Assignment:
A literature review to be doe from previous researches for 30 literature review for the topic (The effect of HR practices in supply chain performance) and following guidance to be followed:
Following points must be taken into consideration while conducting the literature review.
1. Literature Search: Focus on the literature that is recent and relevant to your area/topic/theme of the graduation project. By being recent, I mean the research paper should preferably be not older than ten years (better if these are published 2008 onwards). It doesn't matter which country or industry there in the context of as long as the theme is same/similar.
2. Sample Size and its determination: While you go through a particular research paper/dissertation/project/report (any kind of literature) and the work is empirical (data based) in nature, try to find out how much sample size the researchers have taken for it. Once you have this figure, try to know as to how they reached this figure. For example, the sample size in a particular study is reported as 150. It is ok.
You note it down. But then you should read this research paper again to find how the researcher determined that this 150 sample size will be appropriate? Why did not he take 180 or 120? If no information is available on it, just highlight somewhere that authors didn't mention the sample size determination method.
3. Sampling Method: While reading an empirical research paper, you must also try to find which sampling method the researchers have used in their study? For example; convenience/judgmental/snowball/quota sampling or simple random sampling/stratified sampling/cluster sampling etc.
4. Sampling Elements: Knowing about the respondents is your another task while reviewing any other's work. Here, you will be sure about whether the respondents were for example students, teachers, non-teaching staff, managerial staff of the companies, top management etc.
5. Data Collection Method: You must also try to locate the method using which the researchers have collected the information. Was it a (un)structured questionnaire/schedule/personal interview/observation?
6. Pilot Survey: Pilot survey is the survey over a small sample ranging from 10-50 respondents in general the aim of which is to improve the questionnaire for the final survey. Depending upon the nature of work, the sample size for this pilot survey may vary. Try to check whether the researcher(s) conducted a pilot survey before carrying out a large scale survey? If yes, what was the sample size for this, if no, then no problem, just report it.
7. Objectives of the study: Read and Re-read the objectives. It may be different as the objectives you understand at the first glance. Report these objectives in the summary of your review.
8. Tools used for data analysis: Just find these tools. These may be like descriptive, t-test, anova, correlation etc. for all the empirical (questionnaire/data based) research papers.
9. Major findings: check the major findings in relation to the objectives of the study and in relation to the findings of previous similar studies. Report these findings.
10. Enhance the number of research papers for review: While you find a particular research paper more important than some other research papers, just do one thing. Go to the end of this research paper and quickly scan its reference list. It is possible that you may find the references of additional better research papers. In that case, you copy those titles from references and start searching for their full text versions. It will enrich your literature review section further. Let me make it clear to you that a good graduation project requires approximately 30-35 recent and relevant research papers to be reviewed and reported. The larger is the number of research papers, the stronger is the literature review and the graduation project.
These are the preliminary steps which you need to keep in mind while reviewing the literature. In addition to this, let me tell you one more thing. The research papers that are not data-driven (not based on any data analysis) may also be important for you. So, don't out-rightly ignore such research paper particularly if these are related to your topic of graduation project and recent also.