Systematicity in Organizational Research Literature Reviews: A Framework and Assessment

Abstract

In this study, we first develop a framework that presents systematicity as an encompassing orientation toward the application of explicit methods in the practice of literature reviews, informed by the principles of transparency, coverage, saturation, connectedness, universalism, and coherence. We then supplement that conceptual development with empirical insights into the reported practices of systematicity in a sample of 165 published reviews across three journals in organizational research. We finally trace implications for the future conduct of literature reviews, including the potential perils of systematicity without mindfulness.

Governance and Design of Digital Platforms: A Review and Future Research Directions on a Meta-Organization

“…After an agreement to ensure the focus on digital platforms' governance and design, we created a coding scheme (Simsek, Fox, & Heavey, 2021) and performed the second, third, and fourth steps to manually screen each paper for relevance. In the second step, to ensure that the identified articles focus on digital platforms instead of general platforms (e.g., McIntyre & Srinivasan, 2017), the authors independently reviewed the abstract and full text of each paper and held regular meetings to exclude those papers that either focus on nondigital platforms (e.g., traditional media, product platforms, supply chain platforms, etc.)…”

Advancing literature review methodology through rigour, generativity, scope and transparency

“…As the reviewer reads, interprets and synthesises the literature, they identify new theoretical insights (Elsbach & van Knippenberg, 2020; Post et al., 2020), through a creative process. Opportunities for creative insight will vary depending on the type of research question guiding the review, whether these be exploratory, descriptive, evaluative, integrative or explanatory (Simsek et al., 2021). Equally, the different review approaches noted above will lend themselves in different ways to theory development.…”

“…Clearly, creative leaps need to be grounded in a solid, critical and thorough review of the literature, and it is here that generativity intersects with rigour. Without rigour, reviews are harder pressed to achieve generativity – by, for example, failing to juxtapose emerging perspectives, analyse assumptions, clarify constructs, establish boundary conditions and identify salient governing mechanisms (Simsek et al., 2021). Equally, rigour without the mindfulness of generativity may overly regulate the interpretation and presentation of the literature (Simsek et al., 2021).…”

“…Without rigour, reviews are harder pressed to achieve generativity – by, for example, failing to juxtapose emerging perspectives, analyse assumptions, clarify constructs, establish boundary conditions and identify salient governing mechanisms (Simsek et al., 2021). Equally, rigour without the mindfulness of generativity may overly regulate the interpretation and presentation of the literature (Simsek et al., 2021). In this sense, generativity and rigour might be seen as a dialectic in literature review methodology (Farjoun, 2010).…”

“…However, in a recent assessment of literature reviews published in JOM, AMA and IJMR, Simsek et al (2021) found that reviews, on average, report less than half of the systematic practice items they tracked in their study. Those literature reviews that did report more rigourous practices and, as a result, were more transparent showed elevated levels of research impact (Simsek et al, 2021). This research points to the link between transparency and the robustness and credibility of the review produced.…”