in the field? A raging debate? Pick one of these themes to focus the organization of your review.

Convey it to your reader

A literature review may not have a traditional thesis statement (one that makes an argument), but you do need to tell readers what to expect. Try writing a simple statement that lets the reader know what is your main organizing principle. Here are a couple of examples:

The current trend in treatment for congestive heart failure combines surgery and medicine. More and more cultural studies scholars are accepting popular media as a subject worthy of academic consideration.

Consider organization

You’ve got a focus, and you’ve stated it clearly and directly. Now what is the most effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc., that your review needs to include? And in what order should you present them? Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level:

First, cover the basic categories

Just like most academic papers, literature reviews also must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper. The following provides a brief description of the content of each:

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 and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each).
Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed?

Organizing the body

To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario:

You’ve decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This is because you’ve just finished reading Moby Dick, and you wonder if that whale’s portrayal is really real. You start with some articles about the physiology of sperm whales in biology journals written in the 1980’s. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed on whales in the early 18th century. So you check those out. Then you look up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales have been portrayed in other forms of art, such as in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, as the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to do. This makes you wonder about American whaling methods during the time portrayed in Moby Dick, so you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his novel.

Now consider some typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:

Chronological: If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the book on sperm whales in other art (1968), and finally the biology articles (1980s) and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century. But there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. And notice that even though the sources on sperm whales in other art and on American whaling are written recently, they are about other subjects/objects that were created much earlier. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus.
By publication: Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a change in dissection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies.
By trend: A better way to organize the above sources chronologically is to examine the sources under another trend, such as the history of whaling. Then your review would have subsections according to eras within this period. For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Under this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century apart.
Thematic: Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. While the study focuses on one topic, harpoon technology, it will still be organized chronologically. The only difference here between a “chronological” and a “thematic” approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology.But more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. For instance, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as “evil” in cultural documents. The subsections might include how they are personified, how their proportions are exaggerated, and their behaviors misunderstood. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made.
Methodological: A methodological approach differs from the two above in that the focusing factor usually does not have to do with the content of the material. Instead, it focuses on the “methods” of the researcher or writer. For the sperm whale project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of whales in American, British, and French art work. Or the review might focus on the economic impact of whaling on a community. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed. Once you’ve decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. They should arise out of your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period. A thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue.

Current Situation: Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.
History: The chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
Methods and/or Standards: The criteria you used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Questions for Further Research: What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

Begin composing

Once you’ve settled on a general pattern of organization, you’re ready to write each section. There are a few guidelines you should follow during the writing stage as well. Here is a sample paragraph from a literature review about sexism and language to illuminate the following discussion:

However, other studies have shown that even gender-neutral antecedents are more likely to produce masculine images than feminine ones (Gastil, 1990). Hamilton (1988) asked students to complete sentences that required them to fill in pronouns that agreed with gender-neutral antecedents such as “writer,” “pedestrian,” and “persons.” The students were asked to describe any image they had when writing the sentence. Hamilton found that people imagined 3.3 men to each woman in the masculine “generic” condition and 1.5 men per woman in the unbiased condition. Thus, while ambient sexism accounted for some of the masculine bias, sexist language amplified the effect. (Source: Erika Falk and Jordan Mills, “Why Sexist Language Affects Persuasion: The Role of Homophily, Intended Audience, and Offense,” Women and Language19:2).

Use evidence

Be selective

Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the review’s focus, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological.

Use quotes sparingly

Falk and Mills do not use any direct quotes. That is because the survey nature of the literature review does not allow for in-depth discussion or detailed quotes from the text. Some short quotes here and there are okay, though, if you want to emphasize a point, or if what the author said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. Notice that Falk and Mills do quote certain terms that were coined by the author, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. But if you find yourself wanting to put in more quotes, check with your instructor.

Summarize and synthesize

Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph as well as throughout the review. The authors here recapitulate important features of Hamilton’s study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study’s significance and relating it to their own work.

Keep your own voice

While the literature review presents others’ ideas, your voice (the writer’s) should remain front and center. Notice that Falk and Mills weave references to other sources into their own text, but they still maintain their own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with their own ideas and their own words. The sources support what Falk and Mills are saying.

Use caution when paraphrasing

When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author’s information or opinions accurately and in your own words. In the preceding example, Falk and Mills either directly refer in the text to the author of their source, such as Hamilton, or they provide ample notation in the text when the ideas they are mentioning are not their own, for example, Gastil’s. For more information, please see our handout on plagiarism .

Revise, revise, revise

Draft in hand? Now you’re ready to revise. Spending a lot of time revising is a wise idea, because your main objective is to present the material, not the argument. So check over your review again to make sure it follows the assignment and/or your outline. Then, just as you would for most other academic forms of writing, rewrite or rework the language of your review so that you’ve presented your information in the most concise manner possible. Be sure to use terminology familiar to your audience; get rid of unnecessary jargon or slang. Finally, double check that you’ve documented your sources and formatted the review appropriately for your discipline. For tips on the revising and editing process, see our handout on revising drafts .

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Jones, Robert, Patrick Bizzaro, and Cynthia Selfe. 1997. The Harcourt Brace Guide to Writing in the Disciplines . New York: Harcourt Brace.

Lamb, Sandra E. 1998. How to Write It: A Complete Guide to Everything You’ll Ever Write . Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.

Rosen, Leonard J., and Laurence Behrens. 2003. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook , 5th ed. New York: Longman.

Troyka, Lynn Quittman, and Doug Hesse. 2016. Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers , 11th ed. London: Pearson.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Literature review assignments A video on how to organize literature reviews.
Select the most relevant material from your sources With your research question in mind, read each of your sources and identify the material that is most relevant to that question. This might be material that answers the question directly, but it might also be material that helps explain why it’s important to ask the question or that is otherwise relevant to your question. When you pull this material from your source, you can extract it as a direct quotation, or you can paraphrase the passage or idea. (Make sure you enclose direct quotations in quotation marks!) A single source may have more than one idea relevant to your question.
Arrange that material so you can focus on it apart from the source text itself Many writers put the material they have selected into a grid. They place each quotation or paraphrase in a cell in that grid. Arranging your selected material in a grid has two benefits: first, you can view your relevant material away from the source text (meaning you are now working with fewer words and pages!). Second, you can view all of the material that will go into your lit review in one place.

Once you have created these groups of ideas, approaches, or themes, give each one a label. The labels describe the points, themes, or topics that are the backbone of your paper’s structure.

Now that you have identified the topics you will discuss in your lit review, look them over as a whole. Do you see any gaps that you should fill by finding additional sources? If so, do that research and add those sources to your groupings.

Once you have an assertion for each of your groupings, put those assertions in the order that you want to use in the lit review. This may be the order that has the best logical flow, or the order that tells the story you want to tell in the lit review.

Source: Organizing Literature Reviews: The Basics from George Mason University

Bubbl.us Bubbl.us makes it easy to organize your ideas visually in a way that makes sense to you and others.
Coggle Coggle is online software for creating and sharing mindmaps and flowcharts.
Google Sheets Create a matrix with author names across the top (columns), themes on the left side (rows).
Microsoft Excel Create a matrix with author names across the top (columns), themes on the left side (rows).
Mind42 Mind42 is a free online mind mapping software. In short: Mind42 offers you a software that runs in your browser to create mind maps - a special form of a structured diagram to visually organize information.
Popplet Mind maps, flow charts, timelines, story boards and more.
Scapple Ever scribbled ideas on a piece of paper and drawn lines between related thoughts? Then you already know what Scapple does. It's a virtual sheet of paper that lets you make notes anywhere and connect them using lines or arrows.
XMind The full-featured mind mapping and brainstorming app.

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Literature Reviews

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What is a literature review?

Why conduct a literature review, stages of a literature review, lit reviews: an overview (video), check out these books.

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1. Define your research question
2. Plan your search
3. Search the literature
4. Organize your results
5. Synthesize your findings
6. Write the review
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Definition: A literature review is a systematic examination and synthesis of existing scholarly research on a specific topic or subject.

Purpose: It serves to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge within a particular field.

Analysis: Involves critically evaluating and summarizing key findings, methodologies, and debates found in academic literature.

Identifying Gaps: Aims to pinpoint areas where there is a lack of research or unresolved questions, highlighting opportunities for further investigation.

Contextualization: Enables researchers to understand how their work fits into the broader academic conversation and contributes to the existing body of knowledge.

tl;dr A literature review critically examines and synthesizes existing scholarly research and publications on a specific topic to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current state of knowledge in the field.

What is a literature review NOT?

❌ An annotated bibliography

❌ Original research

❌ A summary

❌ Something to be conducted at the end of your research

❌ An opinion piece

❌ A chronological compilation of studies

The reason for conducting a literature review is to:

Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students

While this 9-minute video from NCSU is geared toward graduate students, it is useful for anyone conducting a literature review.

Writing the literature review: A practical guide

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Writing literature reviews: A guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences

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So, you have to write a literature review: A guided workbook for engineers

Telling a research story: Writing a literature review

The literature review: Six steps to success

Systematic approaches to a successful literature review

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Writing a Literature Review

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
Qualitative versus quantitative research
Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

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Literature reviews: parts & organization of a literature review.

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Literature Reviews

Parts & Organization of a Literature Review

Why are Literature Reviews Important

Literature reviews typically follow the introduction-body-conclusion format. If your literature review is part of a larger project or paper, the introduction and conclusion of the lit review may be just a few sentences, while you focus most of your attention on the body. If it is a standalone piece, then the introduction and conclusion may take up more space.

A literature review typically follows this model:

Introduction:

An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is.
Noting key topics or texts that will appear in the review.
A potential description of how you found your sources, and how you chose them for inclusion and discussion for your review.
Summarize and synthesize : Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole.
Analyze and interpret : Don’t just paraphrase other researchers and their voices – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole.
Critically Evaluate : Mention strengths and weaknesses of your sources.
Write in well-structured paragraphs : Use this body paragraph space to draw and show connections, comparisons, and contrasts between your selected sources.

Conclusion:

Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.
Connect it back to your primary research question. Remind readers what your thesis is.

Purdue University – Purdue Online Writing Lab. (n.d.). What are the Parts of a Lit Review?; How Should I Organize My Lit Review?. Retrieved from: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/conducting_research/writing_a_literature_review.html

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What is a Literature Review?

The scholarly conversation.

A literature review provides an overview of previous research on a topic that critically evaluates, classifies, and compares what has already been published on a particular topic. It allows the author to synthesize and place into context the research and scholarly literature relevant to the topic. It helps map the different approaches to a given question and reveals patterns. It forms the foundation for the author’s subsequent research and justifies the significance of the new investigation.

A literature review can be a short introductory section of a research article or a report or policy paper that focuses on recent research. Or, in the case of dissertations, theses, and review articles, it can be an extensive review of all relevant research.

The format is usually a bibliographic essay; sources are briefly cited within the body of the essay, with full bibliographic citations at the end.
The introduction should define the topic and set the context for the literature review. It will include the author's perspective or point of view on the topic, how they have defined the scope of the topic (including what's not included), and how the review will be organized. It can point out overall trends, conflicts in methodology or conclusions, and gaps in the research.
In the body of the review, the author should organize the research into major topics and subtopics. These groupings may be by subject, (e.g., globalization of clothing manufacturing), type of research (e.g., case studies), methodology (e.g., qualitative), genre, chronology, or other common characteristics. Within these groups, the author can then discuss the merits of each article and analyze and compare the importance of each article to similar ones.
The conclusion will summarize the main findings, make clear how this review of the literature supports (or not) the research to follow, and may point the direction for further research.
The list of references will include full citations for all of the items mentioned in the literature review.

Key Questions for a Literature Review

A literature review should try to answer questions such as

Who are the key researchers on this topic?
What has been the focus of the research efforts so far and what is the current status?
How have certain studies built on prior studies? Where are the connections? Are there new interpretations of the research?
Have there been any controversies or debate about the research? Is there consensus? Are there any contradictions?
Which areas have been identified as needing further research? Have any pathways been suggested?
How will your topic uniquely contribute to this body of knowledge?
Which methodologies have researchers used and which appear to be the most productive?
What sources of information or data were identified that might be useful to you?
How does your particular topic fit into the larger context of what has already been done?
How has the research that has already been done help frame your current investigation ?

Examples of Literature Reviews

Example of a literature review at the beginning of an article: Forbes, C. C., Blanchard, C. M., Mummery, W. K., & Courneya, K. S. (2015, March). Prevalence and correlates of strength exercise among breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer survivors . Oncology Nursing Forum, 42(2), 118+. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.sonoma.idm.oclc.org/ps/i.do?p=HRCA&sw=w&u=sonomacsu&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA422059606&asid=27e45873fddc413ac1bebbc129f7649c Example of a comprehensive review of the literature: Wilson, J. L. (2016). An exploration of bullying behaviours in nursing: a review of the literature. British Journal Of Nursing , 25 (6), 303-306. For additional examples, see:

Galvan, J., Galvan, M., & ProQuest. (2017). Writing literature reviews: A guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences (Seventh ed.). [Electronic book]

Pan, M., & Lopez, M. (2008). Preparing literature reviews: Qualitative and quantitative approaches (3rd ed.). Glendale, CA: Pyrczak Pub. [ Q180.55.E9 P36 2008]

Useful Links

Write a Literature Review (UCSC)
Literature Reviews (Purdue)
Literature Reviews: overview (UNC)
Review of Literature (UW-Madison)

Evidence Matrix for Literature Reviews

The Evidence Matrix can help you organize your research before writing your lit review. Use it to identify patterns and commonalities in the articles you have found--similar methodologies ? common theoretical frameworks ? It helps you make sure that all your major concepts covered. It also helps you see how your research fits into the context of the overall topic.

Evidence Matrix Special thanks to Dr. Cindy Stearns, SSU Sociology Dept, for permission to use this Matrix as an example.
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Doing a Literature Review

I. What is a Literature Review? The purpose of a review is to analyze critically a segment of a published body of knowledge through summary, classification, and comparison of prior research studies. It can be a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern, combining both summary and synthesis.

Review of the Literature (Wisconsin)
Systematic Literature Review vs Narrative Reviews
Get Lit: the Literature Review Candace Schaefer in the Texas A&M University Writing Center.

III. What Major Steps and Basic Elements Literature Reviews Require?

Overview of the subject, issue or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of literature review
Perform a literature review, finding materials relevant to the subject being explored
Division of works under review into categories (e.g. those in support of a particular position, those against, etc)
Explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others
Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, are most convincing of their opinions, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research
Write a Lit Review (UCSC)

IV. Which Citation Tool Are You Going to Use to Manage the Literature Sources? Choose your citation tool before conducing your literature reviews. There are a number of choices, including following software supported by the Libraries and the University:

RefWorks Available at no cost to Texas A&M affiliates.
EndNote Available for free through a campus-wide site license.

Cited Reference Searching

Cited references are the sources consulted in writing an article or a book, often referred to within the text of the work. A list of cited references may appear as Bibliographic Notes, Footnotes or Endnotes, References, List of Sources Cited or Consulted. In order for an article to be cited, it needs to have been published for a long enough period of time for another published article, citing it to appear.

These listings can be helpful in a number of ways:

Finding an article on a relevant topic and accumulating similar helpful resources
Following a specific idea or theory back to its first appearance in the literature
Finding articles that build on a specific theory or the most recent article on a topic
Identifying experts or leaders on a specific topic
Documenting scholarly reputation and impact for tenure and promotion

The cited reference databases are efficient in pulling together many articles on a topic with their references and in identifying which articles on a topic have been cited most frequently. They can also help identify the “top” journals in a field by impact factor, which may be useful for assessing them.

Web of Science This link opens in a new window covers the world’s leading scholarly literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities and examines proceedings of international conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions. It also includes cited references and citation mapping functions.

Searches can be done by:

Title or Topic
Author or Editor – The Author Finder tool includes variations on an author’s name
Journal or Publication Name
Grant Name or Funding Agency
Limited by year, Language, Document Type

The citation of the article will be retrieved with its references as well as the number of times cited and by whom.

You can refine your search results by subject area, useful when there is more than one author with the same name, or by document type. You can see the number of articles in your set contributed by particular authors and institutions and can create a citation report to identify which articles in your results have been cited the most.

You can easily export your results to bibliographic software like EndNote or RefWorks.

Articles can be searched by:

Abstract word or keyword
Source or journal
Author (by name or by affiliation)
Limit by date or document type

The database allows accounts to be set up and can save search alerts and journals lists. Scopus also provides journal analytics including data and graphs to illustrate the total citations, articles published, trend line and % not cited over time. It has the ability to exclude self-citations.

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Organizational Transformation: A Management Research Perspective

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First Online: 14 May 2024

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Ester Christou 16 &
Frank Piller 16

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Organizational transformation is a complex and multifaceted process that involves a fundamental change in the way an organization operates and delivers value to its stakeholders. It can be triggered by a variety of internal and external forces, such as technological change, shifts in the competitive landscape, or changes in market demand. To successfully manage organizational change, organizations must be able to adapt and respond to changing circumstances in a proactive and strategic manner. This chapter reviews important concepts and theories of organizational change from the perspective of management research and examines selected theories and frameworks that have been developed to understand and manage organizational change. Overall, this chapter provides insights and lessons for practitioners and researchers alike. It aims to help readers understand the complexities and challenges of organizational transformation, but also to provide an overview of strategies and approaches to successfully navigate a transformation process.

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Organizational transformation
Effectuation
Institutional theory
Change management
Digital transformation

1 Organizational Change and Transformation

Organizational transformation refers to the process of fundamentally changing the way an organization operates and delivers value to its stakeholders, and may require major changes in the way work is done. It may involve changes to the organization’s structure, culture, business processes, governance, and/or external relationships. There are many reasons why an organization may undergo a transformation. For example, it may seek to respond to a rapidly changing market, new technological opportunities, changing regulatory requirements, or changing norms and expectations in the society in which the organization operates. Consider, for example, the current rise of Generative Artificial Intelligence. Transformer language models (BART, ChatGPT), AI that generates software code (Copilot), or AI that generates images of all kinds (Midjourney, Dall-E) require profound changes not only in higher education institutions, but also in companies of all kinds, for example, in the way marketing copy is written (Peres et al. 2023 ), in the way innovation processes are organized (Piller et al. 2023 ), but also in the way job applications are processed. More generally, the rapid growth of available data combined with better machine learning algorithms is changing the way management decisions are made, how operational processes can be automated, and leading to the emergence of entirely new business models. Generative AI thus contributes to the overall demand for digital transformation—the process of using digital technologies to fundamentally change the way an organization operates and delivers value to its stakeholders (Vial 2019 ; Nambisan et al. 2019 ). At the same time, digitization is also enabling new ways of working that address individuals’ changing preferences for their workplace and work processes. In parallel with this ongoing digital transformation, organizations need to sustainably transform all aspects of their current business models into new, future-proof approaches. As discussed in more detail in other chapters of this book, the mandate for companies to respond to the threat of climate change and related sustainability challenges is probably the biggest driver of organizational transformation today. Overall, we are truly living in “transformational times” (Gruber 2023 ).

Regardless of its trigger, organizational transformation seeks to make an organization better able to compete effectively in a changing competitive environment (Newman 2000 ). A related but often distinct concept is organizational change , which refers to any change in an organization’s structure, processes, or practices (Hage 1999 ; Weick and Quinn 1999 ). It can range from small, incremental changes to more significant shifts in the way the organization operates. In general, the term organizational transformation is used to refer to a broader and more far-reaching process than organizational change. Organizational transformation typically involves a deeper level of change and has a greater impact on the organization and its stakeholders. Organizational change, on the other hand, may be more focused and limited in scope and may have a more modest impact on the organization.

Previous research has addressed this difference by distinguishing between first-order and second-order change (Newman 2000 ). According to Meyer et al. ( 1993 ), first-order change refers to changes that involve incremental adjustments to an organization’s existing structures, processes, and practices, but do not involve fundamental changes in strategy, core values, or corporate identity (Dutton and Dukerich 1991 ; Fox-Wolfgramm et al. 1998 ). These changes are often modest in scope and impact and do not fundamentally alter the way the organization operates. Examples of first-order change include the implementation of new technologies or processes, or the reorganization of existing work teams. First-order change is most likely to occur during periods of relative environmental stability and is likely to occur over extended periods of time (e.g., Tushman and Romanelli 1985 ). It improves the fit and consistency between an organization and its competitive and institutional contexts, but does not produce fundamental change.

Second-order change, on the other hand, refers to more fundamental and transformative changes that involve a significant shift in the way the organization operates. These changes are often broader and more far-reaching in their impact. Examples of second-order change include the introduction of new business models, the adoption of new technologies that fundamentally change the way the organization operates, or the introduction of new governance structures. Second-order change “takes organizations out of their familiar domains and alters the bases of power” (William 1983 : 99). It is a strategic reorientation, an organizational metamorphosis (Meyer et al. 1993 ), or a change in organizational templates or archetypes (Greenwood and Hinings 1996 ). Paradoxically, the more adapted firms are to their competitive and institutional context, i.e., the better they are at implementing first-order change, the more difficult it is for them to achieve second-order change (Granovetter 1985 ; Greenwood and Hinings 1996 ). Strategies for balancing these two poles have thus become a central topic in contemporary management research (for example, the extensive literature on organizational ambidexterity, e.g., O’Reilly and Tushman 2008 ; Raisch and Birkinshaw 2008 , but also the recent emphasis on paradox theory, e.g., Carmine and Smith 2020 ; Lewis 2000 ; Moschko et al. 2023 ).

In the management literature, three theoretical perspectives for studying organizational transformation (second-order change) can be distinguished (Newman 2000 ): institutional theory, organizational change theory, and organizational learning theory. We will briefly review these broad schools in Sect. 2 . This prepares Sect. 3 , where we review selected concepts that have been widely used in previous management research to explain and manage organizational change. In Sect. 4 , we then provide a deep dive into a transformation domain that has received a lot of attention in management research over the last decade, namely digital transformation. This focus may serve as an illustration of the theories and approaches described before. We conclude with a brief reflection and outlook in Sect. 5 .

2 Three Classic Theories to Study Organizational Transformation

Newman ( 2000 ) highlights three theoretical perspectives for studying organizational transformation (second-order change): institutional theory, organizational change theory, and organizational learning theory. These three theories are closely related and overlapping. Their level of analysis can serve as a simplified distinction (Fig. 1 ): While institutional theory argues at the level of a society (industry), work using organizational change theory is predominantly located at the level of the organization (business unit). Organizational learning emphasizes the role of individuals in an organization where learning ultimately takes place.

A table of 3 columns and 2 rows. Column titles are institutional, organizational change, and organizational learning theory. Row 1. Societal, organizational, and individual level. Row 2. Organizations need to conform to institutional pressures, change initiatives, and organizational adaption.

Theoretical lenses to analyze organizational transformation

Institutional theory is a framework for understanding how organizations conform to societal norms and expectations (DiMaggio and Powell 1983 ; Greenwood and Hinings 1996 ; Meyer and Rowan 1977 ; Zucker 1987 ). It is based on the idea that organizations are influenced by a set of institutional forces arising from the social, political, and economic context in which they operate, and that they adopt certain practices and behaviors in order to gain legitimacy and fit into the broader institutional environment. When these societal norms, which include laws, regulations, professional standards, and cultural norms, change (suddenly), organizations must change as well. Thus, institutional theory is often used to understand how organizations adapt to and shape the institutional environment in which they operate, and how they navigate the tensions and trade-offs that can arise between competing institutional logics. This term refers to the underlying values and assumptions that guide organizational behavior and shape the way organizations understand and interact with their environment (Alford and Friedland 1985 ). Finally, institutional work refers to the actions that organizations take to align their practices and behaviors with institutional expectations and norms (Zietsma and Lawrence 2010 ). This may involve conforming to existing norms or creating new ones in order to gain acceptance and legitimacy.

Organizational change theory examines the process of change within organizations, which in the context of this chapter can be understood as a process of institutional work to achieve second-order change (Armenakis and Bedeian 1999 ; Beer and Walton 1987 ). It is concerned with understanding how and why organizations change, as well as the factors that influence the change process (Meyer et al. 1993 ; Tushman and Romanelli 1985 ). Some of the key issues commonly addressed in organizational change theory include leadership, resistance to change, communication, power dynamics, and the role of culture in the change process. Accordingly, a number of frameworks have been developed to explain and understand the process of organizational change. While taking different perspectives, most of these frameworks build on the same few key ideas. Change is seen as a continuous process, a constant and ongoing process rather than a one-time event. This means that organizations must be able to adapt and respond to changing circumstances in order to remain relevant and successful—a perspective that refers to first-order change rather than transformation (Tushman and Romanelli 1985 ). Organizational change can involve both technical and social aspects. Technical change may involve the adoption of new technologies or processes, while social change may involve changes in the way people work together or interact with each other. Much of the change literature emphasizes the importance of considering these aspects together when implementing change (Hanelt et al. 2021 ). Effective change often requires strong leadership to guide and direct the process. This may include providing a clear vision for the change, communicating the benefits of the change to stakeholders, and building support for the change (Konopik et al. 2021 ; Eisenbach et al. 1999 ). Leadership is also needed because change can be difficult. Changing the way an organization operates can be a challenging process, and it is not uncommon for people to resist or be resistant to change. Understanding and managing this resistance is an important aspect of the change process (Kotter 1995 ).

Finally, organizational learning theory focuses on how organizations acquire, process, and apply new knowledge and information to adapt and improve. It is based on the idea that organizations are open systems that interact with their environment and can learn from their experiences (Levitt and March 1988 ; Schulz 2002 ). Organizational learning refers to the process by which organizations, and especially the individuals who make up that organization, acquire, process, and apply new knowledge and information in order to adapt and improve (Schulz 2002 ). Organizational learning can take many forms, such as learning from past experiences, learning from the experiences of others (e.g., through collaboration or benchmarking), or learning from new technologies or processes. It involves the integration and application of new knowledge and information in ways that help the organization adapt and improve. Organizational learning is an ongoing process that takes place throughout the life of the organization, continuously adapting and improving based on new information and experience. As a broad field of study, there are a variety of different approaches to organizational learning, each with its own unique perspective on how organizations learn and how that learning can be facilitated. But again, most approaches share some key ideas, including the perspective of learning as a social process. Organizational learning involves the interaction and communication of individuals within the organization. It is not just an individual process, but rather a collective process involving the sharing and integration of knowledge and ideas (Levitt and March 1988 ). Therefore, learning is influenced by the culture of the organization: An organization’s culture plays a significant role in shaping its capacity to learn. A culture that values learning and encourages experimentation and risk-taking is more likely to facilitate learning than a culture that is resistant to change (Cook and Yanow 2011 ). At the same time, learning is contextual. The specific context in which learning takes place can have a significant impact on the process and outcomes of learning. Finally, organizational learning requires reflective practices, i.e., the deliberate and systematic examination of one’s own experiences and actions. It allows organizations to critically evaluate their experiences and identify opportunities for improvement.

Overall, institutional theory, organizational change theory, and organizational learning theory are complementary perspectives that try to explain how firms respond to change: Institutional theory focuses on the influence of external change and pressures on organizations. Organizational change theory then explains how organizations react to external influences by adapting their existing structures. Lastly, organizational learning describes how organizations learn from past failure and success and thus have the ability to apply this knowledge on upcoming situations, in which organizations need to rethink their existing structures and strategies in order to successfully perform change.

3 Selected Concepts and Frameworks Supporting Organizational Transformation

In this section, we complement the general theoretical overview from the last section by reviewing three streams of literature that we believe provide representative insights into different theoretical approaches in management research to studying change at the organizational level: dynamic capabilities, effective decision making, and transformational leadership. As noted in the introduction, the prior literature often does not distinguish between first-order and second-order change. However, we are confident that the following selection of concrete approaches can contribute to a holistic understanding of transformation research.

The three concepts selected for review in this section have been widely used in previous management research to explain and manage organizational change. We acknowledge that our choice of these concepts is our own and rather subjective. We have tried to cover different aspects of management research that can provide the readers of this interdisciplinary book—which is primarily aimed at an audience beyond the field of management and economics—with a “representative” introduction to how previous research in our field (management research) has investigated the broad field of “transformation.” We have tried to select three complementary perspectives: Dynamic capabilities added the notion of second-order change to the strategic management literature. Their level of analysis is the firm or business unit. Effectuation , on the other hand, is a relatively new concept that originated in the entrepreneurship literature to explain change and transformation in start-ups. It has only recently been transferred to the context of managing change in established organizations. Its level of analysis is the way entrepreneurs and managers (teams) deal with uncertainty and use transformations in their environment as a driver for change. Transformational leadership , finally, recognizes the importance of leadership behavior as a facilitator of organizational change and transformation and takes an individual-level perspective of a company’s top leaders.

3.1 Dynamic Capabilities

Firms are constantly in the process of adapting, reconfiguring, and recreating their organizational resources and capabilities in order to remain competitive (Wang and Ahmed 2007 ). In this context, the notion of dynamic capabilities has been widely explored in the strategic management literature. Dynamic capabilities refer to “organizational and strategic routines by which firms achieve new resource configurations as markets emerge, collide, divide, evolve, and die” (Eisenhardt and Martin 2000 : 1107). Conceptually, they extend the established resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, a theoretical framework that explains how competitive advantage is achieved within a firm and sustained over time (Eisenhardt and Martin 2000 ). The RBV views an organization as a set of resources. These resources are heterogeneously distributed across firms. Resource differences between firms persist over time and can explain differences in competitive advantage across firms (Amit and Schoemaker 1993 ). While the RBV has been seen as a key addition to the previously dominant market-based view of the firm (Porter 1980 ) and has received much general agreement and attention in the management literature, a key criticism of the RBV has been that it is based on the assumption that the market is static and does not address dynamic developments (Teece et al. 1997 ; Eisenhardt and Martin 2000 ). The traditional set of resources captured by the RBV explains when and why a firm can gain competitive advantage due to its unique set of capabilities among a set of given competitors in a market. But the traditional RBV could not explain how firms compete in dynamic markets, how and why certain firms have competitive advantage in unstable environments and situations of unpredictable change. In the seminal paper introducing the idea of dynamic capabilities, Teece et al. ( 1997 ) argue that in dynamic markets where the competitive landscape is changing, a different set of resources and capabilities forms the source of sustainable competitive advantage, dynamic capabilities.

Conceptually, dynamic capabilities are organizational and strategic routines that allow firms to effectively sense and shape their environment in order to pursue new opportunities and respond to changing circumstances (Eisenhardt and Martin 2000 ). These capabilities include the ability to continuously learn, adapt, and innovate to create and exploit new sources of value (Grant 1996 ; Teece and Pisano 1994 ). Dynamic capabilities include both the creation and use of resources, such as knowledge, skills and organizational structures, and the processes by which these resources are managed and mobilized (Teece et al. 1997 ). They include the ability to reconfigure and redeploy resources in response to changing environments and opportunities, and to build new capabilities as needed. Teece ( 2007 ) describes the development of dynamic capabilities as an unfolding process of sensing, harnessing, and reconfiguring firm resources. This conceptualization of dynamic capabilities suggests that firms should have the capacity for the process to first sense and shape opportunities and threats, second seize opportunities, and third maintain competitiveness by enhancing, combining, protecting, and, when necessary, reconfiguring the firm’s intangible and tangible assets (Teece 2007 ).

The sensing mechanism identifies customers with unmet needs and develops technological opportunities. The capabilities required are therefore threefold. Before directing innovation efforts, organizations must identify target market segments and customer needs, and they must be able to assess developments in the business ecosystem. Organizations also need to harness internal innovation and manage internal innovation processes. Accordingly, external sources of innovation must also be tapped, which are suppliers and complements, exogenous science, and customer engagement in open innovation (Teece 2007 ; Schoemaker et al. 2018 ).

Seizing capabilities refer to the ability to mobilize resources, address needs, and exploit business opportunities to create value and mitigate risk for the organization. Seizing capabilities pay special attention to the value of partnerships, realigning the boundaries of the firm and integrating these concepts into the business model (Teece 2007 , 2014 ). With the integration of external partners and information sources, the need for decision-making protocols emerges. The organization must also determine the boundaries within which it operates. This includes decisions about the design of alliances to develop capabilities, as well as the management of integration, in- and outsourcing, and the value of co-specialization within the value network, all while protecting intellectual property and designing an organizational culture for innovation (Teece 2007 , 2014 ).

The final building block, transforming or reconfiguring capabilities , refers to the continuous recombination and reconfiguration of resources and structures under changing environments to support business models (Teece 2007 ). This mechanism highlights the need for organizations to continuously renew their resource base. Effective management of internal and external resources, as well as knowledge management, enables effective and continuous realignment of resources (Teece 2007 , 2014 ). To be successful, top management teams must possess entrepreneurial skills to adapt to and influence an ever-changing business environment. Effective decision making and transformational leadership, which will be explored in the next sections of this chapter, can be seen as constituting such entrepreneurial capabilities.

Overall, dynamic capabilities are a key factor in a firm’s ability to compete and succeed in today’s rapidly changing business environment. Empirical research on dynamic capabilities has mostly examined the relationship between a firm’s dynamic capabilities and firm performance. It is generally supported that all three mechanisms of dynamic capabilities, namely sensing, seizing, and transforming, have an effect on the firm’s long-term success (Rindova and Kotha 2001 ; Torres et al. 2018 ). They enable firms to continuously learn, adapt, and innovate to create and exploit new sources of value. We believe that the core idea of dynamic capabilities can also be applied to the higher level of transformation research as conceptualized in this book. Future interdisciplinary research needs to apply the concept of dynamic capabilities to higher level domains where transformation takes place: an industry, a region, a society—or the world.

3.2 Effectual Decision Making

While dynamic capabilities is a theory that developed in the context of strategic management in established organizations, another theory that can contribute to the study and management of organizational change is effectuation (Sarasvathy 2001 , 2008 ; Fisher 2012 ). The term describes a decision-making approach that is particularly relevant in contexts where the future is uncertain and available resources are limited. It involves focusing on the resources and capabilities that are already available and using these resources to actively shape and create opportunities, rather than simply reacting to them. Effectuation involves taking calculated risks, being flexible and adaptable, and building a network of relationships and collaborations (Fisher 2012 ). Effectuation logic can be applied at different times in a firm’s development depending on what type of change the firm is going through (Ko et al. 2021 ).

Effectuation is often explained in contrast to causation, the typical decision-making approach traditionally taught in management schools. Causation involves identifying a clear goal or objective and then developing a plan to achieve that goal based on a clear understanding of the causal relationships between different variables (Sarasvathy 2008 ). Competitive advantage in these models is conceptualized as largely determined by competencies related to the exploitation of opportunities and resources controlled by the organization (Chandler and Jansen 1992 ).

In a now famous example, Sarasvathy ( 2008 ) further explained the dichotomous concepts of effectuation and causation. She suggests the metaphors of a jigsaw puzzle for the causation approach and a patchwork quilt for the effectuation approach. In the puzzle, an entrepreneur’s task is to take an existing market opportunity and use resources to create a competitive advantage. In the puzzle builder’s view, all the pieces are there, but they need to be put together in the right way. In the patchwork quilt approach, the entrepreneur is asked to develop an opportunity by experimenting and incorporating new information as it becomes available. The patchwork quilter sees the world as a changing state shaped by human action (Sarasvathy 2008 ). Overall, the key difference between effectuation and causation is the level of uncertainty and predictability in the context in which they are used. Causation is more relevant to predictable and stable contexts, while effectuation is more relevant to uncertain and unpredictable contexts-such as those typical of organizational change and transformation. Effectuation assumes that an overall strategic goal is not clear from the outset. Decision-makers use a logic of non-predictive control and focus on “choosing between possible effects that can be created with given means” (Sarasvathy 2008 ).

Originally developed as a theory to explain the success of serial entrepreneurs, effectuation has received considerable scholarly attention in recent decades (Perry et al. 2012 ). Its application has been extended far beyond entrepreneurship circles to fields such as creativity and innovation (Blauth et al. 2014 ), marketing (Coviello and Joseph 2012 ), and operations and project management (Midler and Silberzahn 2008 ). Effectuation has also received attention in the field of research and development processes. Brettel et al. ( 2012 ) suggest that mobilizing an effectual mode of decision making can positively affect R&D performance, especially when innovativeness is high. Based on this study, Blauth et al. ( 2014 ) find that the use of an effectual decision-making logic has a positive impact on practiced creativity, while the use of a causal logic seems to have a negative impact on creativity. These relationships become stronger as the level of uncertainty increases. Nevertheless, recent research suggests that effectuation and causation even complement each other in the pursuit of highly innovative projects (Yusuf and Sloan 2015 ).

Future research has yet to establish a formal link between effectuation and organizational change. However, both concepts involve the process of adapting and responding to change in order to create value. Organizational transformation often involves significant changes in the way an organization operates, which can be difficult and uncertain. In these situations, an effectuation-based approach can be useful to help the organization focus on the resources and capabilities it already has, and to use those resources to actively shape and create new opportunities in the face of uncertainty. We see great potential for establishing effectual decision making as a core concept for transformation management as understood in the context of this book. However, future research needs to establish the links between these concepts in greater detail.

3.3 Transformational Leadership

While dynamic capabilities explain how a specific set of resources can enable organizations to implement second-order change, and the establishment of an effectual decision-making logic can enable an incumbent organization to cope with the uncertainty typical of organizational change, the final concept discussed in this section as a potentially fruitful framework from management research to establish an interdisciplinary transformation framework is transformational leadership . In recent decades, an increasing number of researchers have recognized the importance of leadership behavior as a facilitator of organizational change and transformation (Higgs and Rowland 2008 ; Oreg et al. 2011 ). Our brief review of key concepts in the three foundational theories of managing organizational change, as described in the introduction to this chapter, also pointed to the role of leadership. A wide range of expectations have been proposed for the role of a leader in an organization undergoing change: For example, leaders should act as visionaries, advisors, change agents, or consultants (Felfe 2006 ). Thus, there is no clear definition of the concept of leadership in past and current research, but rather a variety of definitions. These definitions differ not only in terms of the leader’s role within the organization, but also in terms of various factors such as the characteristics of leadership behavior, the leader’s influence on organizational goals, organizational success, culture, and employee performance and satisfaction (Yukl 1989 ).

Past research has been consistent in assigning organizational leaders the primary responsibility of directing followers toward the achievement of organizational goals (Zaccaro and Klimoski 2002 ). A pragmatic definition by Northouse ( 2021 : 24) builds on a core assumption, a leader’s significant influence on followers, and defines leadership as “a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goals.” Leaders are considered to have a broad ability to influence employee performance and well-being (Lok and Crawford 2004 ). In this regard, studies have shown a relationship between organizational outcomes and different leadership styles (Waldman et al. 2001 ). This research proposes that leaders exhibit a specific (leadership) style, which is a combination of personal characteristics and behaviors of leaders when interacting with their team members. For example, Bommer et al. ( 2005 ) suggest that leaders’ values are reflected in employees’ attitudes toward change. The authors find that leaders’ openness values are negatively related to followers’ intentions to resist organizational change. Higgs and Rowland ( 2008 ) argue that group-focused leadership practices and behaviors have a positive impact on change success. Berson and Avolio ( 2004 ) find a link between a leader’s style and communication skills and his or her ability to raise the organization’s awareness of organizational change. Thus, there is growing evidence that leadership traits and behaviors influence the success or failure of organizational change (Higgs and Rowland 2008 ).

Within the literature on leadership styles, the theoretical concept of Bass ( 1985 ), which distinguishes between transactional and transformational leadership, deserves recognition in the context of this chapter. Bass’ theoretical model groups the behavioral patterns of supervisors toward their employees into two different dimensions. According to Bass ( 1985 ), leadership behavior can first be described by comparing two leadership styles, transformational leadership and transactional leadership. Transformational leadership is characterized by the adaptability of the leader. The leader is able to identify current challenges and respond to them in a timely manner (Bass et al. 2003 ). It is also characterized by the “transformation” of the values and attitudes of employees and the resulting increase in employee motivation and performance (Felfe 2006 ; Waldman et al. 2001 ). Thus, transformational leadership focuses on inspiring and motivating followers to not only achieve their goals, but also to strive for personal and professional growth. Transformational leaders seek to engage followers in a shared vision and empower them to take responsibility for their work and development.

Transformational leadership involves four key components—the “four Is”: idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, intellectual input, and individualized consideration. Idealized influence describes the behavior of transformational leaders who serve as role models and inspire their followers to strive for excellence. They demonstrate integrity, honesty, and authenticity and are able to earn the respect and trust of their followers. This component describes leaders as both professional and moral role models (Felfe 2006 ). Inspirational motivation proposes that transformational leaders are able to inspire and motivate their followers by articulating a compelling vision and helping them see the purpose and meaning behind their work and the change required. Leaders motivate followers by instilling optimism and enthusiasm for achieving set goals and the organization’s mission and values (Bass et al. 2003 ). Intellectual stimulation means that leaders encourage their followers to question established tasks, think critically, challenge assumptions, and seek new and creative solutions to problems. Transformational leaders encourage creativity and innovation in their followers (Bass et al. 2003 ). Finally, individualized consideration suggests that transformational leaders provide individualized support and development to their followers, encouraging them to identify and develop their strengths and potential in a targeted manner. Leaders take on the role of a mentor (Bass et al. 2003 ). Research has shown that transformational leadership can be effective in a variety of settings and can lead to improved performance, job satisfaction, and commitment among employees (Liu et al. 2010 ). However, transformational leaders must be authentic and genuine in their interactions with followers, as insincere or manipulative behavior can undermine trust and effectiveness (Felfe 2006 ).

Transactional leadership , on the other hand, is a leadership style that focuses on establishing clear expectations and rewards for achieving specific goals and objectives. Transactional leaders use a system of rewards and punishments to motivate and direct their followers and provide feedback and guidance to help them achieve their goals. Thus, transactional leadership is characterized by a clearly regulated exchange relationship between leaders and followers (Felfe et al. 2004 ; Felfe 2006 ). Transactional leadership has two key components. First, transactional leaders use contingent rewards such as praise, recognition, and tangible incentives to motivate and reward followers for achieving specific goals and objectives (Felfe 2006 ). Second, transactional leaders engage in management by exception. That is, they use a system of monitoring and feedback to identify and correct deviations from expected standards and performance (Bass et al. 2003 ).

Transactional leadership can be effective in situations where there is a clear and defined set of goals and tasks, and where there is a need for stability and predictability. However, it may be less effective in situations where there is a need for creativity, innovation, or adaptability. However, when comparing transformational and transactional leadership styles, transformational and transactional leadership should not be seen as opposing behaviors, but can be used simultaneously by leaders depending on the situation (Felfe et al. 2004 ). Transformational leaders promote a common understanding of strategic goals that align with the organization’s vision. In addition, they create a learning environment that encourages employees to question ways of working in order to translate specific goals into actions. The effectiveness of strategic goal implementation depends on how well leaders in an organization perceive and clarify the goals, translate them into more specific goals tied to the respective units, and then foster an open learning environment to facilitate the pursuit and successful completion of the goals (Felfe et al. 2004 ). Transactional leaders, on the other hand, as a more instrumental leadership style, provide a concrete platform from which leaders can actively engage with followers in implementing change. The reinforcing and rewarding nature of transactional leadership would underpin specific engagement behaviors, such as providing information that emphasizes personal impact. Thus, transformational and transactional leadership styles are thought to be complementary, albeit situational, during organizational change (Tushman and Nadler 1986 ).

Overall, the theoretical concepts of transformational leadership and organizational transformation are strongly related. Transformational leaders are able to inspire and motivate their followers to embrace change and strive for excellence, and to build the skills and resources needed to successfully manage organizational transformation. As a result, they play a critical role in driving and managing organizational transformation efforts.

4 Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is challenging executives across industries (Correani et al. 2020 ). Most recently, COVID-19 urged leaders to rethink existing internal systems and move toward digital transformation, recognizing the strategic importance of technology in their organizations. Current research has not reached a consensus on what exactly digital transformation is (Warner and Wäger 2019 ). Despite the lack of an explicit definition, digital transformation is always associated with organizational change: Organizations need to adapt to the general expansion of digital technologies—defined as the combination and interconnection of myriad, distributed information, communication, and computing technologies (Bharadwaj et al. 2013 ). Thus, digital transformation can be linked to the organizational change initiated by the proliferation of digital technologies (Hanelt et al. 2021 ).

Digital transformation refers to the process of using digital technologies to fundamentally change the way an organization operates and delivers value to its stakeholders (Vial 2019 ; Nambisan et al. 2019 ). It involves the integration of digital technologies into all areas of the organization, including its business models, processes, and operations, to enable new forms of value creation and improve performance (Hanelt et al. 2021 ). The core proposition is that digital technologies enable new forms of value creation. Digital technologies, such as the Internet, mobile devices, and artificial intelligence, enable organizations to create new forms of value that were not previously possible. For example, they can be used to improve customer experiences, create new products and services, or streamline operations. These technologies also have the potential to disrupt traditional business models and create new opportunities for organizations (Hinings et al. 2018 ). They can enable organizations to reach new markets, create new revenue streams, and challenge established players in their industry. In this section, we use the domain of digital transformation as an example to review the state of research in the management discipline on organizational transformation.

Prior research has established that digital transformation requires a holistic approach (e.g., Appio et al. 2021 ; Hanelt et al. 2021 ; Vial 2019 ). Digital transformation is not just about implementing new technologies, but rather about fundamentally rethinking and changing the way an organization operates. It requires a holistic approach that considers the impact of digital technologies on all aspects of the organization. This often involves a change in the culture of the organization, as it requires a different way of thinking and working. It also requires new skills, new ways of collaborating and communicating, and a willingness to embrace change and take risks. Accordingly, the concept of dynamic capabilities has been specified for digitalization, as we will review in the next subsection. Previous research has also derived a number of process models for digital transformation that capture the need for a holistic process. Finally, at the end of this section, we discuss how the state of transformation can be measured by introducing the idea of a digital maturity model—which can be seen as prototypical examples to inspire future research on organizational transformation.

4.1 (Dynamic) Capabilities for Digital Transformation

The emergence of new technologies, and thus new opportunities for organizations, has reshaped business models across industries (Liu et al. 2011 ). Hence, digital transformation is more complex than just integrating new digital technologies into the existing organizational structure and processes. In this context, the idea of dynamic capabilities has been adapted to the field of digitalization (Konopik et al. 2021 ), building on the notion in previous research in strategic management that the existence of dynamic capabilities has a positive impact on competitive advantage in dynamic environments (Drnevich and Kriauciunas 2011 ; Li and Liu 2014 ). For digital transformation, Warner and Wäger ( 2019 ), for example, found that firms need to build a system of dynamic capabilities to be successful in digital transformation. Hanelt et al. ( 2021 ) proposed that firms with high levels of dynamic capabilities have higher levels of digital maturity than firms with low levels of dynamic capabilities. In addition, Konopik et al. ( 2021 ) state that organizational capabilities relevant to digital transformation are equivalent to the dynamic capability approach of three mechanisms: sensing, seizing, and transforming. Companies rely on a specific set of dynamic capabilities along their digital transformation process, namely strategy and ecosystem formation, innovation thinking, technology management, data management, organizational design, and leadership. We briefly review these aspects in the following.

Capabilities related to strategy and ecosystem formation refer to the adaptation of existing business models during the digital transformation process (Warner and Wäger 2019 ). They also include the formation and management of ecosystems that span multiple organizations, functions, and industries initiated by digital transformation (Berman and Marshall 2014 ; Hanelt et al. 2021 ). The formation and management of digital ecosystems requires the ability to identify the key stakeholders and partners involved in the ecosystem and to establish clear roles, responsibilities, and expectations. This may involve creating governance structures and mechanisms to facilitate collaboration and coordination among stakeholders. Second, it is important to establish the technical infrastructure and platforms that will support the ecosystem, such as cloud computing, data analytics, and API management. Finally, companies need the ability to design business models and revenue streams to support the ecosystem and ensure that the ecosystem’s value proposition creates value for all stakeholders (Matt et al. 2015 ).

Innovation thinking refers to organizational capabilities that enable the emergence of innovations from within or outside the organization (open innovation). Innovation thinking enables organizations to identify and explore new possibilities, challenge assumptions and existing ways of doing things, and experiment with new ideas. It also involves the ability to think creatively and see problems and challenges from multiple perspectives, which can help generate novel solutions (Hinings et al. 2018 ). Involving the customer in the innovation processes (co-creation) is a key element here, especially by focusing efforts on improving the customer experience (Elmquist et al. 2009 ). This also includes the development capacity to enhance products with digital technologies (Warner and Wägner 2019 ).

Digital Technology Management. Intuitively, digital technologies play a critical role in the digital transformation process. Technology management as a digital transformation capability therefore involves the strategic planning, acquisition, and deployment of technology resources, as well as the ongoing management and optimization of these resources to deliver maximum value. This includes activities such as technology roadmap development, vendor management, and technology portfolio management (Konopik et al. 2021 ). Effective technology management is a critical capability for digital transformation because it enables organizations to identify and adopt the most appropriate technologies for their needs, integrate these technologies into their operations, and continuously optimize and evolve their technology stack in response to changing business needs and the evolving digital landscape (Besson and Rowe 2012 ).

Data management refers to organizational capabilities related to the handling, security, and capitalization of data. It is critical to digital transformation because it enables organizations to collect and analyze data from a variety of sources, including internal systems, customer interactions, and external sources. This data can be used to optimize business processes, improve decision making, and identify new opportunities (Haffke et al. 2016 ). Data management also includes ensuring the quality, integrity, and security of data, as well as the governance and compliance of data-related activities. This is important because organizations rely on accurate and reliable data to make decisions and maintain the trust of their stakeholders. A specific capability discussed in this context is managing the tension between sharing data with third parties, enabling better decisions at the system level, and maintaining competitive advantage at the firm level (Konopik et al. 2021 ).

Organizational design. The structural and procedural organization must adapt to support digital transformation strategies. Changes may be triggered by new or adapted business models or new technologies (Hess et al. 2016 ). Effective organizational design is critical to digital transformation because it enables organizations to align their structure, processes, and systems with their strategic goals and objectives and create the conditions for innovation and agility. This may involve redesigning roles and responsibilities, implementing new processes and systems, or introducing new governance structures (Hinings et al. 2018 ).

Leadership finally involves creating a culture and leadership style that supports digital transformation and encourages collaboration, creativity, and continuous learning. This is important because digital transformation often requires significant changes in the way work is done, and a supportive culture and leadership style can help facilitate these changes (Eisenhardt and Martin 2010 ; Matt et al. 2015 ). Interestingly, the leadership construct has been largely neglected in the general dynamic capabilities literature (Schilke et al. 2018 ). However, an appropriate leadership style is a key requirement for the successful transformation of organizations (Nadkarni and Prügl 2021 ) and for overcoming internal resistance from various stakeholders during the transformation processes (Matt et al. 2015 ).

In conclusion, dynamic capabilities are an important consideration for organizations seeking to undertake digital transformation. Dynamic capabilities refer to an organization’s ability to continuously adapt and evolve in response to changing circumstances and opportunities. They include the ability to sense and respond to change, to learn and innovate, and to recombine and leverage resources and capabilities in new ways. Dynamic capabilities help organizations navigate the uncertainty and complexity of digital transformation and continuously adapt and evolve in response to changing circumstances and opportunities. However, developing dynamic capabilities is not easy and requires a significant investment of time and resources. It also requires a culture and leadership style that supports change and continuous learning, and encourages collaboration, creativity, and experimentation.

4.2 Digital Transformation Process Models

A second stream of research has focused on providing frameworks and process models to address the question of how organizations can successfully undertake digital transformation. It is widely recognized that digital transformation is a process consisting of various stages (Hess et al. 2016 ; von Leipzig et al. 2017 ; Sebastian et al. 2017 ). Process models for digital transformation refer to frameworks or approaches that organizations can use to guide their digital transformation efforts. These models typically provide a structured approach for identifying and prioritizing digital opportunities, implementing new technologies and processes, and measuring and tracking progress. This process model perspective is consistent with earlier change management literature, which suggests that transformation is a process that evolves through stages, rather than a short-term response to external events. Among these well-established models, four are particularly noteworthy:

Kotter’s eight-step change model outlines a process for leading organizational change that includes creating a sense of urgency, forming a guiding coalition, creating a vision, communicating the vision, empowering others to act on the vision, creating short-term wins, consolidating gains, and embedding new approaches in the organizational culture (Kotter 1995 , 1996 ).

Lewin’s change management model is based on the idea that change involves moving from one state (the “unfreeze” stage) to another (the “refreeze” stage) and involves three steps: unfreezing, changing, and refreezing. Unfreezing involves breaking down the existing state and creating a willingness to change. Changing involves implementing the new ideas or processes. Refreezing involves reinforcing the changes and making them the new norm (Lewin 1947 ).

The ADKAR model , developed by Jeff Hiatt ( 2006 ), is a goal-oriented change management model that focuses on the individual and helps organizations understand and manage the change process from the individual’s perspective. The model consists of five elements that form the acronym of its name: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement.

According to the six-step change management model (Beer et al. 1990 ), change is realized by solving concrete business problems. The first step is to diagnose the specific problem. The definition of the problem situation then helps to create commitment to change. Then, a vision of change is developed that defines new roles and responsibilities. Next, the vision should be properly communicated to stakeholders to gain support and consensus. The change is now implemented and, in a next step, institutionalized with formal systems. Finally, the progress of the change process is monitored and adjustments are made if necessary.

Most change models proposed for digital transformation combine elements of these classic models. For example, Hess et al. ( 2016 ) identify four dimensions of a digital transformation framework. These four dimensions are the use of technology, changes in value creation, structural changes, and financing digital transformation. First, the firm should determine a strategy for the use of technology: Companies can either create their own technology standards and become market leaders, or serve and adapt to already established standards. Then, using new technologies means changing the value proposition of the company. Structural changes, i.e., “variations in a firm’s organizational setup” (Hess et al. 2016 , p. 341), have to be considered, as digitizing products or services requires a recalculation of the existing business scope, as potentially new customer segments are taken into account. Subsequently, an assessment of whether products, processes, or capabilities are primarily affected by the changes will further determine the scope of the restructuring. Substantial changes may require the creation of a separate division within the company, while limited changes are more likely to require the integration of new activities into the existing company structure. Finally, taking into account these three dimensions of the transformation process, the financial aspects, which are both drivers and constraints of the transformation, are analyzed (Hess et al. 2016 ). An assessment of all these four dimensions helps companies to formulate a company-specific strategy for digital transformation.

The model proposed by von Leipzig et al. ( 2017 ) also focuses on the initial phase of developing a digital strategy as a starting point for digital transformation. Following Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle (Deming 1982 ), it postulates an iterative rather than a linear process for initiating digital transformation. To successfully overcome the challenges of digital transformation, in the first stage, managers should be aware of the need to change their existing business plan by analyzing customers, the market, competitors, as well as other industries, as customers may expect the same level of digital services regardless of the industry (von Leipzig et al. 2017 ). In the second stage, benchmarks should be used to compare their position with other companies and analyze strengths and weaknesses. In the third stage, an assessment of the costs resulting from selected changes in the business model will then prepare the implementation of the digital strategy. In the fourth stage, feedback mechanisms include customer and employee perceptions and comparisons with peers. With each subsequent iteration, the company should elaborate on the feedback and adjust its capabilities.

Sebastian et al. ( 2017 ) propose a process model of digital transformation for large incumbents based on two distinct strategic priorities: a customer engagement strategy and a digital solutions strategy. A customer engagement strategy aims to deliver a superior, innovative, personalized, and integrated customer experience through an omnichannel experience that allows customers to order, inquire, pay, and receive support in a consistent manner from any channel. A digital solutions strategy, on the other hand, is appropriate when the company’s value proposition is reimagined through the integration of products, services, and data. The core of this digital strategy is anticipating customer needs rather than reacting to them. In the first phase of a digital transformation process, companies must therefore make the right assumption about their future by choosing one of the two strategic priorities. The second stage is to build an appropriate operational digital backbone, such as a customer database to access customer data and/or a supply chain management system to provide transactional visibility. The third step is to build a digital services platform, which means setting up APIs to access the necessary data. With the help of IT partners, companies can then build the infrastructure to analyze and support the digital services. In Phase IV, the digital services platform is further deployed, integrating the needs of customers and stakeholders. Finally, in Phase V, a service culture should be instilled from the top down. It is crucial that business and IT teams work together to create and deliver business services, as “designing around business services will become the way most companies do business” (Sebastian et al. 2017 ).

In summary, process models are an important consideration for organizations seeking to undertake digital transformation. Process models provide a structured approach to guide digital transformation efforts and can help organizations identify and prioritize digital opportunities, implement and scale digital initiatives, and measure and track progress. It is important for organizations to carefully select and tailor a process model that aligns with their specific needs and goals, and to be aware of the limitations and challenges of each model. Process models should also be flexible and adaptable in the face of changing circumstances in order to continuously learn and improve the model as needed.

However, even when following a specific process model for digital transformation, established organizations can fail (Brenk et al. 2019 ). In a recent study, Moschko et al. ( 2023 ) investigate why organizations fail to achieve their initial ambitions for a digital transformation process. They build on the observation that managers often perceive tensions when engaged in a transformation process (Appio et al. 2021 ; Brenk et al. 2019 ; Moschko et al. 2013). To examine these tensions, Moschko et al. ( 2023 ) turn to paradox theory (Hahn and Knight 2021 ; Lewis and Smith 2014 ). Paradoxes are “contradictory yet interrelated elements that exist simultaneously and persist over time” (Smith and Lewis 2011 , p. 382). These paradoxes cause actors to experience tensions, “defined as stress, anxiety, discomfort, or tightness in making choices and moving forward in organizational situations” (Putnam et al. 2016 , p. 68). For leaders, tensions are problematic trade-offs that need to be resolved or avoided during a change process. Attempts to resolve one of these tensions and paradoxes often create others, resulting in what are known as knotted paradoxes (Smith and Lewis 2022 ), which can occur at multiple levels—from the individual to the organization to society. As Moschko et al. ( 2023 ) show, the notion of (knotted) paradoxes can help managers shift their conceptual frameworks to better understand the complexity and interdependent dynamics of transformation processes. Thus, the development of a paradoxical mindset supports managers in successfully executing a digital transformation process.

4.3 Digital Maturity

A final concept from the digital transformation discourse is the idea of digital maturity assessments. The term digital maturity refers to “the ability to respond to the environment in an appropriate manner through (digital) management practices” (Bititci 2015 ). Digital maturity models are frameworks that assess an organization’s current level of digital maturity and provide a roadmap for improving digital capabilities. The models typically distinguish different levels of digital maturity, each representing an increasingly advanced level of digital capabilities. One of the most prominent models was developed by MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research (CISR), based on research into the digital practices of leading companies (Westerman et al. 2011 ). It differentiates digital maturity into two dimensions, digital intensity and transformation management intensity. Companies that are mature in the digital intensity dimension invest in technology-enabled initiatives with the goal of changing the way the company operates, i.e., customer engagement and internal operations (see Fig. 2 ). The second dimension, transformation management intensity, addresses the creation of leadership capabilities needed to successfully execute a digital transformation. Transformation intensity involves a strategic vision of the planned digitalization, the necessary governance and commitment, and the relationships with IT and business partners implementing technology-driven change (Westerman et al. 2011 ).

A table of 2 columns and 2 rows. Column titles are digital and transformation management intensity. Row 1. Maturity dimension indicators. Technology-enabled initiatives and leadership capabilities like customer engagement and governance. Row 2. Examples like location-based marketing and new skills.

Digital maturity dimensions (Westerman et al. 2011 )

Depending on the level of digital maturity along these two dimensions, the authors differentiate five different maturity stages, each representing a progressively more advanced level of digital capabilities:

Level 1: Digital Novice : These are organizations with only limited digital capabilities, focused on automating existing processes.

Level 2: Digital Apprentice : At this level, organizations are starting to explore new digital technologies and are beginning to integrate them into their operations.

Level 3: Digital Practitioner : These are organizations that have established a strong foundation of digital capabilities and are actively seeking out new digital opportunities.

Level 4: Digital Experts are organizations that have fully integrated digital technologies into their operations and are continuously innovating and experimenting with new digital initiatives.

Level 5: Digital Leader : At this level, organizations are a leader of digital practices in their industry (“lighthouse sites”) and are driving industry-wide digital transformation.

Organizations can use a digital maturity model to assess their current level of digital maturity, identify areas for improvement, and develop a roadmap for improving their digital capabilities. The model is particularly useful for organizations that want to understand how their digital capabilities compare to those of their peers and competitors, and to identify areas for investment and improvement. Figure 3 shows another maturity model for digital transformation, based on different dimensions of an organization that are impacted as the transformation progresses (Azhari et al. 2014 ). The authors depict eight dimensions of digitalization, namely strategy, leadership, products, operations, culture, people, governance, and technology. Organizations are assigned to one of five maturity levels, depending on the extent to which the dimensions are met. Companies classified as unaware are those with little or no digital capability. They lack awareness of the need for digital transformation. Companies at a conceptual level are typically those that offer a few digital products but do not yet have a digital strategy. Those with a defined level of digitalization are companies that have already gained experience with pilot implementations and have partially formed a digital strategy. At the point where a clear digital strategy is developed, an organization is classified as integrated. Finally, a transformed company is one that has fully implemented the digital strategy into its operations and business processes.

An illustration of an organization's digital maturity. It has 8 dimensions including strategy, leadership, operations, and culture in the top-down order, and 5 levels of maturity namely, unaware, conceptual, defined, integrated, and transformed with increasing values from 0 to 100%, in order.

Digital maturity of an organization (Azhari et al. 2014 )

In the more specific context of the manufacturing sector, the term Industry 4.0 has been used to describe the digital transformation of manufacturing. Increasingly, research examines digital readiness in the context of Industry 4.0 to assess whether manufacturing firms have the necessary capabilities to undertake this transformation. The “Industry 4.0 Maturity Index” (2016), developed by the FIR Institute at RWTH Aachen University, illustrates a step-by-step approach to implementing Industry 4.0. The maturity model has already been validated in manufacturing companies. It integrates the entire value creation process within the company, including development, logistics, production, as well as service and sales. In each of these areas, a comprehensive analysis of the respective Industry 4.0 maturity level is carried out. The steps that move a company from Industry 3.0 to Industry 4.0 are based on its use of data and analytics to gain visibility into its manufacturing processes, transparency into what is happening and why, predictability of future states and events, and finally adaptability, i.e., the ability to generate data-driven prescriptions for future behavior.

Another maturity model in the context of Industry 4.0 is the “IMPLUS—Industry 4.0 Readiness” model (Lichtblau and Stich 2015 ). The authors distinguish six levels of readiness, ranging from “Level 0: Outsiders” to “Level 5: Top Performers.“ The authors developed a questionnaire as a tool to measure the structural characteristics of the companies, their knowledge about Industry 4.0, their motivations and obstacles during the Industry 4.0 journey. Furthermore, the companies are grouped into high-level categories as newcomers (level 0 and 1), learners (level 2), and leaders (level 3 and above). Newcomers consist of companies that have never initiated any projects, learners are companies that have initiated their first projects related to Industry 4.0, and leaders are companies that are compared to other advanced companies in their projects to implement Industry 4.0 initiatives. The dimensions of the questionnaire are: “smart factories,” “smart products,” “data-driven service,” “smart operations,” and “employees.” Using the model, company profiles and main barriers in the listed dimensions are identified, which serve as a basis for creating action plans for companies to improve their Industry 4.0 readiness (Lichtblau and Stich 2015 ).

Inspired by this stream of digital transformation research, future research could develop an organizational transformation maturity model to assess an organization’s current level of readiness and capability to undertake organizational transformation efforts, and to provide a roadmap for improving these capabilities. Such a model could be particularly useful for organizations seeking to understand how their transformation capabilities compare to those of their peers and competitors, and to identify areas for investment and improvement. The model would consist of different levels of maturity, each representing an increasingly advanced level of readiness and capability for organizational transformation. However, simply translating Westerman et al.’s or other digital maturity models into an organizational transformation setting is probably not enough. A more sophisticated approach would also take into account the goals of the transformation process, i.e., the realization of societal goals (e.g., sustainability goals), and the extent to which the transformation progress has enabled novel approaches to achieving these goals. In a further step, such a model could also enable an ex-ante simulation of potential transformation activities, predicting the impact of their successful implementation on these overall objectives. However, building such a model is a complex undertaking that requires a large interdisciplinary research consortium.

5 Conclusion

Organizational transformation can be a complex and challenging process, as it often involves significant changes to the way work is done and can have a major impact on employees, customers, and other stakeholders. While there is a large body of existing research, our review of selected literatures indicates a number of areas where more research could be fruitful. One important question for future research is how organizations can sustain transformational change over the long term. Many organizations initiate change programs that are successful in the short term, but fail to achieve sustained change over the long term and reach their initial higher ambitions (Moschko et al. 2023 ). It is important to understand the factors (and their antecedents) that contribute to successful long-term transformation, like leadership commitment, employee engagement, and alignment of organizational culture with the desired change.

Secondly, research is required how to effectively manage resistance to change. Resistance to change is a common phenomenon in organizations and can significantly impede the success of transformational initiatives (Antons and Piller 2015 ). Understanding the sources of resistance, as well as effective strategies for managing it, is critical for successful organizational transformation. Related to this issue is future research how to effectively measure the impact of organizational transformation in order to steer the change initiative, but also to measure the effectiveness of countermeasures against resistance to transform. Measuring the success of organizational transformation is challenging, and traditional metrics such as financial performance may not provide a complete picture of the impact of transformation on the organization. Future research should focus on developing more comprehensive measures of the impact of transformation on organizational culture, employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and other key performance indicators.

Another important question is how to effectively manage the human side of organizational change at the micro-level. Transformational change can be stressful for employees, leading to anxiety, uncertainty, and resistance. Future research should focus on identifying effective strategies for managing the human side of organizational change, including communication, training, and support for employees. Related to this is the question of how to effectively manage the cultural aspects of organizational change. Organizational culture is a critical factor in the success of transformational initiatives. Future research should focus on identifying effective strategies for managing the cultural aspects of organizational change, including leadership development, communication, and employee engagement.

Answering these and many other questions will provide management scholars and the audiences they address (academia, but especially corporate managers and stakeholders) with the insights needed to manage the complex process of organizational change and transformation. Given the need for organizations to master the current digital (AI) revolution alongside their mandatory sustainability transformation (and addressing all 17 of the United Nations’ social development goals), we believe that those organizations that strive and succeed will be those that have first acquired the skills and behaviors to master second-order change.

To conclude our chapter, we asked the institution that is perhaps most transforming our personal lives as academics these days, the ChatGPT Transformer Language Model (Bouschery et al. 2023 ), to list the top five success factors for organizational transformation. We'll end our chapter with its response—because we couldn't have summed it up better:

In summary, these are the top five success factors for organizational transformation:

Resistance to change : People are often resistant to change, especially if it involves significant disruptions to their work or lifestyle. Organizations may need to overcome this resistance by communicating the benefits of the transformation and helping employees understand how it will impact them.

Communication : Ensuring that all stakeholders are kept informed about the transformation and its progress is crucial. This can be particularly challenging in large organizations with multiple levels of management and employees working in different locations.

Managing the change process : Effective change management is key to ensuring that the transformation is successful. This includes identifying the steps needed to implement the changes, establishing a timeline for the transformation, and providing resources and support to those affected by the changes.

Maintaining momentum : It is important to keep the momentum going during the transformation process. This can be challenging, especially if there are setbacks or delays.

Measuring success : Establishing clear metrics for measuring the success of the transformation is important. This can help organizations determine whether they are achieving their goals and make necessary adjustments as needed.

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Christou, E., Piller, F. (2024). Organizational Transformation: A Management Research Perspective. In: Letmathe, P., et al. Transformation Towards Sustainability. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54700-3_11

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A literature review surveys scholarly articles, books and other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, providing a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works. Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits into the larger field of study.

Importance of a Good Literature Review

A literature review may consist of simple a summary of key sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories . A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that informs how you are planning to investigate a research problem. The analytical features of a literature review might:

Give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations,
Trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates,
Depending on the situation, evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant, or
Usually in the conclusion of a literature review, identify where gaps exist in how a problem has been researched to date.

The purpose of a literature review is to:

Place each work in the context of its contribution to the understanding of the research problem being studied,
Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration,
Identify new ways to interpret, and shed light on any gaps in previous research,
Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies,
Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort,
Point the way in fulfilling a need for additional research, and
Locate your own research within the context of existing literature.

Types of Literature Reviews

It is important to think of knowledge in a given field as consisting of three layers.* First, there are the primary studies that researchers conduct and publish. Second are the reviews of those studies that summarize and offer new interpretations built from and often extending beyond the original studies. Third, there are the perceptions, conclusions, opinion, and interpretations that are shared informally that become part of the lore of field. In composing a literature review, it is important to note that it is often this third layer of knowledge that is cited as "true" even though it often has only a loose relationship to the primary studies and secondary literature reviews. Given this, while literature reviews are designed to provide an overview and synthesis of pertinent sources you have explored, there are a number of approaches you could adopt depending upon the type of analysis underpinning your study.

Argumentative Review This form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply imbedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature. The purpose is to develop a body of literature that establishes a contrarian viewpoint. Given the value-laden nature of some social science research [e.g., educational reform; immigration control], argumentative approaches to analyzing the literature can be a legitimate and important form of discourse. However, note that they can also introduce problems of bias when they are used to to make summary claims of the sort found in systematic reviews.

Integrative Review Considered a form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated. The body of literature includes all studies that address related or identical hypotheses. A well-done integrative review meets the same standards as primary research in regard to clarity, rigor, and replication.

Historical Review Few things rest in isolation from historical precedent. Historical reviews are focused on examining research throughout a period of time, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, phenomena emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and to identify the likely directions for future research.

Methodological Review A review does not always focus on what someone said [content], but how they said it [method of analysis]. This approach provides a framework of understanding at different levels (i.e. those of theory, substantive fields, research approaches and data collection and analysis techniques), enables researchers to draw on a wide variety of knowledge ranging from the conceptual level to practical documents for use in fieldwork in the areas of ontological and epistemological consideration, quantitative and qualitative integration, sampling, interviewing, data collection and data analysis, and helps highlight many ethical issues which we should be aware of and consider as we go through our study.

Theoretical Review The purpose of this form is to concretely examine the corpus of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue, concept, theory, phenomena. The theoretical literature review help establish what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the existing theories have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested. Often this form is used to help establish a lack of appropriate theories or reveal that current theories are inadequate for explaining new or emerging research problems. The unit of analysis can focus on a theoretical concept or a whole theory or framework.

Structure and Writing Style

I. Thinking About Your Literature Review

The structure of a literature review should include the following :

An overview of the subject, issue or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of the literature review,
Division of works under review into themes or categories (e.g. works that support of a particular position, those against, and those offering alternative approaches entirely),
An explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others,
Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, are most convincing of their opinions, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research

The critical evaluation of each work should consider :

Provenance -- what are the author's credentials? Are the author's arguments supported by evidence (e.g. primary historical material, case studies, narratives, statistics, recent scientific findings)?
Objectivity -- is the author's perspective even-handed or prejudicial? Is contrary data considered or is certain pertinent information ignored to prove the author's point?
Persuasiveness -- which of the author's theses are most/least convincing?
Value -- are the author's arguments and conclusions convincing? Does the work ultimately contribute in any significant way to an understanding of the subject?

II. Development of the Literature Review

Four Stages

Problem formulation -- which topic or field is being examined and what are its component issues?
Literature search -- finding materials relevant to the subject being explored.
Data evaluation -- determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic.
Analysis and interpretation -- discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature.

Consider the following issues before writing the literature review: Clarify If your assignment is not very specific about what form your literature review should take, seek clarification from your professor by asking these questions:

Roughly how many sources should I include?
What types of sources should I review (books, journal articles, websites)?
Should I summarize, synthesize, or critique your sources by discussing a common theme or issue?
Should I evaluate the sources?
Should I provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history?

Find Models Use the exercise of reviewing the literature to examine how authors in your discipline or area of interest have composed their literature reviews. Read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or ways to organize your final review. The bibliography or reference section of sources you've already read are also excellent entry points into your own research. Narrow the Topic The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to obtain a good survey of relevant resources. Your professor will probably not expect you to read everything that's available about the topic, but you'll make your job easier if you first limit scope of the research problem. A good strategy is to begin by searching the HOMER catalog for books about the topic and review their contents for chapters that focus on more specific issues. You can also review the subject indexes of books to find references to specific issues that can serve as the focus of your research. For example, a book surveying the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may include a chapter on the role Egypt has played in mediating the conflict. Consider Whether Your Sources are Current Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. This is very common in the sciences where research conducted only two years ago could be obsolete. However, when writing a review in the social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be what is needed because what is important is how perspectives have changed over the years or within a certain time period. Try sorting through some other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to consider what is consider by scholars to be a "hot topic" and what is not.

III. Ways to Organize Your Literature Review

Chronological of Events If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials according to when they were published. This approach should only be followed if a clear path of research building on previous research can be identified and that these trends follow a clear chronological order of development. For example, a literature review that focuses on continuing research about the emergence of German economic power after the fall of the Soviet Union. By Publication Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on environmental studies of brown fields if the progression revealed, for example, a change in the soil collection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies. Thematic (“conceptual categories”) Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For example, a review of the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics could focus on the development of online political satire. While the study focuses on one topic, the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics, it will still be organized chronologically reflecting technological developments in media. The only difference here between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: the role of the Internet in presidential politics. Note however that more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made. Methodological A methodological approach focuses on the methods utilized by the researcher. For the Internet in American presidential politics project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of American presidents on American, British, and French websites. Or the review might focus on the fundraising impact of the Internet on a particular political party. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed.

Other Sections of Your Literature Review Once you've decided on the organizational method for your literature review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out because they arise from your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period; a thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue. However, sometimes you may need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you but include only what is necessary for the reader to locate your study within the larger scholarship framework.

Here are examples of other sections you may need to include depending on the type of review you write:

Current Situation : information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.
History : the chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
Selection Methods : the criteria you used to select (and perhaps exclude) sources in your literature review. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.
Standards : the way in which you present your information.
Questions for Further Research : What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

IV. Writing Your Literature Review

Once you've settled on how to organize your literature review, you're ready to write each section. When writing your review, keep in mind these issues.

Use Evidence A literature review in this sense is just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence to show that what you are saying is valid. Be Selective Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the research problem, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological. Use Quotes Sparingly Some short quotes are okay if you want to emphasize a point, or if what the author said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. Sometimes you may need to quote certain terms that were coined by the author, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. Do not use extensive quotes as a substitute your own summary and interpretation of the literature. Summarize and Synthesize Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph as well as throughout the review. Recapitulate important features of a research study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study's significance and relating it to their own work. Keep Your Own Voice While the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice (the writer's) should remain front and center. For example, weave references to other sources into what you are writing but maintain your own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with your own ideas and wording. Use Caution When Paraphrasing When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author's information or opinions accurately and in your own words. Even when paraphrasing an author’s work, you still must provide a citation to that work.

V. Common Mistakes to Avoid

These are the most common mistakes made in reviewing social science research literature.

Sources in your literature review do not clearly relate to the research problem;
You do not take sufficient time to define and identify the most relevent sources to use in the literature review related to the research problem;
Relies exclusively on secondary analytical sources rather than including relevant primary research studies or data;
Uncritically accepts another researcher's findings and interpretations as valid, rather than examining critically all aspects of the research design and analysis;
Does not describe the search procedures that were used in the literature review;
Reports isolated statistical results rather than synthesizing them in chi-squared or meta-analytic methods; and,
Only includes research that validates assumptions and does not consider contrary findings and alternative interpretations found in the literature.

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques. Los Angeles, CA: London : SAGE, 2011; Literature Review Handout . Online Writing Center. Liberty University; Literature Reviews . The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students. 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012; Randolph, Justus J. “A Guide to Writing the Dissertation Literature Review." Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation . vol. 14, June 2009; Taylor, Dena. The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It . University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Writing a Literature Review. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra.

Writing Tip

Break Out of Your Disciplinary Box!

Thinking in an interdisciplinary way about a research problem can be a rewarding exercise in applying new ideas, theories, or concepts to an old problem. For example, what might cultural anthropologists say about the continuing conflict in the Middle East? In what ways might geographers view the need for better distribution of social service agencies in large cities than how social workers might study the issue? You don’t want to substitute a thorough review of core research literature in your discipline for studies conducted in other fields of study. However, particularly in the social sciences, thinking about research problems from multiple vectors is a key strategy for finding new solutions. Consult with a librarian about identifying research databases in other disciplines; almost every field of study has at least one comprehensive database devoted to indexing its research literature.

Another Writing Tip

Don't Just Review for Content!

How are they organizing their ideas?
What methods have they used to study the problem?
What theories have been used to explain, predict, or understand their research problem?
What sources have they cited to support of their conclusions?
How have they used non-textual elements [e.g., charts, graphs, figures, etc.] to illustrate key points?

When you begin to write your literature review section, you'll be glad you dug deeper into how the research was constructed because it lays a foundation for developing more substantial analysis and interpretation of the research problem.

Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998.

Yet Another Writing Tip

When Do I Know I Can Stop Looking and Move On?

Here are several strategies you can utilize to assess whether you've adequately reviewed the literature:

Look for repeating patterns in the research findings. If the same thing is being said, just by different people, then this likely demonstrates that the research problem has hit a conceptual dead end. At this point consider: Does your study extend current research? Does it forge a new path? Or, does is merely add more of the same thing being said?
Look at sources the authors cite to in their work. If you begin to see the same researchers cited again and again, then this is often an indication that no new ideas have been introduced in addressing the research question.
Search Google Scholar to identify who has subsequently cited leading scholars already identified in your literature review. This is called citation tracking and there are a number of sources that can help you identify who has cited whom, particularly scholars from outside of your discipline. If the same authors are being cited again and again, this may indicate no new literature has been written on the topic.
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Last Updated: Jul 18, 2023 11:58 AM
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COMMENTS

The Literature Review: 5. Organizing the Literature Review
Describe the organization of the review (the sequence) If necessary, state why certain literature is or is not included (scope) Body - summative, comparative, and evaluative discussion of literature reviewed. For a thematic review: organize the review into paragraphs that present themes and identify trends relevant to your topic
Literature Reviews
Structure. The three elements of a literature review are introduction, body, and conclusion. Introduction. Define the topic of the literature review, including any terminology. Introduce the central theme and organization of the literature review. Summarize the state of research on the topic. Frame the literature review with your research question.
Literature Review Guide: How to organise the review
Use Cooper's taxonomy to explore and determine what elements and categories to incorporate into your review; Revise and proofread your review to ensure your arguments, supporting evidence and writing is clear and precise; Source. Cronin, P., Ryan, F. & Coughlan, M. (2008). Undertaking a literature review: A step-by-step approach.
Organizing the Literature Review
Just like most academic papers, literature reviews must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper.
The Writing Center
A review of the literature surveys the scholarship and research relevant to your research question, but it is not a series of summaries. It is a synthesis of your sources. This means you cannot write a review of the literature (which we'll call a "lit review") by composing a summary of each of your sources, then stringing those summaries ...
5. The Literature Review
A literature review may consist of simply a summary of key sources, but in the social sciences, a literature review usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories.A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that ...
How to Write a Literature Review
Examples of literature reviews. Step 1 - Search for relevant literature. Step 2 - Evaluate and select sources. Step 3 - Identify themes, debates, and gaps. Step 4 - Outline your literature review's structure. Step 5 - Write your literature review.
How To Structure A Literature Review (Free Template)
Demonstrate your knowledge of the research topic. Identify the gaps in the literature and show how your research links to these. Provide the foundation for your conceptual framework (if you have one) Inform your own methodology and research design. To achieve this, your literature review needs a well-thought-out structure.
Organizing Your Literature Review
For example, if the review topic was arts-based research, your review may focus on different ways artistic inquiry was used to understand the creative process, focusing then on the concepts rather than the development. Methodological: The method or practice applied in a case study can be the basis for organizing a literature review. This ...
Organizing the Literature Review
Just like most academic papers, literature reviews must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper. Introduction: Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature ...
Literature Review: Conducting & Writing
Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level: First, cover the basic categories Just like most academic papers, literature reviews also must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion ...
Organizing the Review
A literature review is structured similarly to other research essays, opening with an introduction that explains the topic and summarizes how the review will be conducted, several body paragraphs organized to share your findings, and a concluding paragraph. ... This is why proper organization of the literature is so important; it will allow you ...
Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
Example: Predictors and Outcomes of U.S. Quality Maternity Leave: A Review and Conceptual Framework: 10.1177/08948453211037398 ; Systematic review: "The authors of a systematic review use a specific procedure to search the research literature, select the studies to include in their review, and critically evaluate the studies they find." (p. 139).
How to Conduct a Literature Review (Health Sciences and Beyond)
This is called a review matrix. When you create a review matrix, the first few columns should include (1) the authors, title, journal, (2) publication year, and (3) purpose of the paper. The remaining columns should identify important aspects of each study such as methodology and findings. Click on the image below to view a sample review matrix.
Literature Reviews
A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period. ... Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level: First, cover the basic categories. Just like most academic papers, literature reviews also must ...
Organization
Tools to help organize your literature review. Bubbl.us makes it easy to organize your ideas visually in a way that makes sense to you and others. Coggle is online software for creating and sharing mindmaps and flowcharts. Create a matrix with author names across the top (columns), themes on the left side (rows).
Four Ways to Structure Your Literature Review
A literature review is a critical component of a dissertation, thesis, or journal article. It can be used to: - Assess the current state of knowledge on a topic. - Identify gaps in the existing research. - Inform future research directions. The best structure for a literature review depends on the purpose of the review and the audience.
Getting started
What is a literature review? Definition: A literature review is a systematic examination and synthesis of existing scholarly research on a specific topic or subject. Purpose: It serves to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge within a particular field. Analysis: Involves critically evaluating and summarizing key findings, methodologies, and debates found in ...
Writing a Literature Review
A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays).
Guidance on Conducting a Systematic Literature Review
Literature review is an essential feature of academic research. Fundamentally, knowledge advancement must be built on prior existing work. To push the knowledge frontier, we must know where the frontier is. By reviewing relevant literature, we understand the breadth and depth of the existing body of work and identify gaps to explore.
Literature Reviews: Parts & Organization of a Literature Review
Parts & Organization of a Literature Review. Literature reviews typically follow the introduction-body-conclusion format. If your literature review is part of a larger project or paper, the introduction and conclusion of the lit review may be just a few sentences, while you focus most of your attention on the body.
Literature Reviews
A literature review can be a short introductory section of a research article or a report or policy paper that focuses on recent research. Or, in the case of dissertations, theses, and review articles, it can be an extensive review of all relevant research. The format is usually a bibliographic essay; sources are briefly cited within the body ...
Doing a literature review
What is a Literature Review? The purpose of a review is to analyze critically a segment of a published body of knowledge through summary, classification, and comparison of prior research studies. It can be a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern, combining both summary and synthesis.
Organizational Transformation: A Management Research Perspective
Organizational transformation is a complex and multifaceted process that involves a fundamental change in the way an organization operates and delivers value to its stakeholders. ... Hanelt A, Bohnsack R, Marz D, Antunes C (2021) A systematic review of the literature on digital transformation: insights and implications for strategy and ...
Employee Motivation in Contemporary Academic Literature: A Narrative
Using the correct type of motivation is pivotal in triggering employees' affirmative work attitudes, such as work performance, job satisfaction, or voluntary retention, ultimately leading to increasing the organization's overall efficiency. Despite the ongoing academic debate, academics provide practitioners with mixed results on which motivation factors are relevant for targeted employee ...
Mapping the Landscape of the Literature on Environmental, Social
Increased interest in sustainability and related issues has led to the development of disclosed corporate information on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. Additionally, questions have arisen about whether these disclosures affect the firm's value. Therefore, we conducted a bibliometric analysis coupled with a systematic literature review (SLR) of the current literature in ...
Organizing Academic Research Papers: 5. The Literature Review
A literature review may consist of simple a summary of key sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories.A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that informs how you are planning to investigate ...
Unravelling the three lines model in cybersecurity: a systematic
A systematic literature review on information security management in higher education, Comput. Secur. 86 (2019) 350 - 357, 10.1016/j.cose.2019.07.003. Google Scholar Digital Library; Bozkus Kahyaoglu and Caliyurt, 2018 Bozkus Kahyaoglu S., Caliyurt K., Cyber security assurance process from the internal audit perspective, Manag. Audit.
The Role of the Informal Institution: How Does It Shape the Trust
This paper analyses the influences of informal institutions on interorganizational trust. Based on a case study, it identifies five impact paths of informal institutions operating between government and social organizations in China: internal referencing, direct entrustment, office visits, favor provision, and key figure decision-making.