Search results

The purpose of this paper is to present a method for a structured literature review (SLR). An SLR is a method for examining a corpus of scholarly literature, to develop insights, critical reflections, future research paths and research questions. SLRs are common in scientific disciplines dominated by quantitative approaches, but they can be adapted in accounting studies since quantitative and qualitative approaches are commonly accepted.

A literature review, as a piece of academic writing, must have a logical, planned structure. The authors also argue it requires tests based on qualitative and quantitative methods. Therefore, the authors describe ten steps for developing an SLR.

The SLR method is a way that scholars can stand “on the shoulders of giants” and provide insightful and impactful research that is different to the traditional authorship approaches to literature reviews.

Traditional literature reviews can have varied results because of a lack of rigour. SLRs use a process that, through a set of rules, potentially offers less bias and more transparency of the execution and measures and techniques of validation and reliability.

SLRs provide an approach that can help academics to discover under-investigated topics and methods, nurturing, therefore, the development of new knowledge areas and research approaches.

The paper presents accounting researchers with an opportunity to develop insightful and publishable studies, and also serves as a basis for developing future research agendas in the accounting field. The authors advocate the SLR method especially to higher degree research students and emerging scholars as a way of potentially developing robust and defensible research agendas and questions.

A literature review or review article is an integral part of a scientific body of research which synthesizes prior knowledge and provides a holistic overview of a subject domain. While several studies emphasize the significance of literature reviews and include the guidelines for conducting a review, limited studies demonstrated different types of literature review methodologies in a comprehensive way. Accordingly, this chapter presents various types of review methodologies which includes narrative, descriptive, systematic, meta-analysis, hybrid, umbrella, scoping, theoretical, and critical reviews. In addition, the authors' skills including logical reasoning, content analysis, literature mapping, critical writing, and ethical consideration are presented. Further, quality aspects of the literature review are discussed such as the rigor and relevance of the selected studies. Overall, this chapter provides implications for researchers in understanding types of literature review methodologies along with their objectives, strengths, and weaknesses which can assist them in selecting a suitable methodology while conducting a review.

This study aims to conduct a critical review of the research on the sharing economy to identify its key intellectual foundations and their evolution and offers thematic and methodological recommendations for future research to advance the domain.

A tri-method approach using bibliometric (co-citation) analysis, thematic content analysis and a quantitative systematic literature review was conducted on sharing economy research in hospitality and tourism journals, up to and including May 2020.

The findings from the three methods were coherent and provide a clear picture of the fact that while research on the sharing economy in hospitality and tourism has achieved significant depth, the breadth of the understanding of this area remains somewhat limited. Each of the three periods of research on the sharing economy identified in the study were marked by a focus on specific thematic areas, with largely Western-situated researchers demonstrating limited theoretical engagement and using a limited range of methods and perspectives (disciplinary, stakeholders and sectors) to examine these themes.

Recommendations for future thematic research opportunities are provided using a multi-level perspective. The present review does not include research that incorporates the impacts of COVID-19, which has significantly disrupted the hospitality and tourism industry and is the focus of current research in the field. However, the review represents the largest and most comprehensive assessment of the state of research on the sharing economy prior to COVID-19, and, as such, can serve as a valuable baseline for future reviews of sharing economy research during and after the pandemic.

In contrast with previous literature reviews, the present review is comprehensive in its scope, methodology and temporal coverage of sharing economy research. It also examines the evolution of research on the topic, enabling a more nuanced identification of gaps and future thematic and methodological research opportunities.

The present study aims to synthesize and conceptualize, through a systematic literature review (SLR), the current state of gamification knowledge in the tourism and hospitality (T&H) sector, providing a roadmap for future research recommendations for service research and practice.

The research is based on a systematic literature review and adopts a systematic quantitative approach to summarize existing evidence on gamification usage in the T&H sector, focusing on relevant service literature on gamification. The authors analyze 36 papers published between 2011 and 2019.

The authors synthesize existing knowledge into five themes describing gamification's role in T&H (Edutainment, Sustainable behavior, Engagement factors, Service provider-generated content and User-generated reviews). Then, a cross-analysis of the five themes reveals the pivotal elements (affordances, behavioral and psychological outcomes, and benefits) generated by gamification mechanics in T&H, simultaneously highlighting potential implications and relevant insights for service literature. The review identifies critical issues affecting gamification research and provides a future research agenda, considering opportunities for T&H and service research.

The study provides the first SLR investigating gamification in T&H. The findings present potential implications and relevant insights for T&H contributing to the construction of a more holistic understanding of gamification adoption in service research.

One of the major challenges for any project is to prepare and develop an achievable baseline schedule and thus set the project up for success, rather than failure. The purpose of this paper is to explore and investigate research outputs in one of the major causes, optimism bias, to identify problems with developing baseline schedules and analyse mitigation techniques and their effectiveness recommended by research to minimise the impact of this bias.

A systematic quantitative literature review was followed, examining Project Management Journals, documenting the mitigation approaches recommended and then reviewing whether these approaches were validated by research.

Optimism bias proved to be widely accepted as a major cause of unrealistic scheduling for projects, and there is a common understanding as to what it is and the effects that it has on original baseline schedules. Based upon this review, the most recommended mitigation method is Flyvbjerg’s “Reference class,” which has been developed based upon Kahneman’s “Outside View”. Both of these mitigation techniques are based upon using an independent third party to review the estimate. However, within the papers reviewed, apart from the engineering projects, there has been no experimental and statistically validated research into the effectiveness of this method. The majority of authors who have published on this topic are based in Europe.

The short-listed papers for this review referred mainly to non-engineering projects which included information technology focussed ones. Thus, on one hand, empirical research is needed for engineering projects, while on the other hand, the lack of tangible evidence for the effectiveness of methods related to the alleviation of optimism bias issues calls for greater research into the effectiveness of mitigation techniques for not only engineering projects, but for all projects.

This paper documents the growth within the project management research literature over time on the topic of optimism bias. Specifically, it documents the various methods recommended to mitigate the phenomenon and highlights quantitatively the research undertaken on the subject. Moreover, it introduces paths for further research.

The phenomenon of intellectual capital in the firm has been deeply researched and immensely debated in the management literature in recent years. After three decades of evolution, it has become established as a mature field of research. At this point, a review of its theoretical foundations and current and future evolution provides us with the state of the art of intellectual capital in the firm. The purpose of this paper is to present a quantitative review of the existing literature on intellectual capital in the firm.

In this paper, the authors present a quantitative review of the existing literature on intellectual capital in the firm. To do so, the authors searched the JCR-SSCI database from 1990 to 2016 and identified 553 citing documents; these were split into three main periods in order to identify the interactions and path dependencies existing between different foundations of research. In addition, areas of current and future research connected with the theoretical foundations were identified. For these purposes, the authors used both co-citation analyses as well as bibliographical coupling.

In this paper, three main stages of IC evolution have been identified with the main topics and research frames, as well as their path dependencies. Additionally, four main areas of current and future development of IC have been identified: IC measurement, IC in new business models, IC disclosure, and its role in social capital and human resource practices.

The present bibliometric study is a quantitative review of papers published in the Web of Science database.

By its dimensions ‒ broad academic disciplines and longitudinal character ‒ this bibliometric study constitutes a new quantitative review of the IC discipline, both drawing its intellectual evolution in the last decades, and showing current and future research trends in IC and the firm.

A literature review within the manufacturing strategy (MS) discipline with a focus on thematic developments is provided. Based on recent studies, a set of challenges posed to manufacturing enterprise of the future are summarized, and thematic areas are analyzed in relation to meeting those challenges. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Based on a select set of 506 articles published in top-ranked refereed international journals in the discipline of operations management, major and subthemes are identified and the publication trends in these themes are provided with time and across geographical regions, namely: North America, Europe, and other parts of the world.

MS literature is predominantly focussed on the economic objectives of firms without a due focus on the social and environmental perspectives. MS literature covers 11 major thematic areas, namely: MS components and paradigms, manufacturing capabilities (MCs), strategic choices (SCs), best practices (BPs), the strategy process (SP), supply-chain management (SCM), performance measurement, transnational comparisons, global manufacturing, environmental/green manufacturing, and literature reviews. The research in two areas – SCs, and MCs – has been in decline, while the research in BPs, the SP, and transnational comparisons is growing (in absolute figures). Various research opportunities for future studies are identified.

The literature review is limited in its selection of articles and journals, however, the identified trends clarify the state of research by the MS research community at large.

For researchers, multiple new research directions are identified in order to advance knowledge in the field of MS. The publication trends also highlight thematic areas where most of the MS body of knowledge is currently available and can be utilized by practitioners.

The paper’s novelty comes from: first, a broader and deeper review of thematic areas that has not been researched before, second, trends in thematic areas by time, across geographical regions, and including time-region dyads, and third, coverage provided by MS literature in meeting challenges posed to manufacturing enterprise of the future.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the state of academic research on innovation in tourism. The authors present a systematic review of the literature, different research approaches and perspectives on tourism innovation; offer a synthesis of our findings and provide a discussion and proposals for future research.

Existing studies on innovation in hospitality and tourism (included in the Web of Knowledge database) were reviewed, and their limitations were identified. A procedure used in previous studies (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010; Tranfield et al., 2003; Becheikh et al., 2006) was applied. Moreover, aiming to reveal theoretical foundations of tourism innovation research and identify their structure, a bibliometric analysis was performed.

This paper identifies 152 published papers that represent the major efforts in expanding the body of research on innovation in hospitality and tourism. The importance of innovation for business and regional competitiveness and success has been recognised by both researchers and practitioners. In the papers included in the sample of this paper, the authors identified a general consensus that much remains to be done in the development of the theory of innovation in tourism. Through bibliometric analysis, nine co-citation networks, or clusters, were retrieved by applying co-citation relations among the most cited authors. The examination of these nine clusters revealed some dominant themes that characterise the field.

The authors used three databases: Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. While these databases may not include all relevant research, the authors, nonetheless, believe that by using a rigorous procedure in reviewing the literature systematically, they were able to reduce the probability of neglecting any information that would critically change the content of the present paper.

The aim of this paper was to bring together the prior research with presently existing models that may be used in further research. For the continuation of the research, the authors propose additional studies with the aim of theory development. By introducing new theoretical ideas and theoretical models, more qualitative and inductive research would help to stimulate further work. As stated above, researchers could go further by undertaking quantitative methods to empirically verify the theoretically proposed models.

Since the last review (Hjalager, 2010) of past studies in tourism innovation, mostly focusing on studies up to 2009, tourism innovation research has grown noticeably in terms of diverse topics. In this paper’s database, the year with the most publications was 2012 with 48 papers, followed by 2014 with 42 (by 19 September), 2010 and 2011 with 41 and 2009 with 29. To the authors’ knowledge, no updated reviews focusing on innovation in tourism have been published recently. This study, consisting of a systematic review of academic literature, includes analyses of the international context, the methodology used, the points of view, the level of analysis (micro-level, macro-level and general level) and the type of innovation discussed in the paper. Moreover, the authors did not find any studies that used bibliometric analysis to identify the structure of the theoretical foundation of research in the area of innovation in tourism.

The purpose of this article is to systematically review extant research on the corporate governance (CG) of microfinance institutions (MFIs) from a global perspective. In the process, it discusses scholarly contributions and highlights key issues from the findings of past studies on several governance attributes, in particular, their interconnections and influence on different institutional outcomes of the sector.

Although academic work on microfinance governance is substantial, prior studies lack a comprehensive approach to reviewing the literature on this topic. We adopted a systematic method to review past studies on microfinance CG by applying particular inclusion and exclusion criteria. In this regard, the study developed specific questions and sought to find their answers from the existing literature.

The findings from our research indicate that microfinance governance-performance relationship is the central focus of the majority of our reviewed papers, although a few attempts have been made to explain the interconnection between CG mechanisms at the firm and institutional level. Our findings also show that existing studies have used a variety of techniques to measure MFI performance vis-à-vis their hybrid mission, such as profitability and outreach. Moreover, the study found that common topics discussed in the mainstream literature include board structure, CEO characteristics, audit quality, external governance, disclosure and MFI ownership type.

This review has some limitations that warrant further research. First, we considered only peer-reviewed scientific publications for our systematic review. Second, we omitted non-English journal papers from our sample. In light of these limitations, we provide some future research directions that may shed further light on our current inquiry.

This paper evaluates past relevant studies using a systematic approach (in preference to the commonly used narrative approach) for a span of over eighteen years; thereby contributing significantly to the sectoral governance literature. This study is novel in that it offers new incentives and opportunities for further research in order to meet the shortcomings of reviewed papers from various theoretical, empirical, methodological and geographical standpoints.

This study aims to review relevant studies concerning consumer purchase of halal-certified products. A total of 35 studies related to the consumer purchasing behavior of halal-certified products in top-tier journals have been identified according to the recommended systematic literature review methodology.

A systematic literature review approach was implemented to examine, summarize and finally interpret the relevant research stream pertaining to consumer purchase of halal-certified products.

There are five research streams extracted from this systematic review, halal study context, theories adapted, covariance-based-structural equation modeling (SEM) vs partial least square-SEM, Muslim vs nonMuslim consumer and role of religiosity. Despite the growing interest in the quantitative approach in consumer purchase behavior in halal-certified products, scholars in halal consumer studies must have a greater extent of work. These include incorporating diverse theories in the framework, an advanced SEM approach, and relevant determinants to capture consumer purchasing of halal-certified products in the highly anticipated and profitable Muslim market.

Findings would help researchers in halal studies to consider and contemplate critical issues, according to the research stream presented in this review.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first review of quantitative studies on consumer purchases of halal-certified products.