Writing a literature review

Essay by raddieUniversity, Master'sA+, July 2007

download word file, 4 pages 5.0

Downloaded 141 times

Writing a literature review

It is impossible to be dogmatic about the form and content of a litereature review; it depends somewhat on the topic. You do now have to follow my recipe slavishly; intelligent dissent is admired and encouraged.

A literature review that is part of a thesis is different from what you are doing as part of coursework: A thesis literature review culminates in research questions and hypotheses on which the research to be done is based. Your literature review should finish with a list of the unresolved issues and/or questions meriting further research but you do not have to develop hypotheses.

The Title

The title is a very important part of your literature review. It tells the reader what you are investigating and indicates the scope of your investigation. The title can be too narrow (you can't find any reference to the topic) or too broad (there are far too many references).

I want each nontrivial word of the title to be defined on the first page or two. Suppose you title is "Australian Organizations and their use of Electronic Business". I want to know what you mean by Australian organizations. Public companies? Private companies? Companies registered in Australia? Companies operating in Australia, but run from overseas? Wholly owned Australian subsidiaries of foreign companies? Not-for-profit organizations? Government departments etc? Note that by defining this term, you are partly defining the scope of your project.

You must also define Electronic Business. Here is you chance to display your knowledge and easy familiarity with the idea of EB; to compare and contrast the various definitions of electronic business; to differentiate it from e-commerce; to identify the bits of each definition that are more fruitful, and to identify the definition that best illuminates the actual practice of EB...