Understanding acceptance of information system development and management methodologies by actual users: A review and assessment of existing literature

On being ‘Systematic’ in Literature Reviews in IS

“…SLRs thus do not aim to provide what traditional literature reviews do: an assessment of a state of knowledge in a problem domain and identification of weaknesses and needs for further research (Finfgeld-Connett and Johnson, 2013;Hart, 1998). However, in IS, SLRs are often portrayed as an alternative general approach to literature review (e.g., Schabram, 2009, 2010;Mohan and Ahlemann, 2011). To understand both the SLR approach and how it differs from traditional 'narrative' approaches, we examine the aims and underlying assumptions of both.…”

“…Large document sets that are typically retrieved pose a new problem: they need to be assessed for relevance. For instance, Mohan and Ahlemann (2011) report that their search in eight databases retrieved 22,291 documents, however, after spending 74 h examining them (based on titles and abstracts) only 58 were selected and eventually only 17 were considered for inclusion in the literature review.…”

“…This claim is justified by the transparency of the review process: search strategies are fully disclosed; the steps subsequently taken to narrow down the literature set are described (e.g., inclusion/exclusion criteria, analysis of titles and abstracts); and the final summation of results is detailed. This is most notable in the tables containing the numbers of documents obtained from different databases, and the visualization of the different steps of the review accompanied by the number of documents making it through each phase (e.g., Mohan and Ahlemann, 2011). However, as Oancea and Pring (2008) observe, in this context, transparency is treated as a purely technical matter.…”

“…Figure 1 illustrates a notable increase in the reference to SLRs within the IS discipline. These SLRs use a rhetoric of scientific principles, elimination of researcher's interpretation and judgment as a source of bias, and the necessity for transparency (e.g., Dwivedi et al, 2008;Mohan and Ahlemann, 2011). By adopting the SLR protocol, they make claims to objectivity, replicability and rigor without providing further explanation of or justification for these claims (e.g., Roztocki and Weistroffer, 2008;Wolfswinkel et al, 2010;Mohan and Ahlemann, 2011;Grahlmann et al, 2012).…”

“…These SLRs use a rhetoric of scientific principles, elimination of researcher's interpretation and judgment as a source of bias, and the necessity for transparency (e.g., Dwivedi et al, 2008;Mohan and Ahlemann, 2011). By adopting the SLR protocol, they make claims to objectivity, replicability and rigor without providing further explanation of or justification for these claims (e.g., Roztocki and Weistroffer, 2008;Wolfswinkel et al, 2010;Mohan and Ahlemann, 2011;Grahlmann et al, 2012). Furthermore, some assert that SLR allows an analysis of 'the current state of play' through a 'comprehensive review' (Williams et al, 2009), and that SLR leads to 'sound' reviews for IS (Cheung and Thadani, 2010).…”