The notion of research game plan in the Agile Literature Review Approach: a note

This note is on the notion of research game plan in the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA). As we know, research strategies (re: the onion model), such as case study research and ethnographic research, comprise a number of research methods, e.g. observation, interview and questionnaire survey, etc.. A specific research project, e.g., one on applied business research for a specific client organization with a specific set of research objectives, involves a tailor-made research strategy as formulated by the researcher. In the Agile Literature Review Approach, such a tailor-made research strategy is called a research game plan. The research game plan is portrayed with two views:

View 1. A research methods mapping view. Diagram 1 is illustrative on this view:

Diagram 1: a research methods mapping view

View 2. A flowchart view. Diagram 2 illustrates this view

Diagram 2: a flowchart view

The relationship between the two research game plan views are shown in Diagram 3 as follows:

Diagram 3: the relationship between the two research game plan views

The two views of a research game plan are to be explained in the chapter on research methods in a dissertation report that involves the ALRA. 

Lastly, it is useful to discuss which part of your research game plan has adopted what kind of principles from which research strategies, e.g., case study research, ethnographic research, grounded theory and action research, etc.., and why. Doing so sheds lights on the underlying nature, research philosophies and aims of your research game plan. This in turn, enables readers to better comprehend the methodological essence of your research game plan.

A pair of diagrams in the Agile Literature Review Approach: an example

A pair of diagrams in the Agile Literature Review Approach: an example on ABC Travel Agency

Diagram 1: A management-concerns diagram

Component 1: Increase in competition from online travel industry giants
Component 2: Customers become more demanding on travel service quality
Component 3: Concern of ABC Travel Agency on operational inefficiency and unreliability
Component 4: Concern on the challenges involved in branding, marketing and operational innovation and improvements at ABC Travel Agency


Diagram 2: A level-0 theoretical framework

Influencing factorsComponent 1: evaluate the competitive landscape as affected by the online travel industry giants
Component 2: evaluate the existing service quality expectations from customers in the travel sector
Core-focus domain
Component 3: evaluate ABC's existing competence on operations management, marketing management and innovation management
Component 5: evaluate planned and other new solutions to address ABC's management concerns, e.g., customer relationship management initiatives, service automation initiatives and digital marketing initiatives.
Outcome and proposal evaluation
Component 4: evaluate how the existing organizational competence of ABC affects its business performance
Component 5: evaluate planned and other new solutions to address ABC's management concerns, e.g., customer relationship management initiatives, service automation initiatives and digital marketing initiatives.


{Note that Component 5 belongs to both the "core-focus" domain and the "outcome and proposal evaluation" domain.}

Research methods mapping in the Agile Literature Review Approach: a note

This note is on research methods mapping in the Agile Literature Review Approach  (ALRA). To do research methods mapping, you need a level 1 theoretical framework. Here I distinguish 2 types of level-1 theoretical framework, see Diagram 1:

Type 1 [level 1a]: Each theoretical framework component is populated with academic ideas (whose referencing can be traced in the study notes)
Type 2 [level 1b]: Each theoretical framework component is populated with research tasks (e.g., an evaluation task, a research question or a hypothesis to be tested) that incorporate the academic ideas from type 1 theoretical framework [level-1a]


Diagram 1

The construction of a level-1b theoretical framework involves making the academic ideas directly relevant to conduct queries, resulting in generating findings valuable to the theoretical framework components [which are essentially theory-driven evaluation endeavors to address a set of related management-concerns]. 

Once the level 1b theoretical framework is done, you can now map your research methods onto the theoretical framework. This task is called research methods mapping in the Agile Literature Review Approach, see Diagram 2


Diagram 2

Diagram 2 should be included in the dissertation report chapter on Research Methods.

Achieving project alignment and coherence with the Agile Literature Review Approach

Achieving project alignment and coherence with the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA) requires a number of conversion tasks on 7 topics (which are often specific ALRA deliverables). This is depicted in the following diagram:

The 7 topics [shown as components in black colour in the diagram] are:

Topic 1: The problem-context

Topic 2: A set of related management concerns (in the form of a management-concerns diagram)

Topic 3: A level-0 theoretical framework

Topic 4: A level-1 theoretical framework

Topic 5: An overall research gameplan (including a theoretical framework (level 1) with mapped-on research methods)

Topic 6: An organized and valid analysis and findings

Topic 7: A set of concrete and helpful recommendations

{For MBA students doing applied business research projects, when you have largely clarified your thinking on topic 3 and are starting to work on topics 4 and 5, you are in a good position to write up your synopsis form; when you have largely clarified your thinking on topics 4 and 5, you are in a good position to write up your dissertation proposal.}

The conversion tasks (CT) [shown in red colour in the diagram] are: 

CT1: a meaningful extraction [of key issues and concerns out of the problem-context]

CT2: An appropriate intellectual response [to the set of management concerns with a level-0 theoretical framework]

CT3: A sufficiently enriched theoretical framework [level-1] with literature review

CT4: An appropriate research methods mapping performed

CT5: A skillful research methods application as informed by academic ideas from the level-1 theoretical framework

CT6: A clear justification of recommendations with a logical chain of evidence (as presented in various parts of your dissertation report).

How to do literature review with a level 0 theoretical framework

I make use of the following theoretical framework [level 0] in the agile literature review approach to suggest how to proceed with literature review:

A theoretical framework [level 0]

The theoretical framework is made up of 7 components:

Influencing factors (Part A)

1. Evaluate how the existing HR strategies affect staff turnover and team leadership

2. Evaluate how the existing business strategies affect staff turnover and team leadership

3. Evaluate how the existing change management strategies affect staff turnover and team leadership

Core-focus domain (Part B)

4. Evaluate how the existing staff turnover status affects business performance

5. Evaluate how the existing team leadership status affects business performance

Business impacts and solution evaluation domain (Part C)

6. Evaluate how the existing staff turnover and team leadership status aggravates the current management concerns (as depicted by the management-concerns diagram)

7. Evaluate the existing and proposed measures to specifically cope with the staff turnover and team leadership issues.

Now, let us consider component 1 "Evaluate how the existing HR strategies affect staff turnover and team leadership". If you type the key words of "HR strategies", "staff turnover" and "team leadership" as a single search in e-library, I am 99.9% sure that you will not get any articles from it. And, even if you are able to obtain 1 or 2 articles, it is very likely that they are not exactly about how HR strategies affect staff turnover and team leadership.

I suggest that, each time you do literature search, you key in one key topic, e.g, "human resource strategy" and then save your resultant articles in a computer folder. Then you try another key topic, e.g., "staff turnover"; and finally, "team leadership".

After that, browse through the collected articles and compile a study note with some useful academic ideas on the three topics of hr strategy, staff turnover and team leadership. The academic ideas may have something to do with definitions, value-full viewpoints, analytical notions, empirical findings (e.g., effectiveness of certain practices and opinion survey results in a particular country) and research issues on the three topics of hr strategy, staff turnover and team leadership. Possibly, you may come across academic ideas that are associated with relationship between the three topics. Again, you may come across academic ideas that are associated with other components of your theoretical framework. It needs to be stressed that literature review is an engaging exploratory and exploitative intellectual learning process that involves snowballing of ideas.

After reviewing your study notes on the three topics, you could make now use of your chosen academic ideas to formulate specific research tasks and questions for your theoretical framework component 1. Examples can be: 

1. To evaluate how variable X (an academic idea, e.g., employee recruitment practice in HR strategy) affects staff turnover/or team leadership outcome

2. To evaluate staff turnover outcome via diverse HR strategy models (an academic idea, e.g., traditional, human relation and human resource HR models)

3. To formulate a hypothesis on the correlation between variable X (an academic idea on HR strategy) and variable Y (an academic idea on staff turnover/or team leadership)

4. To evaluate staff turnover/ team leadership status of the company under review with an analytical HR strategy model (e.g., talent management).

After doing that for all the components of the theoretical framework [level 0], you produce a level 1 theoretical framework.  A level 1 theoretical framework is essentially a level 0 one whose components are populated with academic ideas-incorporated points. You can now use the statements [i.e., academic ideas-incorporated point] that explicitly use academic ideas (with clear referencing) in a component to inform your specific research methods to be used. Specifically, the statements (e.g., examples 1-4 above) on component 1 can be expressed as research questions to be asked in an interview research or in a questionnaire survey research. The task of mapping research methods onto a theoretical framework can be called research methods mapping in the Agile Literature Review Approach. The result is that your research methods are explicitly academic ideas-driven and research objectives-focused.

Subsequently, you could write up your dissertation report chapter on Literature Review with the final version of your level 1 theoretical framework. The theoretical framework [level 1] with research methods mapped is used for writing up the chapter on Research methods.

Two types of applied business research for discussion

There are two types of applied business research; students need to review them and discuss with their project supervisors subsequently. They are:

Type 1 [with a specific set of management concerns from a particular client organization]: Mainly case study research, preferably with the agile literature review approach

Type 2 [without a specific set of management concerns from a particular client organization]: Mainly questionnaire survey research with hypothesis testing

The four questions for students to consider are:

Q1: Which research type is easier to conduct? Why?
Q2: Which research type is more impressive to the examiners? Why?
Q3: What is the research type preference to which supervisor? Why?
Q4: What is the research type preference to you? Why?

Types of diagramming for agile literature review approach study

Types of diagramming for agile literature review approach (ALRA) study includes:

A, Foundational diagramming types
a.1. Rich picture building: it highlights the structural and processual factors as well as the concerns and conflicts of a problem-situation.
a.2. Cognitive mapping: it captures a set of perceived variables in a systemic and somewhat dynamic way.
a.3. Mind mapping. it portrays in a multidimensional way with radiant thinking on a topic in focus.

B. Diagramming for direct ALRA usage
b.1. Management-concerns diagrams and theoretical frameworks: the ALRA pair of diagrams adopts, as the researcher sees fit, some of the features of the foundational diagramming types (A), with the goal of portraying and aligning a coherent set of (i) management concerns, (ii) intellectual (including academic) notions and (iii) research methods for conducting applied business research in an agile mode.

How to refine a management-concerns diagram: an illustration

How to refine a management-concerns diagram in the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA): an illustration

[The core-focus of the research project is on staff turnover and team leadership.]


Diagram 1: A management-concerns diagram [level 0] before refinement

After refinement, Diagram 1 becomes Diagram 2.


Diagram 2: A management-concerns diagram [level 0] after refinement

The arrows with +/- signs are features of cognitive mapping; they are adopted here in the refined management-concerns diagram.

Lastly, the core-focus of management concerns is identified in Diagram 2 on "Increase staff turnover" and "Team leadership quality"; this is shown in Diagram 3 as follows:

Diagram 3: A management-concerns diagram [level 0] after refinement, with the core management concerns to be responded to identified

Specifically, one can say that the core focus is on the two inter-related management concerns on the problematic status of staff turnover and team leadership quality at company under examination.
Class discussion:
Question 1: What refinements have been made on Diagram 1?
Question 2: Is Diagram 3 more useful to provide justification for a dissertation project to study staff turnover and team leadership of the company under review? Why and how?

How to refine a theoretical framework in the Agile Literature Review Approach: an illustration

How to refine a theoretical framework in the Agile Literature Review Approach: an illustration

Diagram 1: A theoretical framework before refinement

The framework (re: Diagram 1) comprises 5 components:

• Evaluate HR strategies
• Evaluate business strategies
• Evaluate change management strategies
• Evaluate staff turnover
• Evaluate team leadership

Diagram 2: A theoretical framework after refinement

The refined theoretical framework is made up of 7 components:
Influencing factors (Part A)
1. Evaluate how the existing HR strategies affect staff turnover and team leadership
2. Evaluate how the existing business strategies affect staff turnover and team leadership
3. Evaluate how the existing change management strategies affect staff turnover and team leadership
Core-focus domain (Part B)
4. Evaluate how the existing staff turnover status affects business performance
5. Evaluate how the existing team leadership status affects business performance
Business impacts and solution evaluation domain (Part C)
6. Evaluate how the existing staff turnover and team leadership status aggravates the current management concerns (as depicted by the management-concerns diagram)
7. Evaluate the existing and proposed measures to specifically cope with the staff turnover and team leadership issues

For discussion 
1. Could you tell what refinements have been made on the theoretical framework?
2. Please also evaluate the refinements made on the theoretical framework. Specifically, do you think the refined theoretical framework is more useful for guiding your literature review efforts? How?

A cognitive map on Agile Literature Review Approach I and II

The following diagram is a cognitive map on the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA) I and II.

Diagram 1

The cognitive map has 8 interacting variables:
Variable 1: Able to access supervisory/ learning support
Variable 2: Employ the ALRA well
Variable 3: Improve applied business research performance
Variable 4: Foster immediate managerial intellectual learning
Variable 5: Improve managerial performance
Variable 6: Improve sustainable scholar-practitioner based career development
Variable 7: Improve managerial intellectual learning capability
Variable 8: Learn critical systems thinking more

The arrow with the + sign in Diagram 1 means that an increase in Variable A leads to an increase in Variable B.



References
1. Ho, J.K.K. 2018. "Some further conceptual clarification of the recently proposed agile literature review approach (ALRA)" European Academic Research 5(12) March: 6313-6328.
2. Facebook page on managerial intellectual learning.

The concept of "theoretical framework" in a mind map

The concept of "theoretical framework" in the agile literature review approach (ALRA) is portrayed in a mind map as follows:

The mind map has three trunks:

Trunk 1: complexity attributes

• From level 0 to 1
• 4-8 components
• Components with specific evaluative tasks associated to specific academic topics
• Components all linked up with 1-4 links

Trunk 2: nature and expression of components

• core-focus and non-core-focus domains indicated
• In academic language
• Start with "Evaluate ...."
• Favour a process view on "theory-driven research" and "literature review"
• Point to theory-driven research and data analysis
• An organized expression of the researcher's intellectual response to a set of management concerns

Trunk 3: purposes served by it

• Supportive of an agile mode of literature review
• Convey the researcher's chosen intellectual response to a set of related management concerns
• A coherent agenda to guide literature review
• A self-reflective and communicative tool to conduct literature review
• The blueprint on which research methods are mapped onto
• Promote "complicated understanding"
• A blueprint to organize contents in the Literature Review Chapter in dissertation reports
• A major input for formulating dissertation titles, research objectives and research questions

The concept of "management-concerns diagram" in a mind map

The concept of "management-concerns diagram" in the agile literature review approach (ALRA) is portrayed in a mind map as follows:

The mind map has three trunks:

Trunk 1: complexity attributes

• From level 0 to level 1
• 5-8 components
• Components all linked up; some have 2-4 links
• Components with specific themes and topics

Trunk 2: nature and expression of components

• In management's own language
• Starts with "concern on..."
• Intersubjectivity, paradoxes and wickedness revealed
• Associated to SWOT "key issues"
• Management standpoints represented
• A coherent set of concerns
• Concerns catch the research interest of the researcher

Trunk 3: purposes served by it

• A usable tool to convey a set of related management concerns
• A major input for deriving the "theoretical framework"
• A major input for writing up the dissertation project background of a project
• The base of justifications for the 'theoretical framework" [level 0]
• Promote "complicated understanding"

A management-concerns diagram on staff turnover and related HR policy

A management-concerns diagram exercise on staff turnover and related HR policy for illustration at levels 0 and 1 

Diagram 1: A management-concerns diagram on "staff turnover and related HR policy" [level 0]

Specifically, the components are:
Component 1: concern on stressful and unfriendly working condition and HR policy
Component 2: concern on employees' low morale and low job satisfaction
Component 3: concern on the staff turnover problem
Component 4: concern on the negative impact of staff turnover to employees' quality of work life and related behavioral outcomes
Component 5: concern on the impacts of staff turnover on business performance
Component 6: concern on the effectiveness of HR solutions to cope with the staff turnover problem, notably with flexitime


A management-concerns diagram at level 0 exhibits characteristics of a cognitive map but the management-concerns diagram is not for comprehensively explore and document the problem-situation facing the client system under review. The management-concerns diagram has a narrower scope and objective for the provision of justification of the companion theoretical framework (as constructed by the researcher]. Another point is that a management-concerns diagram is not a mind-map [which focuses on a very specific object (e.g., a management topic such as staff turnover] with radiant thinking under investigation].



Diagram 2: A management-concerns diagram showing two components at level 1.

It is also useful to insert links on the individual points in the level 1 diagram, e.g. 1.4 (lots of overtime) ---> 2.5 (staff feeling upset), see Diagram 3.

Diagram 3: A management-concerns diagram at level 1 with links

It is very likely not feasible to have an aggregate level 1 management-concerns diagram that cover all components (re: diagram 1) on an A4 paper. Another point to note is that some researchers might be interested in conducting quantitative data analysis (e.g., correlation analysis) on these linkages with their questionnaire survey data.



References
The companion theoretical framework
Diagram 4

The FB agile literature review approach group

A pair of diagrams on housing dissertation: an illustration related to ethnic minorities in HK

The following is a pair of diagrams [in the agile literature review approach] on housing dissertation: an illustration on the theme of "housing discrimination on ethnic minorities in Hong Kong":

Diagram 1

Specifically, the components are:
Component 1: concern on social prejudice to the ethnic minorities in the Hong Kong housing market.
Component 2: concern of socio-economic factors that reinforce social prejudice to the ethnic minorities in Hong Kong.
Component 3: concern on impacts of housing discrimination to quality of residential life of the ethnic minorities in Hong Kong.
Component 4: concern on the sufficiency of the existing Hong Kong housing policy to support the ethnic minorities in Hong Kong



Diagram 2

Specifically, the components are:
Component 1: evaluate the socio-economic factors that reinforce social prejudice to the ethnic minorities in Hong Kong
Component 2: evaluate how social prejudice affects the Hong Kong minorities in the housing market
Component 3: evaluate the quality of residential life of the ethnic minorities in Hong Kong
Component 4: evaluate the sufficiency of the existing and proposed housing policies for supporting the ethnic minorities in Hong Kong

Structural analysis of management-concerns diagram: a note

Quite often, students believe that large companies are more complicated to study while small companies are simpler to investigate. A more meaningful way to evaluate the complexity of an applied business research project is to examine the structure of the management-concerns diagram produced for a client system to be examined. This amounts to a structural analysis of a management-concerns diagram. The following notes are illustrative:

Diagram 1

Structures of diagrams 1 to 3 are not sufficiently complicated, though diagram 3 fares better than diagrams 1 and 2. Complexity also depends on the nature of complexity of the ingredient components (e.g., A, B, C, D, E, F, and G) themselves. 

Diagram 2

Structure of diagram 4 would be considered as sufficiently complicated to study. The diagram could become more complicated if there are a few additional feedback loops, such as linkages from K to F, or H to C, etc...

Overall, the number of components, number of linkages and patterns of linkages (e.g., one-to-one, one-to-many, to many-to-many; number of feedback loops) determine the structural complexity of a management-concerns diagram. The complexity of a management-concerns diagram renders an image on the degree of "complicated understanding of a problem-situation" under investigation by the researcher as briefed by the manager(s) of the client system.

At the applied business research project proposal stage, a management-concerns diagram [level 0] consisting of 6-8 components is a reasonable construct, from the writer's experience.  

Finally, it is possible to make a complicated diagram more comprehensible by categorizing the components of a diagram. This is indicated in Diagram 3 as follows:

Diagram 3

Referring to Diagram 3, there are 5 categories of components:

Category 1: Human resource factors
Category 2: Marketing factors
Category 3: Information Technology factors
Category 4: Logistics management factors
Category 5: Business performance factors

A pair of diagrams in the agile literature review approach : social justice on housing in Hong Kong

 The following is a pair of diagrams in the agile literature review approach (ALRA) on the topic of "social justice on housing in Hong Kong (HK)" [related to the field of housing studies]


Diagram 1: A housing-concerns diagram [level 0]

Specifically,

Component 1: concern on social injustice arising from the existing HK housing policy
Component 2: concern on social injustice leading to the housing affordability problem in Hong Kong
Component 3: concern about public housing availability to poor families
Component 4: concern about formulation of housing policy that promotes social justice and economic growth simultaneously

The relatedness of the four components is underlined by the arrows that link them together to make up a set of related housing concerns.

Need to populate the components 1 to 4 (re: Diagram 1) with specific ideas and examples gathered primarily from newspaper articles.



Diagram 2: A theoretical framework [level 0]

Specifically, the components are:
Component 1: evaluate how the existing HK housing policy can lead to social injustice
Component 2: Evaluate how unjust housing policy can contribute to the housing affordability problem in HK
Component 3: Evaluate how the existing public housing policy can affect poor families in HK
Component 4: Evaluate and recommend housing policy that can better promote social justice and economic growth simultaneously in Hong Kong 

The relatedness of the four components are stressed by the arrows that link together the four components.

Need to populate components 1 to 4 (re: Diagram 2) with specific academic ideas and academic topics via literature review.

The key role of deductive reasoning in the Agile Literature Review Approach: a note

To fulfill the purpose of being agile, the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA) adopts the practice of producing a prototype of "a pair of diagrams" at the early phase of its application. The two diagrams are (i) a management-concerns diagram and (ii) a level-0 theoretical framework. The management-concerns diagram provides the justification for the intellectual response to the client system's key management concerns as chosen by the researcher. It helps the researcher to answer the following questions on his/her intellectual response (as expressed in the form of a level-0 theoretical framework):

Q1: What's the point [of adopting the researcher's research proposal]?

Q2: Who care about [the adoption of the researcher's research proposal]?

Q3: Why bother [to adopt the researcher's research proposal]?

The level-0 theoretical framework considers a set of coherent evaluative tasks using academic topics and ideas as an intellectual response to the the key management concerns of a client system, as depicted by the management-concerns diagram. The level-0 theoretical framework establishes very early on in the research project a list of academic topics to conduct literature review by the researcher. In this regard, the theoretical framework [level-0] enables from the outset, the researcher to conduct literature research with a clear sense of direction. As a consequence, the researcher is able to produce in an agile mode a level-1 theoretical framework with a set of academic ideas and topics (with clear referencing) to guide the research design as well as to conduct theory-driven evaluation and analysis on the findings from the employment of research methods.

Such a literature review process that chiefly relies on a theoretical framework to guide and, subsequently, analyse, explain and evaluate research findings is primarily grounded on deductive reasoning, rather than inductive reasoning. [It is certainly still feasible to employ inductive reasoning within this broad ALRA pathway]. As most students new to dissertation projects are not experienced in producing this pair of ALRA diagrams, they need much coaching and academic support from their dissertation supervisors.