How well have you written your literature review?
In my experience, most students write their literature reviews by focussing on who (i.e. the authors of each reference) says what. Each paragraph starts with authors’ names. Writing this way is not ideal as the focus is on the authors, rather than on what they’re saying. According to Bloom’s (2001) Taxonomy of conceptual levels, students who write this way are merely describing and reporting what they have read, with no analysis or synthesis.
The following paragraph provides an example of writing that focuses on what the authors say. The context is the benefits and challenges of a 4-day working week:
Author 1 presents findings that showed that employees who work a 4-day week felt that the organisation cared about their well-being. According to Author 1, employees were more focused on their work. Author 2 makes a similar observation. Author 3 concurs as they found that employees working a 4-day week arranged fewer and shorter meetings so that they could finish their work in a shorter time. Author 4 posits that workers will be fatigued and unable to keep up the pace required to finish their work in the reduced hours. Furthermore, Author 5 found tensions between employees in knowledge-based roles who are paid monthly and those in service-based roles who are paid hourly. Similarly, Author 6 suggests that differently paid employees who work in teams will be difficult to manage in a 4-day week.
Notice how the focus in this paragraph (above) is on the authors.
Now have a look at how the same material is grouped and written below, with the focus on analysing and comparing what the authors are saying (with references). Here the emphasis is on benefits, followed by challenges. Benefits are synthesised or grouped together, as are challenges. According to Bloom’s (2001) Taxonomy, students who write this way are writing at a higher conceptual level as they successfully draw conclusions by organising, comparing and contrasting ideas.
The research literature provides evidence of both benefits and challenges associated with a 4-day work week. Benefits include employees’ perceiving their organisations as caring for their well-being, and consciously adopting a more focussed, efficient approach to completing their work in fewer hours (Author 1; Author 2; Author 3). However, greater efficiency may produce challenges for employees who cannot keep up the pace required in a 4-day week, resulting in employee fatigue and burnout (Author 4). A further challenge may arise from conflict between employees in knowledge-based roles who are paid monthly, versus service-based employees who are paid hourly and cannot benefit from a reduced week (Author 5). Furthermore, managing teams of employees with different pay structures may provide an additional challenge (Author 6).
This simple strategy of organising and comparing what is being said (with references), rather than focusing on the authors and merely describing what they’ve said, raises the conceptual level of your writing.
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