Snowballing literature review - an example

In preliminary literature review, very often, we start with an identified management concept, e.g., "staff turnover". (See also the ebook on mind mapping-based literature review). When we  type the word "staff turnover" in google scholar, the search result also points to other closely associated management concepts, e.g. "job stress" and "job burnout', see following exhibit.

In this case, the literature review snowballs into other directions to cover those closely associated management concepts. For this reason, the literature search solely via Google scholar, as stimulated by the snowballing literature review, should still be able to gather a sizable number of articles, e.g. around 25 articles, for literature review. This is not to deny that university e-libraries is a vital and powerful facility for literature search.

An illustrative diagram of the snowballing literature review process: