Description:
Student will be allocated a specified journal article to review.
Essay question!!
1) A synthesis of the main arguments in the paper into an easily digestible form, without copying text within the paper explaining the main theoretical contribution.
Here you are identifying the ‘discourse’ this paper speaks to. Somewhere in the paper will be at least a cursory acknowledgment of where this paper is supposed to contribute to. You are summarising the key arguments the piece makes (through paraphrasing, reflection and analysis) NOT copying these out of the text. Does it try and move a particular concept forward (e.g. a theory like resource based view or another theory)? Does it try to build a new model of something? Or to adapt an existing theory? What are the specific theoretical domains (topics/broad subject areas) that this article ‘speaks’ to? Where are the author(s) positioning this paper within particular theoretical or conceptual ‘conversations?’
2) A discussion how the author(s) of the paper ensured that they developed a rigorous framework for identifying and analysing the literature they used in the paper.
The author(s) decided on the literature they reviewed somehow! How did they decide this? Look at the theory on doing systematic literature reviews and notes in the text book. Did they have a specific mechanism by which they found the articles they used? Or not – for instance the approach they used might be criticised for not being comprehensive. How might you criticise what they have done to find the literature they based their review on? Did they present a synthesis of the literature or somehow analyse it (for instance- building a map of the literature or analysing the key themes covered by prior work and identifying the gaps)
3) A consideration of how this paper has been used in subsequent empirical studies by checking the citations within Google Scholar for the assigned article. Students should also evaluate how this original research has been used in a selection of these cited studies.
You are NOT analysing the citations used by your original assigned article.
You can see from Google scholar who has used your allocated article. You are looking at your allocated article and how it has been SUBSEQUENTLY used. Who has used the article you have been assigned and HOW and to what EXTENT. Some articles have over 600 citations. This immediately tells you something about how influential this original article has been! You can’t obviously review all 600+ so you select some.
You could describe how it has been cited for example the total number and distribution. You could select some (say a sample of 10) and describe in a few lines (or in a analytical table) how it was used (context). But ultimately how to describe then is a decision for you but whatever way you describe it should be justified. You can also discuss limitations of how it has been used.