What has recently been learned from the application of the agile literature review approach (ALRA): a review

What has recently been learned from the application of the agile literature review approach (ALRA): a review

 JOSEPH KIM-KEUNG HO

Independent Trainer

Hong Kong, China

Abstract: As a newly developed approach on literature review for MBA students doing applied business research projects, the agile literature review approach (ALRA) has unclear ideas and guidelines. The paper reflects on the recent experience of its practice for about 1 year and comes up with some practice observations as well as recommended practice. Foreseeably, more ideas and recommendations on its practice will be made in due course.

Key words: applied business research, the agile literature review approach (ALRA)

Introduction

Since its launch in 2017, the agile literature review approach (ALRA), a literature review approach proposed by this writer for application by part-time MBA students on applied business dissertation projects, has been employed for about a year (Ho, 2018a). Some experience of its practice has been gained and reflected on by the writer. Out of the reflection on the ALRA usage, the writer is able to come forward with some additional ideas on its enhancement. This paper aims at reporting on the updated thinking on the ALRA, notably on the suggestions of  approach enhancement from this writer.

The basic ideas from the existing literature on ALRA

The motive of developing an agile literature review approach by the writer is to come up with a suitable way to guide the writer's part-time MBA students to do their applied business research dissertation projects (Ho, 2018a; 2018b). This is in response to the writer's observed difficulties experienced by these students in their dissertation projects. Chiefly, these difficulties include:

Difficulty 1: The prevailing time poverty of the part-time MBA students in Hong Kong;

Difficulty 2: Weak intellectual ability to comprehend, and subsequently to select and record ideas that are potentially relevant to the students' dissertation project works;

Difficulty 3: Weak intellectual ability to evaluate, adopt and adapt ideas from the academic literature to make them relevant and more applicable to their dissertation project works;

These three primary difficulties on the students' part can be further attributed to the more fundamental issues of (i) the research-practice gap in academic research (Ho, 2018c), (ii) students' insufficient engagement with intellectual learning per se and (iii) students' weak knowledge, including learning skills, on the subject of research methods as well as other management subjects. It is not inconceivable to make an imaginative leap to relate these issues to broader defects of the contemporary commercialized management education system that promotes the value of accelerated speed of gaining a recognized academic qualification at the expense cultivating students' intellectual curiosity.

To address these difficulties encountered by the MBA students, the writer proposed the agile literature review approach (ALRA). The approach chiefly relies on three core conceptual themes for that: the agile thinking (theme 1), the systems thinking (theme 2) and the managerial intellectual learning (MIL) (theme 3). Specifically,

Theme 1 (the agile thinking) endorses the evolutionary/ spiral prototyping approach (Agilemanifesto.org, n.d.) to produce a theoretical framework (or called ideas systemic diagramming in the ALRA) in order to clarify and render an image on the researcher's management concern-directed understanding and intellectual interest in his/her literature review endeavor.

Theme 2 (the systems thinking) encourages a creative and holistic way to (a) explore the problem-situation of the client system under review as well as to (b) construct, as a major literature review output, a theoretical framework that possesses systemic properties (Ho, 2018a; 2018b).

Theme 3 (the managerial intellectual learning) points to the need to relate the intellectual learning required for the engaging and effective performance of the whole applied business research; in particular, the recommended way to intellectual learn is based on (a) the multi-perspective, systems-based research mode and (b) the adoption of the self-identity of a scholar-practitioner (Ho, 2018a)

The ALRA comprises short-term guidelines for part-time MBA students to cope with their applied business research projects with relatively tight deadlines and long-term recommendations for them to undergo life-long systems thinking-based intellectual learning. At the outset, for doing applied business research projects, the ALRA offers a 4-steps approach, i.e., ideas search (step 1), ideas collection (step 2), ideas categorization (step 3) and ideas systemic diagramming (step 4). Subsequent work on the ALRA also examines preparation required on applied business research project background exploration to support the approach (Ho, 2017).

With the supervisory experience gained from coaching his dissertation project students with the ALRA from early 2017 till now, the writer comes up with some additional ALRA practice observations and recommendations. These ideas are discussed in the next section.

Observations from the ALRA practice and additional practice recommendations

Four observations have been made on the writer's MBA students learning and using the ALRA. They are:

Observation 1: Frequent revision on academic themes and project objectives at the dissertation proposal stage, leading to numerous major and minor amendments on theoretical framework drafts.

Observation 2: Ability to produce only a high level (i.e. high resolution level (Flood and Jackson, 1991: 8) theoretical framework initially with up to 6 related components before being ready to conduct a major preliminary literature review.

Observation 3: Difficulty to evaluate and subsequently synthesize academic ideas gathered from the preliminary literature review into the theoretical framework.

Observation 4: Some difficulty to comprehend and make use of the constructed theoretical framework to guide the actual applied business research project.

On reflecting on the dissertation project supervisory and teaching experience on the ALRA, the writer comes up with the following five additional recommended practice on ALRA for applied business research projects:

Recommendation 1 (for the project supervisor): Be prepared to provide intensive personalized supervisory support to students who are committed to (i) learning and doing their applied business research projects and (ii) closely working with the project supervisors in a friendly and responsive way.

Recommendation 2 (for the project supervisor and the student together): Be prepared to construct in a spiral evolutionary prototyping way a high-level (called resolution level 0) theoretical framework with 4 to 7 components, and subsequently, to enhance and populate the level 0 theoretical framework with around 3 academic ideas for each of the "level 0 theoretical framework" component. The result is the production of a "level 1 theoretical framework", (i.e. an enhanced version of level 0 theoretical framework with a slightly higher resolution level) and a "level 2 theoretical framework" (with each framework component populated with around 3 to 4 relevant academic ideas).

Recommendation 3 (for the project supervisor and the student together): Employ the lego toy analogy to encourage a playful way to assemble academic ideas (occasionally with some adaptation of them to improve application relevance) in order to construct a management concern-focused theoretical framework in the preliminary literature review endeavor.

Recommendation 4 (for the project supervisor and the student together): Encourage the student to construct a comprehensive laundry list of management items using popular analysis frameworks, such as the PEST analysis and SWOT analysis, as the broader conceptual background to comprehend and produce the theoretical framework so as to be sensitive to (a) potential conceptual blind spots in the literature review and (b) the restrictiveness of the theoretical framework being constructed.

Recommendation 5 (for the project supervisor and the student together): Make use of comprehensive checklists based on PEST and SWOT analysis as well as problem-exploring diagramming based on cognitive mapping to produce reference diagrams to produce an initial theoretical framework (i.e., a level 0 ideas systemic diagram in the ALRA).

Concluding remarks

Being a newly proposed approach, the ALRA has unclear ideas and unclear guidelines. Moreover, it needs to be refined and enriched via reflection on its application.  What is clear from the recent ALRA practice is that ALRA is only for dissertation supervisors and applied business research students who are committed to engage intellectually in the research process with a very friendly relationship. This paper offers some additional observations and recommendations on its practices. Foreseeably, more ideas and recommendations will be made on the ALRA with more practice experience gained.

References

Agilemanifesto.org. n.d. "Manifesto for Agile Software Development" (URL address: http://agilemanifesto.org/) [visited at September 30, 2017].

Flood, R.L. and M.C. Jackson. 1991. Creative problem solving: Total Systems Intervention, Wiley. Chichester.

Ho, J.K.K. 2017. "A systems thinking-based review of the topic on an applied business research project background (ABB)" European Academic Research 5(8) November: 4021-4040.

Ho, JKK. 2018a. "On the agile literature review approach for practising managers: a proposal" Systems Research and Behavioral Science March Wiley (url address: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/sres.2505).

Ho, J.K.K. 2018b. "Some further conceptual clarification of the recently proposed agile literature review approach (ALRA)" European Academic Research 5(12) March: 6313-6328.

Ho, J.K.K. 2018c. "The research-practice relevance gap (RPRG) issue in the management field: a brief note" Joseph KK Ho e-resources blog January 1 (URL address: http://josephho33.blogspot.hk/2018/01/the-relevance-gap-topic-in-management.html) [visited at February 28, 2018].

e-resources

Facebook group on the agile literature review approach: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1789115691385045/.

Facebook page on Literature on cognitive mapping: https://www.facebook.com/literature.cognitive.mapping/.