How to write Literature Review in Mba Project
In majority of cases this is a common road block for the students where they face hardship to create the Literature Review for the project. In the final year of MBA studies, students have to complete and submit a Research Paper based on the Subject they are studying. In MBA program, the subject “Research Methodology” is taught normally in the 2nd or 3rd semester of the MBA programme. While the students have to do a MBA project in the 4th semester where they have to actually submit a MBA Project Report or Dissertation or Capstone project.
Struggling with Literature Review
Final semester students in their MBA Project often struggle with the Literature Review section. The main difficulties arises as it requires academic and analytical writing skills which is totally different from their regular business studies. The reasons for the hurdles are:
Lack of Conceptual Clarity
Students in this case faces the hurdles as in many situations they are unable to understand the meaning of Literature Review. Majority of the students think its as collection of summaries or articles. They in majority cases don’t understand that it is a critical evaluation of the existing knowledges. Students in most cases think Literature Review as collecting of “Review Literature or Articles”. What they miss out is to connect their own research with the existing available work.
1. Difficulties in finding quality sources
Students while collecting the existing data often depend on the Google search rather than searching in academic resources such as Google Scholars, Research Gate, JSTOR or Scopus. This creates weak resources in their work in fact they even don’t know to use Boolean operators or citations.
2. Poor Academic Writing Skill
Most of the students while working on their projects focuses of the report or the case studies rather than focussing on the academic writing. This leads to poor paraphrasing with descriptive writing rather than analytical.
3. Linking Literature Review to Objectives
The major mistake the students make is failure to link their Literature Review to their Research Objective, Research Questions and Hypothesis. This ultimately leads to failure to the project framework.
4. Plagiarism and Citations
Another hurdles students’ faces are understanding the formats of citations. Students in some cases copy past others contents which leads to plagiarism issues.
5. Time Issue
Finally, a student also faces a time issue as the project work is done in the final semester. For students’ competition of the project work is like a formality.
Literature Review Meaning
A literature review is a critical analytical and systemic evaluation of the existing research, studies and theories of similar topics or research objectives. Literature review helps to understands the existing studies while finding the gaps of the research works and integrating how his study will fit in the existing research available.
Key Elements of a Good Literature Review
- Researching and identifying the existing Research work.
- Evaluating and assessing their strength, weakness and gap in those studies.
- Organizing the literature by their ideas and concepts.
- Linking the current study research with the existing research work.
- Providing a conceptual framework for the research.
How to write a literature Review
Understanding the Topic: Even before starting to write a student should be having a full clarity about the research title, the objective of the study and the research problems.
Searching for Relevant Literature: Students should search the academic libraries like Google Scholars, Research Gate, JSTOR or Scopus.
Evaluating Sources: Once relevant sources are collected students should analyze, evaluate the objective, findings and limitation of those studies.
Grouping of Literature: Collected literature should be grouped as per the subheading of the required studies.
Write Critically: Literature review should be written critically and analytically relevant to the study .
Identify the Research Gap: Students should analyze and find the research gap and specify where his study will add value to those gaps.
Cite & Reference: Students should use formats like APA (7th edition) or Havard Referencing style while using in text citing.
Literature Review Format
A typical Literature Review in an MBA project should be like
- Introduction: Showing the purpose and the scope of the review.
- Thematic Discussion: Analysis of grouped existing studies
- Critical Evaluation: Analysis and evaluation of agreements, gaps and the trends of the study.
- Summary: Consolidation of the entire section with a glimpse of what is coming next.
Conclusion
The literature review of an MBA research project is intellectual, critical and analytical base. It is not just a collection of existing studies. It is rather an evaluation of the existing studies analyzing the existing research objective, purpose, scope and limitation of the research. It helps in laying the foundation of the framework of the studies.
Finally at MBA Project Guide, student gets help from the core level of the project with selection of the topic, identifying relevant literature, analyzing the research gaps ultimately preparing a complete, plagiarism free project report.
