Chapter 2: Developing research topic and literature review
Content
- Developing research topic
- Literature review
Discussion
- Research theme vs. research topic
+ Major-Theme-Topic
+ Technology – AI – AI on shoppe payment
- Managerial issues vs. research issues
+ research issues: provide information for managers to make decision
+ Managerial issues: conclusions
Example
1. Developing research topic
1.1. Sources of research topic
- From practical or theoretical perspectives
+ Eg: Waste (practical issues); Theoretical problem/ theoretical perspectives: How to define waste in of
public management, for example corruption is a kind of waste.
- From researchers' knowledge of phenomena/problems
- From suggestion of researchers/instructors
- From your advisor's orientation/suggestion and your choice
- For students, three important sources:
Lecturers assign a topic
Students choose a topic in a provided list
Students independently propose a research topic and get approvals
1.2. Characteristics of research topic:
a. Relevance
- Meeting research standards and requirements
- Matching with research competency and resources
+ Choose research is suitable with your ability and competency
- Having theories as foundation
- Matching with research context
- Matching to your career development goals
b. Competence
- Interesting
- Can make specific research objectives and questions
- Can access research resources (data…)
- Can help develop research skills
- Can potentially provide new knowledge
Summary: A simple formular
- A good research topic = Content+ analytical unit/context+ scope
Ex: Government quality and provincial economic growth in Vietnam.
+ Poverty reduction (content) of DienBien Dong district (analytical unit), DienBien province
DienBien Dong, DienBien province (scope)
+ Enhancing firm competitiveness of ThienDuong company
+ Impacts of education on labor participation (content) of individuals (analytical unit) in Vietnam
(scope)
- Characteristics of a good research topic
+ General objective
+ Specific objectives/question
Eg: What is government quality and how we measure?
How government quality affect economic index
Choose a research topic that have following factors:
Want to increase revenue
+ Identify Material issues: How to increase
revenue
+ Managerial questions: Whether we should
increase sales
+ Research questions: Does sales encourage
consumers to buy more
2. Literature review
Example: C, E, M, O, O, S, I, N
Find 01 character to have meaning words
Literature review
ECONOMISM => Literature review
=> M: research gap => need to find out
Literature review is like forming a meaningful word:
+ So, you arrange the “character” in an order to form a “meaningful word”
+ Also like you play a puzzle
Remember, do not “List” the previous research!
2.1. How literature review can help you in research?
- Help uncover research gaps (something that hasn't been studied);
- Help propose research topic (from the shortcomings of previous research); => Đọc phần limitations
phần tác giả chưa giải quyết được và recommendation for research => to form idea.
- Help avoid monotonous repetition of studies;
- Help to formulate and refine research objectives and questions;
- Enhance the meaning for the selection of research topics;
- Help learn about research design for your research.
- Help develop the research framework;
- Discover the methods to solve the research question used in previous studies
=> The third last helps to design research
2.2. Common content to review research
- What is known in the research topic => What you have so far? => identifying a gap in the available
literature
- What concepts and theories have been applied?
- What research methods are used? => what kinds of data, research method are used..
- There are arguments/disagreements in the research issue => identifying your chosen methodology and
justify why this methodology is relevant
- What evidence is there in the research problem?
- Who are the main contributors in that field of research?
- Any further research suggestions related to the issue….
2.3. Procedures of literature review
Step 1: Determine the needed information
+ Based on research objectives, concepts, theories, etc. What, who? where? When? How?....
Step 2: Locate the sources of documents
+ Primary or secondary sources
Step 3: Conduct a document search
+ Online and offline: pay attention to online search features….
Step 4: Read, comment, and evaluate documents
+ Quick review (title, origin, author, summary); => focus on each title, origin of that paper, ranking
Endnote:
- Citation
- Reference
- Literature review
+ Overall assessment (reliability, suitability), document storage
Step 5: Synthesize and analyze documents
+ Terms, concepts, measures, theoretical arguments, methods, results, proposals, etc. related to
research
2.3. Procedures of literature review
2.4. Where to find relevant documents
- Magazine and newspapers
+ BusinessWeek, Forbes, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal…
- Peer-reviewed journals
+ American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of
Economic Literature, Journal of Management, Economic Business Review, Journal of Economics and
Development,…
- Databases
+ Web of science, ScienceDirect, Proquest, JSTOR, Google scholar…
- DO NOT review documents from unreliable sources (Wikipedia, thesis,…), unclear sources (eg:
www.wnexpress.vn)
Citation from
+ a website
+ Published books (evaluate reputation of books)
2.5. Write a literature review report
- Possible structures for a literature review
◦Chronological order (happen over time): relevant for a particular topic has changed over time => from
the past to now (nghiên cứu trên trật tự thời gian)
◦Schools of thought: relevant for a topic is controversial and there are clearly defined schools of thought
(Phân loại thành các nhóm), thiên hơn về lý thuyết
◦Thematic logic: relevant for several aspects or ‘themes’ relevant to the topic
Đề: Government quality and economic growth
Thematic logic : EQ => GQ => Relationship EQ & EG
- Key elements of a good literature review
+ critical, comprehensive (covers all content needed) and scholarly (hàn lâm, học thuật)
- Magazine and newspapers
2.6. Misunderstanding about research review (try to avoid)
+ Literature review is an independent section of a research report/article
- So, you can say whatever you find in the literature review
+ Literature review is to list out all the previous related research and results
- So, you cannot compare, synthesize or criticize=> difficult to find the knowledge gap
- There can be “millions” of research related to the issue => readers cannot read them all
+ There is no criticism
+ Quality of literature review is about the number of the reviewed research
- What more important is what you get from the literature review, what’s your research’s
contribution
Khi viết literature review cần tránh Sử dụng nguồn tài liệu không đáng tin + liệt kê
