On the nature of the management-concerns diagram in the Agile Literature Review Approach

This discussion examines the nature of the management-concerns diagram in the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA) and how to decide on its appropriateness:

In the Agile Literature Review Approach, the management-concerns diagram represents a chosen set of management issues (i.e. factors related to the organizational environment, organizational capabilities and business outcomes/solutions) that (i) the organization management team is so unhappy about or, alternatively, so exited about that they strongly feel that they need to be addressed in the near future and (ii) the researcher is also interested to conduct research on them. It can be further clarified in the form of the following diagram:

Referring to the diagram, the management-concerns diagram covers a set of components on management concerns that are at the same time of intellectual interest to the researcher [i.e. the shaded area in the diagram]. In the actual construction of such a diagram, the researcher could introduce a few additional related variables about the client system's environment or organizational performances/ solutions so as to make the comprehension of the set of management concerns easier. If the management-concerns diagram covers topics in the unshaded area, the overall research direction, e.g., in research objectives, literature review focus and research design, etc., is also not appropriate. In a nutshell, there has to be a congruity between the researcher-preference-based individualized and client-concerns-specific considerations in final the management-concerns diagram adopted for an applied business research project for such a diagram to be adopted.


Note: in the discussion, management issues are those the management team is unhappy about or excited about, yet not feeling that they need to be addressed in the near future; management concerns are similar to management issues, except that the management team feels strongly that they need to be addressed in the near future. Thus, management concerns provide a much stronger justification base for launching a research project with an explicit goal to intellectually respond to them, ultimately with some recommendations to cope with them. This then explains why management-concerns diagram should mainly cover management concerns rather than management issues.

Comments on the overall process to conduct literature review on a theoretical framework [level 1a] component

Comments on the overall process to conduct literature review on a theoretical framework [level 1a] component in the ALRA:

The overall process

1. Describe how the academic ideas together enable you to perform the component evaluation task. 

2. Discuss how the academic ideas are able to clarify the nature, e.g., meaning, of the evaluation task and the academic concepts involved. 

3. Examine the importance of the lead model, including its ability to synthesize, if feasible, the rest of the academic ideas involved.. 

4. Evaluate how the chosen analytical concepts (academic ideas) enable you to more specifically, including more systematically, perform the evaluation task.

An example of mgt-concerns components by zones on the staff turnover theme (ALRA)

The following is an example of management-concerns components by zones on the staff turnover theme in the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA) subject:


Zone 1: Environmental driver [internal environment related]

Component name: error-prone and stressful working environment due to high staff turnover


Zone 2: Organizational capabilities:

Component name: management concern on the existing management capability to manage staff turnover


Zone 3: Outcomes/ solutions:

Component name: management concern on the poor corporate financial results, considered to be partly due to the insufficient management capability to manage staff turnover

Dissertation report: main ALRA deliverables

Dissertation report: main Agile literature Review Approach (ALRA) deliverables 

Chapter 1 - Introduction: 
*Management-concerns diagram 

Chapter 2 – Literature review: 
*Theoretical framework [level 0] [level 1a] [level 1b] 
Level 0: components with labels 
Level 1a: Level 0 + academic ideas per components
Level 1b: Level 0 + research tasks using the academic ideas 

Chapter 3 – Research methods: 
*Theoretical framework [1c: either 1a + research methods mapping or 1b + research methods mapping] 
Level 1c: Level 1a or 1b, with research methods mapping

The 3 zones in the main diagrams used in the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA)

The 3 zones in the main diagrams used in the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA) are:

Zone 1: Environmental drivers: topics (e.g. factors, drivers or concerns) that are related to external and internal environments. As factors, drivers and issues, they exert much influences on certain organizational capabilities under examination, as relatively independent and nonmanipulable variables.

Zone 2: Organizational capabilities: topics related to certain organizational (both internal or inter-organizational) capability domains, such as innovation capability, managerial leadership competence, and supply chain management capability, etc..The prime attention is on their quality and competence status which have impact relevance to the organizational performance outcomes (e.g. financial/ non-financial and successfulness to cope with identified management concerns, and effectiveness of existing and potential organizational improvement initiatives.

Zone 3: Outcomes/ solutions: These cover both (i) outcome status on the organizational financial and nonfinancial performances and successfulness to deal with chosen management concerns and (ii) effectiveness of existing and potential solutions being considered to address the chosen management concerns.

The three zones are related in the sense, broadly speaking, that components/ factors in zone 1 influence components/ factors in zone 2; and components/ factors in zone 2 influence those in zone 3.

This is shown in the following diagram

Examples of components for the three zones are: 

Zone 1: Environmental drivers: Intensity of competition in the external environment; Customers becoming more demanding and sophisticated on service quality offered by the company. Internal environmental drivers could be the existing employee profile, e.g. ageing employees or millennial employees, and their job expectations.

Zone 2: Organizational capabilities: innovation capability, supply chain management capability, business intelligence management capability, and managerial leadership competence.

Zone 3: Outcomes/ solutions: (i) outcomes-related: return on equity, customer loyalty status, size of market share, staff morale status, employee commitment status, employee job stress level status, staff turnover status; and (ii) solutions-related (existing and new): service-automation project, flexible job arrangement initiative, and new e-service application.

Examples of management-concerns diagrams and theoretical frameworks are provided in other blog articles, thus not examined in this blog article.

Steps for literature review of an academic idea in ALRA

Steps for literature review of an academic idea in the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA):

How to analyze a research method finding in ALRA

How to analyze a research method finding in the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA):

Verify academic idea status in theoretical framework [level 0] construction (ALRA)

The theoretical framework [level 0] in the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA) represents the researcher's intellectual response to the management concerns (as depicted in the management-concerns diagram]; at the same time, it constitutes the literature review agenda of the researcher using the ALRA. As such, when converting a management-concern statement [in the management-concern diagram] into a theoretical framework component label [in theoretical framework level 0], it is vital to verify at the outset that such component label is expressed with an academic idea, and not just an idea in layman's terms. This verification can be quickly done with Google Scholar. The following example is illustrative:

Step 1: identify a management-concern statement [re: the management-concerns diagram]:

"Management is concerned about what are the prevailing SME customer preference on accounting services"

Step 2: formulate a corresponding theoretical framework [level 0] component label [re: the theoretical framework (level-0)]:

"To find out the prevailing SME customer preference on accounting services".

Step 3: to quickly verify whether the idea of customer preference is indeed an academic idea.

Type the word "customer preference" in Google Scholar to see if there are any academic articles that involve examination on the idea of "customer preference". The search result shows that there are indeed some academic articles that did examine the idea of "customer preference". Thus, it can be verified that the "customer preference' term can be considered as an academic idea. In this case, the theoretical framework component label is proper and serves as a reasonable response to the management concern of "Management is concerned about what are the prevailing SME customer preference on accounting services" [re: the Management-concerns diagram].

Writing literature review for the theoretical frameworks level 0 and level 1a

Writing up literature review for the theoretical frameworks level 0 and level 1a (with academic key words) in the agile literature review approach

Activity 1

Using your compiled study note for a specific theoretical framework component , present your literature review ideas in the following sequence:

Step 1. A discussion on the definitions and major concept typologies as related to the theoretical framework component; then indicate your own standpoint and specific preference on them as related to your present project work.

Step 2. A discussion on the main research interests and research gaps in the academic literature; then discuss your own preference on research interests and how you are going to deal with the relevant research gaps in the academic literature so as to proceed with your own investigation.

Step 3. An indication of specific research tasks you intend to perform that make use of the academic ideas, notably on specific analytical concepts and techniques, and viewpoints as presented in steps 1 and 2.

Activity 2: move on to write literature review on the next theoretical framework component

***** 

(a) make sure your overall discussion is directed at informing you how to perform your theoretical framework component task: e..g. to evaluate the innovation capability status of ABC Ltd' to evaluate the managerial leadership competence status of XYZ Ltd.

(b) as your literature review study note on a specific theoretical framework component also covers concept definitions, research interests and gaps, and analytical concepts and techniques, you should find it very useful to write up your literature review chapter. If not, you need to do additional literature review to enhance the content of your study note.

(c) your discussion on a particular component is likely to touch on how your ideas about your theoretical framework component contributes to the discussion of the related components in other parts of your theoretical framework.

(d) Length of your discussion depends on whether the component is a core-focus one or not: the length of your writing for a core-focus component should be much longer than that of a non-core-focus one.

The 2 initial diagram templates in the agile literature review approach

The 2 initial diagram templates in the agile literature review approach

Template 1: The management-concerns diagram template

** use layman language to label the components



Template 2: The theoretical framework level-0 template

** use academic topics and terms to label the components

Literature search in the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA)

Literature search in the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA)

E.g.: your theoretical framework level 0 includes two components, among others:

Component 3: To evaluate the supply chain capability of ABC Ltd.

Component 5: To evaluate how the organizational capability of ABC Ltd, including its supply chain capability, affects its business performance.

Now, when doing literature search for component 3, to begin with, your key words should be “supply chain management competence” and “supply chain management capability”. You then try to gather more specific academic ideas useful for conducting investigation on component 3.

For component 5, your main key word should be “supply chain management performance” and “supply chain performance”.

In short, although both components 3 and 5 are related to supply chain management and the two components are related in that component 3 affects component 5, the literature search tasks on them are different – they are interested in different academic ideas and the key words to use for literature search are different.

Literature search for concrete academic ideas in the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA)

Literature search for concrete academic ideas in the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA)

E.g.: your theoretical framework level 0 includes the following component, among others:

Component 3: To evaluate the innovation capability of ABC Ltd.

When doing literature search, an obvious key word is “innovation capability”. Now when you formulate a research task based on some captured content of an academic article, you need to make use of a concrete academic idea that has clear actionable value in designing a research method to use in your project. Thus, the following research task is not satisfactory as being too broad with the academic idea used, i.e., “resource-based view”:

Research Task: To evaluate the innovation capability of ABC Ltd in terms of the resource-based view by conducting semi-structured interview with a few senior managers of ABC Ltd.

The following one is more useful as it adopts a more concrete academic idea, i.e., “employee-driven innovation”, from a particular academic article:

"Development methods for innovation capability Handbook of Innovation In employee-driven innovation, the employees contribute actively and systematically to the innovation process (Kallio, 2012). Innovations can emerge from any part of the organization and any employee group (Kesting & Ulhoi, 2010). A typical hindrance to employees’ innovativeness is that individual employees do not see it as part of their job. Feeling responsible for generating ideas increases the activity compared with ‘it is someone else’s job’ (Axtell et al., 2000; Kallio, 2012)..."; [Juhani Ukko, Minna Saunila, Satu Parjanen, Tero Rantala, Juho Salminen, Sanna Pekkola & Martti Mäkimattila (2016) Effectiveness of innovation capability development methods, Innovation, 18:4, 513-535, DOI: 10.1080/14479338.2016.1233824.]

Research task: To evaluate the usage, including its perceived usefulness, of employee-driven innovation activities to strengthen innovation capability of ABC Ltd. by means of semi-structured interviews with a few chosen middle managers.

Examples of components in theoretical framework level-0 (ALRA)

Examples of Environmental driver components, organizational capability components and outcomes/solutions components in theoretical framework level-0 (ALRA)

I. Environmental driver components: to evaluate the intensity of competition facing ABC Ltd; to evaluate contemporary consumer product preferences as related to the business of ABC Ltd.

II. Organizational capability components: to evaluate the managerial leadership quality of ABC Ltd.; to evaluate the innovation capability of ABC Ltd.

III. Outcomes/solutions components: to evaluate how the existing supply chain capability of ABC Ltd affects its business performance; to evaluate the effectiveness of solutions, both existing and potential, for addressing ABC Ltd’s major management concerns (re: the management-concerns diagram)