Literature review of research subject matter info and its background

In dissertation works, you need to find out information about your research subject and its relevant background. For example, if you want to evaluate the business value of business intelligence application in small-and-medium sized enterprises (SME) in Hong Kong, you need to find out information of business intelligence products available in the marketplace and the business environment facing SME in Hong Kong. To obtain these information, you need to do internet search and library-based search, etc. With these information, you are thus informed to write about the background of your study which could appear in "Chapter 1: introduction". Or, you might prefer to describe the research subject information in "Chapter 2: Literature review". You can also analyze these descriptive information with your chosen management theories. Sometimes, this kind of descriptive information is so important that you might prefer to have a separate chapter on "Background of the study" to explain at some length the research subject and its background.

It is clear that this literature review of research subject matter and its background is very important to your dissertation work. However, this literature review is not literature review of theories. Therefore, this literature review does not offer major management theories to enable you to conduct theory-driven analysis nor to develop theory-driven research design. Therefore, to produce a dissertation report with sufficient theoretical depth, you need to do literature review of theories. Literature review of research subject matter and its background does not enable you to do that. A dissertation report without a proper literature review of theories is highly defective.

Relevant readings:

1. On literature review: http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/literature_review.html
2. Writing literature review: http://www4.caes.hku.hk/acadgrammar/litrev/section2/two1.htm