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.