Some additional conceptual clarification of the recently proposed agile literature review approach (ALRA)

Some additional conceptual clarification of the recently proposed agile literature review approach (ALRA)

The agile literature review approach (ALRA) has recently been formulated for: (i) students newly involved in applied business research projects, (ii) literature review-informed management practices and (iii) managerial intellectual learning (Ho, 2017). Ho (2017) provides the initial account of the ALRA. Additional thinking on the ALRA, primarily on the ALRA characteristics, its underlying thinking and the research report quality it promotes, is offered here. As such, this article contributes to the theoretical clarification of the ALRA. It points to the need to carry on with the intellectual journey of developing this novel topic in the  business management field.

Key words: Applied Business Research, contemporary systems thinking, literature review, the agile literature review approach (ALRA)

Introduction

Many students, both at undergraduate and post-graduate levels, experience difficulties in pursuing managerial intellectual learning in general and in doing final year dissertation projects in particular. Such is the writer's teaching experience in Hong Kong. There are a number of reasons for that, such as lack of time to do dissertation projects, lack of skills to tackle non-examination-based academic assignment, difficulty to relate academic writings to specific real-world managerial concern investigation, weak existing intellectual competence, and the existence of the relevance gap in the academic literature (Ho, 2017). Of late, reflecting on these common intellectual learning difficulties encountered by the writer's students in Hong Kong, he proposed the agile literature review approach (ALRA) (Ho, 2017) to guide students in three application domains. These are: (i) to improve immediate academic performance in dissertation project works [ALRA application domain 1], (ii) to strengthen managerial problem-solving performance [ALRA application domain 2], and (iii) to develop managerial intellectual competence [ALRA application domain 3]. These three application domains are related. In this article, the writer takes up the task of further developing the ALRA theme. Specifically, it offers to distinguish between two types of ALRA, namely, ALRA I and ALRA II. Then, it clarifies the characteristics of the ALRA in the form of response statements to some literature review ideas in the literature review subject. Finally, it explicates four desired quality attributes of applied business research dissertation reports that the ALRA endorses. In short, this article is an attempt to provide some extra conceptual elaboration on the ALRA.

Basic ideas on the ALRA

A central nature of the ALRA is its agility. This nature of the ALRA resonates with that of the Agile Manifesto for Software Development (Agilemanifesto.org. n.d.), such as (i) early and continuous of literature review findings as well as (ii) close collaboration among the ALRA users and, preferably other stakeholders related to the management concern(s) studied, involved in the ALRA employment. The approach consists of two parts: the four literature review steps (part 1), and a strongly recommended theoretical grounding of the ALRA on contemporary systems thinking, notably on topics of expansionism, the four levels of complexity II and critical systems thinking (part 2) (Ho, 2017). Regarding part 1, the four ALRA steps are: Step 1 (ideas search), Step 2 (ideas collection), Step 3 (ideas categorization) and, finally, Step 4 (ideas systemic diagramming). In brief, ALRA Step 1 is essentially about literature search while ALRA Steps 2 to 4 constitute  an agile way to carry out literature review. By following the ALRA steps, chiefly as an idealized evolutionary process model, the writer proclaims that the ALRA user is better able to conduct literature review in an agile way, leading to a more complicated understanding of the management topics and concerns under study. The study of a specific set of management topics and concerns can be for doing an applied business research project or for informing a managerial endeavor to cope with an actual management concern. The resultant ideas systemic diagram produced via the ALRA Step 4 can also serve as a theoretical framework to inform dissertation project works, e.g., on research design and findings analysis or specific management practice. Ho (2017) also postulates that, for outstanding literature review performance and long-term intellectual competence development, the ALRA should be grounded on contemporary systems thinking, particularly on critical systems thinking (part 2). To do so requires continuous intellectual learning on the subject of systems thinking with the ALRA as an intellectual learning technique for academic literature study. Explicitly, the ALRA has three application domains: literature review in applied business research, (ii) managerial practices, notably on managerial problem-solving, and (iii) managerial intellectual learning (Ho, 2017).

A distinction between ALRA I and ALRA II as  two ALRA types

The writer now labels the ALRA steps as ALRA I and the contemporary systems thinking-based ALRA as ALRA II. Making this distinction enables him to more plainly differentiate the key ideas between ALRA I and II as well as indicate their relatedness as a result. Such clarification on ALRA I and II is performed in terms of their (i) main conceptual components, (ii) expected application outcomes, (iii) constraints of practice and (iv) practice support required.  It is  summarized in Table 1.

Table 1: A comparison of ALRA I and ALRA II

	ALRA I	ALRA II
1. Main conceptual components of the approach	1.1. An idealized model with four ALRA steps and techniques involved, including basic literature search, literature review knowledge, and diagramming technique 1.2. Resonance with the principles of the Agile Manifesto for Software Development 1.3. Deadline-driven intellectual learning 1.4. Some awareness of the relevance of contemporary systems thinking	1.1. ALRA I as an intellectual learning tool 1.2. Contemporary systems thinking as the underlying theoretical perspective 1.3. Inner-driven managerial intellectual learning
2. Expected application outcomes	2.1. Frequent and quick literature review progress 2.2. Ability to plan for research design, as informed by the constructed ideas systemic diagram(s) (re: ALRA Step 4) 2.3. Some intellectual learning gained by the ALRA user	2.1. Sustained managerial intellectual learning, especially on contemporary systems thinking, and other business management topics 2.2. Achievement of consistently outstanding ALRA I performance and associated management practices
3. Constraints of practice	3.1. Time constraint, e.g., dissertation project deadline 3.2. Existing managerial intellectual competence of the ALRA user 3.3. Specific university requirements on Applied Business Research project 3.4. The dissertation supervisor's favored research methods and philosophy 3.5. Specific client's organizational setting facing the ALRA user, e.g., perceived as a unitary, pluralist or coercive one.	3.1. Mental constraint of the ALRA user, e.g., devotion on managerial intellectual learning, especially on contemporary systems thinking 3.2. The broader social/ economic climate as an external environmental constraint on the intellectual learning 3.3. Personal resource constraints, both financial and non-financial, on managerial intellectual learning pursuit
4. Practice support required	4.1. Coaching and dissertation supervisory support in an applied business research setting 4.2. Learning resource support, e.g., e-library 4.3. Social networking support	4.1. Coaching, mentoring  and educational support ·      4.2. Learning resource support, e.g., e-library ·      4.3. Social networking support

The original elaboration of the ideas associated to ALRA I and II has been made in Ho (2017) albeit the terms of ALRA         I and II are coined here. Based on this classification of ALRA types, ALRA I is conceived as a heuristic  device for a tight deadline-driven literature review exercise while ALRA II is more concerned about systemic literature review practice as well as the continuous systems thinking-based managerial intellectual learning with the ALRA I as a major learning tool. Additionally, the distinctive features of the ALRA, comprising both ALRA I and II, can be made clear by heeding the ALRA responses to the main literature review ideas from the academic literature. This is done in the next section.

The ALRA responses to the literature review ideas from the academic literature review sources

Another way to illuminate the features and thinking underlying the ALRA  is to come forward with response statements to some literature review ideas from the existing academic literature on literature review. This endeavor also helps in establishing more properly the ALRA as a topic  in the field of literature review. In this article, the writer has chosen thirteen literature review ideas from the academic literature for this exercise. The findings is presented in Table 2. Some of the words from the academic literature are in bold type to underline the main conceptual aspects of the academic literature review ideas in Table 2.

Table 2: The main literature review ideas from the academic literature and the corresponding ALRA response statements

Some literature review ideas from the academic literature	Relevant ALRA features for comparison as response statements
I. Literature review purposes
Idea 1: "... literature reviews help researchers develop an argument for their study by demonstrating that they are extending existing knowledge—building on what is already out there and filling gaps that exist" (Zorn and Campbell, 2006).	Response 1: The ALRA requires its users to synthesize their chosen academic concepts with a few of their own ideas specific to their management concerns and issues into a theoretical framework. The framework construction involves an endeavor to "extend existing academic knowledge" in order to address their applied business research concerns.
Idea 2: ".... they [literature reviews] can be sources of tools or solutions to organizational problems .... Literature reviews can also inform decisions or support proposals or conclusions with credible evidence" (Zorn and Campbell, 2006).	Response 2: The ALRA users conduct applied business research with the aim of providing recommendations with high actionable value to the companies that they study. Because of that, they are interested in academic ideas on "tools or solutions to organizational problems". Most likely, some of these academic ideas or categories of them would catch the attention of the ALRA users, who then incorporate them early on into their constructed theoretical frameworks to guide their research works. "Credible evidence" from the academic literature to support the ideas taken up in the theoretical framework and recommendations made is valuable in the ALRA for it also makes the ALRA findings more credible.
II. Literature review approaches
Idea 3: Traditional or narrative literature review "critiques and summarizes a body of literature and draws conclusions about the topic in question" (Cronin, Ryan and Coughlan, 2008).	Response 3: Critiquing and summarizing ideas from the literature as stored in the study notes in the ALRA (re: deliverables from  Step 2 of the ALRA) are also done in the ALRA, primarily in ALRA Steps 3 and 4. They are, specifically, done quickly and frequently in keeping with its agile style.
Idea 4: ".... systematic reviews use a more rigorous and well-defined approach to reviewing the literature in a specific subject area. Systematic reviews are used to answer well-focused questions" (Cronin, Ryan and Coughlan, 2008).	Response 4: The ALRA abandons the "rigorous" and "well-defined" approach as being too hard systems in tone  to study management topics and concerns that are more often than not messy. Instead, it is willing to explore inter-disciplinary and transdisciplinary academic themes and management issues for applied business research. It views a literature review approach that is agile and critical systems-based as suitable for this kind of exploratory exercise.
Idea 5: "Meta-analysis is the process of taking a large body of quantitative findings and conducting statistical analysis in order to integrate those findings and enhance understanding" (Cronin, Ryan and Coughlan, 2008).	Response 5: The process of meta-analysis is quite incompatible with the agile style of the ALRA, which stresses (i) quick and frequent progress in literature review and (ii) qualitative way on literature review. The ALRA does have the flexibility to employ some "statistical analysis", if a ALRA user, in a particular project background, feels useful and have the resource, e.g., availability of time, to do so.
Idea 6: "Meta-synthesis is the non-statistical technique used to integrate, evaluate and interpret the findings of multiple qualitative research studies. Such studies may be combined to identify their common core elements and themes" (Cronin, Ryan and Coughlan, 2008).	Response 6: The ALRA is receptive to the meta-synthesis approach and its associated technique, i.e., "non-statistical technique", and required  tasks, i.e., "integrate, evaluate and interpret the findings of multiple qualitative research studies", in ALRA Step 3 - ideas categorization. Academic "themes" are called management topics in the ALRA.
III. Literature review concerns
Idea 7: "A good literature review could, for example, identify systematic theoretical and methodological biases in a field and suggest fundamental reorientation for understanding the problem or central construct (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2011)" (Rowe, 2014).	Response 7: The ALRA is not methodologically rigorous enough to "identify systematic theoretical and methodological biases in a field"; nevertheless, the ALRA user has his/her own voice, which should steer him/ her to re-orientate certain academic concepts and theories, if it helps in developing a theoretical framework  more relevant to address specific management concern(s) in a particular organizational context. In the process of doing so, the ALRA user might be able to sense hazily the existence of "systematic theoretical and methodological biases in a field".
Idea 8: ".... a key problem may be that the search is not systematic or comprehensive enough. As a result, the literature reviewed may be too narrow, scattered, or out of date. The search may also focus on the wrong sources, for example, relying on textbooks and popular press articles at the expense of scholarly sources" (Zorn and Campbell, 2006).	Response 8: The ALRA is primarily interested in the scholarly sources, but is prepared to consider some non-scholarly sources for review. Literature search is done in ALRA Step 1, which does not emphasize "systematic or comprehensive" search of the various literature sources. Dissertation project supervisors, or persons in a similar academic role, should be able to advise on literature search so that literature search findings of the ALRA users being "too narrow, scattered, or out of date" can be avoided to a certain extent. Besides, literature search on academic publishers' journal websites is quite convenient, thus mitigating the worry of it being "narrow, scattered or out of date".
Idea 9: "A good literature review gathers information about a particular subject from many sources. It is well written and contains few if any personal biases" (Cronin, Ryan and Coughlan, 2008).	Response 9: The ALRA users are encouraged to gather information from both scholarly and nonscholarly sources about management topics reflecting (i) the personal voice of the ALRA users and (ii) management concern(s) that bother them. Thus, the ALRA Step 1 also relies on "many sources" and "personal biases" in the literature review cannot be totally eliminated. Expectantly, as a result of being informed by ideas from "many sources", the ALRA findings, e.g., the constructed theoretical framework, should not be dominated by "personal biases" from the ALRA user or a particular group of stakeholders in  a specific organizational setting.
Idea 10: "The direct involvement of practitioners within a review potentially opens up greater scope for the complexities of practice to be more fully respected, with the professional user review representing the existing approach that incorporates this perspective most directly" (Kahn, Wareham, Young, Willis and Pilkington, 2008).	Response 10: The ALRA is intended to be owned by practitioners who are either doing an applied  business research project or, anyway, making use of the ALRA to address specific management concern(s). Its application is carried out by the ALRA user, who is a practitioner, if not a scholar-practitioner. Preferably, other stakeholders of a particular situation are also involved, e.g., being consulted, with the ALRA. In this regard, there is "direct involvement of practitioners". As such, the ALRA, in the words of Kahn et al. (2008), "opens up greater scope for the complexities of practice to be more fully respected".
Idea 11: "... there has been relatively little consideration as to how reviews of research might be designed to ensure greater relevance to practitioners. This is despite the way in which reviews provide a key means for practitioners to access the research literature" (Kahn, Wareham, Young, Willis and Pilkington, 2008).	Response 11: The ALRA is formulated to improve relevance  of literature review to (i) practitioners, primarily to those who are literature review novices with tight time constraint (re: ALRA application domain 1) and (ii) aspiring management scholar-practitioners (re: ALRA application domains 2 and 3). Being able to produce management knowledge with high actionable value is therefore the prime aim of the ALRA. In this regard, the ALRA explicitly addresses the neglected "consideration" as pointed out by Kahn et al. (2008).
Idea 12: "A challenge, though, presents itself as to whether a review conducted by practitioners might not be dominated by their own personal perspectives, paradoxically ensuring limited applicability to practitioners in other contexts" (Kahn, Wareham, Young, Willis and Pilkington, 2008).	Response 12: An outstanding ALRA application requires the ALRA user to pursue intellectual learning with both transdisciplinary and inter-disciplinary orientations. These orientations enable the ALRA users to be more capable to gain a creative and holistic understanding of management knowledge as well as the specific problem-situation the users encounter. With that, the ALRA user's  "personal perspective" can be intellectually enriched. The findings from research projects that involve ALRA practices are expected to be capable of applicability in other contexts mainly via (i) the Action Research approach to study the applied business research projects and (ii) the intensive  reflective usage of academic ideas as encouraged  by the ALRA.
Idea 13: "One of the most intimidating aspects of a literature review is encountering the messy nature of knowledge. Concepts transcend disciplinary boundaries, and literature can be found in a wide range of different kinds of sources" (Rowley and Slack, 2004).	Response 13: By endorsing contemporary systems thinking, notably critical systems thinking, the ALRA users become more prepared to deal with both the messiness and transdisciplinarity of the academic knowledge being reviewed.

Regarding Table 2, the words from the academic literature in bold type underline the key conceptual aspects on the literature review ideas. By making response statements to these ideas from the standpoint of the ALRA rationale,  the ALRA characteristics are more clearly spelled out. To make the findings organized, Table 2 groups the ideas into three categories: (i) literature review objectives, (ii) literature review approaches, and (iii) literature review concerns. The left-hand side column of the table on academic literature review ideas indicates: (i) more than a single literature review approach, e.g.,  traditional or narrative review, systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-synthesis (re: Ideas 3, 4, 5 and 6), (ii) an array of tasks, e.g., critique, summarize, draw conclusions, extend existing knowledge, offer sources of tools and solutions (re: ideas 1, 2 and 3), and (iii) a number of concerns in the literature review exercises, e.g., theoretical and methodological biases, personal biases, and unsystematic and incomprehensive search (re: ideas 7, 8 and 9). The ALRA response statements to the literature review ideas are shown in the right-hand side column of Table 2. Some of the main ALRA thinking (re: the right-hand side column of Table 2) are  similar to that of the academic literature, e.g., the ALRA responses to ideas 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 11 and 13. In this respect, the academic literature review ideas serve to conceptually clarify and enrich the ALRA. Other literature review ideas are quite dissimilar to that of the ALRA, e.g., the ALRA responses to ideas 4, 5, 7, 8 and 12.  A reason for that is  due to the diversity of literature review ideas and approaches in the academic literature itself. Again, referring to Table 2, a  large number of the ALRA response statements to the thirteen literature review ideas are chiefly associated with ALRA I. Examples are responses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11. Nevertheless, three responses, i.e., responses 4, 12 and 13, appear to be related to ALRA 2, as they are more attentive to the topics of perspective and transdisciplinarity. Such findings outcome of Table 2 suggests that the present academic literature review literature spares limited attention on contemporary systems thinking and managerial intellectual learning. By contrast, these two topics are the prime interest of ALRA 2, but not of ALRA I. On the whole, the findings (re: Table 2) indicate that the ALRA can be conceptually enriched by its users with other academic literature review ideas for they are fertile in the intellectual sense. In addition, there is room for the ALRA users to adapt ALRA I by incorporating other academic literature review ideas into it in view of their specific intellectual competence profile and other situation-specific considerations, e.g., the researcher's resource constraint, including time.

With the additional conceptual clarification made, the writer now moves on to examine the desired quality attributes of applied business research dissertation reports which ALRA is argued here to be good at promoting.

How the AlRA could help in achieving the Desired quality attributes of an applied business research dissertation report

Doing literature review for research project is application domain 1 the ALRA. There are benefits and costs in terms of the ability to achieve certain desired quality attributes of applied business research projects by being agile in the literature review approach. For identifying desirable quality attributes, one can refer to the assessment criteria and marking guidelines on dissertation reports that are specified in the dissertation guides of universities. Examples of these criteria could include: (i) relevance, (ii) knowledge, (iii) analysis, (iv) argument and structure, (v) critical evaluation, (vi) presentation and (vii) relevance to literature. These criteria are not confined to the quality evaluation of  literature review performance in dissertation work, but instead cover the quality assessment of the whole dissertation report. In this case, for an evaluation of literature review in an applied business research dissertation report using the ALRA, there is a need to come up with a specific set of quality attributes for assessment purpose. The quality attributes chosen by the writer are (i) cohesiveness of reasoning throughout the dissertation report,  (ii) holistic and conceptually rich comprehension of the management topic and concern under investigation, (iii) generation of knowledge of good actionable (practical) value and academic value, and, finally, (iv) clear and organized expression of dissertation report content in written form. They are chosen as they more clearly reveal the benefits of using the ALRA. An elaboration of these quality attributes are as follows:

Desired quality attribute 1: Cohesiveness of reasoning throughout the dissertation report: The main deliverable from ALRA Step 4 (ideas systemic diagramming) is the integrated theoretical framework. It captures a set of academic and situation-specific management ideas perceived by the ALRA user to be relevant to address his/her research objectives and management issues. The framework, being a set of cohesive ideas as worked out by the ALRA user, should foster reasoning cohesiveness in the dissertation report writing.

Desired quality attribute 2: Holistic and conceptually rich comprehension of the management topic and concern under investigation: Via contemporary systems thinking, especially critical systems thinking, the ALRA user is encouraged to construct a theoretical framework that facilitates conceptually rich comprehension of the systemic property of a chosen set of ideas. A more holistic intellectual knowledge on a management topic, in turn, enables a more complicated understanding of the management concern under investigation. [Critical systems thinking and its associated methodology are also useful for informing  practitioners to tackle management concern(s) with creative holism, though this topic is outside the scope of discussion here.]

Desired quality attribute 3: Generation of knowledge of good actionable (practical) value and academic value: The ALRA theoretical framework is formulated with a strong concern-driven as well as transdisciplinary orientation. With embracement of such orientation, the ALRA channels the ALRA user's main attention toward theoretical framework-informed and management concern-driven research design and analysis of findings. All these  research efforts, i.e., literature review, research design and findings analysis, become aligned on the generation of management knowledge of good actionable value. At the same time, certain academic value is created with the ALRA application conducted with Action Research and the academic literature-informed theoretical framework.

Desired quality attribute 4: Clear and organized expression of dissertation report content in written form: Although the ALRA itself does not offer specific guidelines on dissertation writing skills nor on applied research methods, the theoretical framework formulated with the ALRA helps the ALRA users to clarify, justify and organize various discussion items, e.g., the research objectives, the literature review chapter,  and the research method chapter, of the dissertation report written content. This is achieved by explicitly relating these discussion items to the theoretical framework, which is shown vividly in a diagram. As a result, dissertation report readers are better able to figure out how the management concerns, literature review, research methods used, findings and analysis and recommendations of the dissertation report  are associated with each other with reference  to the theoretical framework. The framework in this case serves as an encompassing  conceptual roadmap for the dissertation report readers. This itself improves the usability quality of the dissertation report. In short, the written report content appears more organized and its ideas more clearly expressed to its readers.

The four quality attributes are complementary with the theoretical framework (or ideas systemic diagram) playing a pivotal role. It needs to be emphasized that a well constructed theoretical framework reflects useful managerial intellectual learning on the ALRA users' part.

On the costs and weaknesses of the ALRA, as revealed by the study on the academic literature review ideas (re: Table 2), the ALRA is not capable to match the review vigor of the heavy-weight literature review approaches, especially those cogently driven by academic  interest. These costs and weaknesses are more clearly shown in terms of comprehensiveness, user bias  reduction, and quantification of research idea patterns, etc.. In this regard, the methodological weaknesses of the ALRA have to be recognized by the ALRA users. The ALRA is obviously not a silver bullet to address all kinds of literature review objectives and challenges.

Concluding remarks

From the outset, ALRA I is formulated to serve researchers with certain profile and under certain conditions: (i) novice researcher, (ii) weak intellectual competence to do applied business research work, (iii) tight research project time constraint, and (iv) poverty with time. That is why the approach is an agile one in the first place. For research projects that (i) demand comprehensive and vigorous literature review on a specific academic management topic and (ii) primarily target for the academic community, and (iii) focus principally on delivering academic value, not practical value, the ALRA is  not the appropriate choice. As to ALRA II, it is more related to the long-term intellectual competence development via study of contemporary systems thinking by the ALRA users. The ALRA II users are expected to be aspiring or mature scholar-practitioners with a keen interest to learn contemporary systems thinking. In this regard, the ALRA I is a learning tool for ALRA II.

The intellectual endeavor to develop the ALRA is going to be a long research venture. Ho (2017) represents the initiation phase of this venture. This article is a follow-up one on it, involving some further clarification of the characteristics, underlying thinking and quality attributes of the ALRA. Foreseeably,  additional theoretical advancement on the ALRA could also be made via the Action Research pathway by applying the ALRA together with the writer's students doing Applied Business Research projects.

References

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