the role of literature in research

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Library Guide to Capstone Literature Reviews: Role of the Literature Review

The role of the literature review.

Your literature review gives readers an understanding of the scholarly research on your topic.

In your literature review you will:

• demonstrate that you are a well-informed scholar with expertise and knowledge in the field by giving an overview of the current state of the literature
• find a gap in the literature, or address a business or professional issue, depending on your doctoral study program; the literature review will illustrate how your research contributes to the scholarly conversation
• provide a synthesis of the issues, trends, and concepts surrounding your research

Be aware that the literature review is an iterative process. As you read and write initial drafts, you will find new threads and complementary themes, at which point you will return to search, find out about these new themes, and incorporate them into your review.

The purpose of this guide is to help you through the literature review process. Take some time to look over the resources in order to become familiar with them. The tabs on the left side of this page have additional information.

Short video: Research for the Literature Review

Short Video: Research for the Literature Review

(4 min 10 sec) Recorded August 2019 Transcript 

Literature review as a dinner party

To think about the role of the literature review, consider this analogy:  pretend that you throw a dinner party for the other researchers working in your topic area. First, you’d need to develop a guest list.

• The guests of honor would be early researchers or theorists; their work likely inspired subsequent studies, ideas, or controversies that the current researchers pursue.
• Then, think about the important current researchers to invite. Which guests might agree with each other?  Which others might provide useful counterpoints?
• You likely won’t be able to include everyone on the guest list, so you may need to choose carefully so that you don’t leave important figures out. 
• Alternatively, if there aren’t many researchers working in your topic area, then your guest list will need to include people working in other, related areas, who can still contribute to the conversation.

After the party, you describe the evening to a friend. You’ll summarize the evening’s conversation. Perhaps one guest made a comment that sparked a conversation, and then you describe who responded and how the topic evolved. There are other conversations to share, too. This is how you synthesize the themes and developments that you find in your research. Thinking about your literature research this way will help you to present your dinner party (and your literature review) in a lively and engaging way.

Short video: Empirical research

Video: How to locate and identify empirical research for your literature review

(6 min 16 sec) Recorded May 2020 Transcript 

Here are some useful resources from the Writing Center, the Office of Research and Doctoral Services, and other departments within the Office of Academic Support. Take some time to look at what is available to help you with your capstone/dissertation.

• Familiarize yourself with Walden support
• Doctoral Capstone Resources website
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• Office of Student Research Administration
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• Visit the Writing Center

You can watch recorded webinars on the literature review in our Library Webinar Archives .

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Literature Reviews

• What is a literature review?
• Steps in the Literature Review Process
• Define your research question
• Determine inclusion and exclusion criteria
• Choose databases and search
• Review Results
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• Librarian Support

What is a Literature Review?

A literature or narrative review is a comprehensive review and analysis of the published literature on a specific topic or research question. The literature that is reviewed contains: books, articles, academic articles, conference proceedings, association papers, and dissertations. It contains the most pertinent studies and points to important past and current research and practices. It provides background and context, and shows how your research will contribute to the field. 

A literature review should: 

• Provide a comprehensive and updated review of the literature;
• Explain why this review has taken place;
• Articulate a position or hypothesis;
• Acknowledge and account for conflicting and corroborating points of view

From  S age Research Methods

Purpose of a Literature Review

A literature review can be written as an introduction to a study to:

• Demonstrate how a study fills a gap in research
• Compare a study with other research that's been done

Or it can be a separate work (a research article on its own) which:

• Organizes or describes a topic
• Describes variables within a particular issue/problem

Limitations of a Literature Review

Some of the limitations of a literature review are:

• It's a snapshot in time. Unlike other reviews, this one has beginning, a middle and an end. There may be future developments that could make your work less relevant.
• It may be too focused. Some niche studies may miss the bigger picture.
• It can be difficult to be comprehensive. There is no way to make sure all the literature on a topic was considered.
• It is easy to be biased if you stick to top tier journals. There may be other places where people are publishing exemplary research. Look to open access publications and conferences to reflect a more inclusive collection. Also, make sure to include opposing views (and not just supporting evidence).

Source: Grant, Maria J., and Andrew Booth. “A Typology of Reviews: An Analysis of 14 Review Types and Associated Methodologies.” Health Information & Libraries Journal, vol. 26, no. 2, June 2009, pp. 91–108. Wiley Online Library, doi:10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x.

Meryl Brodsky : Communication and Information Studies

Hannah Chapman Tripp : Biology, Neuroscience

Carolyn Cunningham : Human Development & Family Sciences, Psychology, Sociology

Larayne Dallas : Engineering

Janelle Hedstrom : Special Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Ed Leadership & Policy ​

Susan Macicak : Linguistics

Imelda Vetter : Dell Medical School

For help in other subject areas, please see the guide to library specialists by subject .

Periodically, UT Libraries runs a workshop covering the basics and library support for literature reviews. While we try to offer these once per academic year, we find providing the recording to be helpful to community members who have missed the session. Following is the most recent recording of the workshop, Conducting a Literature Review. To view the recording, a UT login is required.

• October 26, 2022 recording
• Last Updated: Oct 26, 2022 2:49 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/literaturereviews

Libraries | Research Guides

Literature reviews, what is a literature review, learning more about how to do a literature review.

• Planning the Review
• The Research Question
• Choosing Where to Search
• Organizing the Review
• Writing the Review

A literature review is a review and synthesis of existing research on a topic or research question. A literature review is meant to analyze the scholarly literature, make connections across writings and identify strengths, weaknesses, trends, and missing conversations. A literature review should address different aspects of a topic as it relates to your research question. A literature review goes beyond a description or summary of the literature you have read. 

• Sage Research Methods Core Collection This link opens in a new window SAGE Research Methods supports research at all levels by providing material to guide users through every step of the research process. SAGE Research Methods is the ultimate methods library with more than 1000 books, reference works, journal articles, and instructional videos by world-leading academics from across the social sciences, including the largest collection of qualitative methods books available online from any scholarly publisher. – Publisher

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• Last Updated: May 2, 2024 10:39 AM
• URL: https://libguides.northwestern.edu/literaturereviews

• UConn Library
• Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
• Introduction

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide — Introduction

• Getting Started
• How to Pick a Topic
• Strategies to Find Sources
• Evaluating Sources & Lit. Reviews
• Tips for Writing Literature Reviews
• Writing Literature Review: Useful Sites
• Citation Resources
• Other Academic Writings

What are Literature Reviews?

So, what is a literature review? "A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries." Taylor, D.  The literature review: A few tips on conducting it . University of Toronto Health Sciences Writing Centre.

Goals of Literature Reviews

What are the goals of creating a Literature Review?  A literature could be written to accomplish different aims:

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1997). Writing narrative literature reviews .  Review of General Psychology , 1 (3), 311-320.

What kinds of sources require a Literature Review?

• A research paper assigned in a course
• A thesis or dissertation
• A grant proposal
• An article intended for publication in a journal

All these instances require you to collect what has been written about your research topic so that you can demonstrate how your own research sheds new light on the topic.

Types of Literature Reviews

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Narrative review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section which summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.

• Example : Predictors and Outcomes of U.S. Quality Maternity Leave: A Review and Conceptual Framework:  10.1177/08948453211037398  

Systematic review : "The authors of a systematic review use a specific procedure to search the research literature, select the studies to include in their review, and critically evaluate the studies they find." (p. 139). Nelson, L. K. (2013). Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders . Plural Publishing.

• Example : The effect of leave policies on increasing fertility: a systematic review:  10.1057/s41599-022-01270-w

Meta-analysis : "Meta-analysis is a method of reviewing research findings in a quantitative fashion by transforming the data from individual studies into what is called an effect size and then pooling and analyzing this information. The basic goal in meta-analysis is to explain why different outcomes have occurred in different studies." (p. 197). Roberts, M. C., & Ilardi, S. S. (2003). Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology . Blackwell Publishing.

• Example : Employment Instability and Fertility in Europe: A Meta-Analysis:  10.1215/00703370-9164737

Meta-synthesis : "Qualitative meta-synthesis is a type of qualitative study that uses as data the findings from other qualitative studies linked by the same or related topic." (p.312). Zimmer, L. (2006). Qualitative meta-synthesis: A question of dialoguing with texts .  Journal of Advanced Nursing , 53 (3), 311-318.

• Example : Women’s perspectives on career successes and barriers: A qualitative meta-synthesis:  10.1177/05390184221113735

Literature Reviews in the Health Sciences

• UConn Health subject guide on systematic reviews Explanation of the different review types used in health sciences literature as well as tools to help you find the right review type
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• Last Updated: Sep 21, 2022 2:16 PM
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Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

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A literature review surveys prior research published in books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated. Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have used in researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within existing scholarship about the topic.

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . Fourth edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2014.

Importance of a Good Literature Review

A literature review may consist of simply a summary of key sources, but in the social sciences, a literature review usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories . A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that informs how you are planning to investigate a research problem. The analytical features of a literature review might:

• Give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations,
• Trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates,
• Depending on the situation, evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant research, or
• Usually in the conclusion of a literature review, identify where gaps exist in how a problem has been researched to date.

Given this, the purpose of a literature review is to:

• Place each work in the context of its contribution to understanding the research problem being studied.
• Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration.
• Identify new ways to interpret prior research.
• Reveal any gaps that exist in the literature.
• Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies.
• Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort.
• Point the way in fulfilling a need for additional research.
• Locate your own research within the context of existing literature [very important].

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2011; Knopf, Jeffrey W. "Doing a Literature Review." PS: Political Science and Politics 39 (January 2006): 127-132; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012.

Types of Literature Reviews

It is important to think of knowledge in a given field as consisting of three layers. First, there are the primary studies that researchers conduct and publish. Second are the reviews of those studies that summarize and offer new interpretations built from and often extending beyond the primary studies. Third, there are the perceptions, conclusions, opinion, and interpretations that are shared informally among scholars that become part of the body of epistemological traditions within the field.

In composing a literature review, it is important to note that it is often this third layer of knowledge that is cited as "true" even though it often has only a loose relationship to the primary studies and secondary literature reviews. Given this, while literature reviews are designed to provide an overview and synthesis of pertinent sources you have explored, there are a number of approaches you could adopt depending upon the type of analysis underpinning your study.

Argumentative Review This form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply embedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature. The purpose is to develop a body of literature that establishes a contrarian viewpoint. Given the value-laden nature of some social science research [e.g., educational reform; immigration control], argumentative approaches to analyzing the literature can be a legitimate and important form of discourse. However, note that they can also introduce problems of bias when they are used to make summary claims of the sort found in systematic reviews [see below].

Integrative Review Considered a form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated. The body of literature includes all studies that address related or identical hypotheses or research problems. A well-done integrative review meets the same standards as primary research in regard to clarity, rigor, and replication. This is the most common form of review in the social sciences.

Historical Review Few things rest in isolation from historical precedent. Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period of time, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, phenomena emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and to identify the likely directions for future research.

Methodological Review A review does not always focus on what someone said [findings], but how they came about saying what they say [method of analysis]. Reviewing methods of analysis provides a framework of understanding at different levels [i.e. those of theory, substantive fields, research approaches, and data collection and analysis techniques], how researchers draw upon a wide variety of knowledge ranging from the conceptual level to practical documents for use in fieldwork in the areas of ontological and epistemological consideration, quantitative and qualitative integration, sampling, interviewing, data collection, and data analysis. This approach helps highlight ethical issues which you should be aware of and consider as you go through your own study.

Systematic Review This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect, report, and analyze data from the studies that are included in the review. The goal is to deliberately document, critically evaluate, and summarize scientifically all of the research about a clearly defined research problem . Typically it focuses on a very specific empirical question, often posed in a cause-and-effect form, such as "To what extent does A contribute to B?" This type of literature review is primarily applied to examining prior research studies in clinical medicine and allied health fields, but it is increasingly being used in the social sciences.

Theoretical Review The purpose of this form is to examine the corpus of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue, concept, theory, phenomena. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the existing theories have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested. Often this form is used to help establish a lack of appropriate theories or reveal that current theories are inadequate for explaining new or emerging research problems. The unit of analysis can focus on a theoretical concept or a whole theory or framework.

NOTE : Most often the literature review will incorporate some combination of types. For example, a review that examines literature supporting or refuting an argument, assumption, or philosophical problem related to the research problem will also need to include writing supported by sources that establish the history of these arguments in the literature.

Baumeister, Roy F. and Mark R. Leary. "Writing Narrative Literature Reviews."  Review of General Psychology 1 (September 1997): 311-320; Mark R. Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Kennedy, Mary M. "Defining a Literature." Educational Researcher 36 (April 2007): 139-147; Petticrew, Mark and Helen Roberts. Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide . Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2006; Torracro, Richard. "Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples." Human Resource Development Review 4 (September 2005): 356-367; Rocco, Tonette S. and Maria S. Plakhotnik. "Literature Reviews, Conceptual Frameworks, and Theoretical Frameworks: Terms, Functions, and Distinctions." Human Ressource Development Review 8 (March 2008): 120-130; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

Structure and Writing Style

I.  Thinking About Your Literature Review

The structure of a literature review should include the following in support of understanding the research problem :

• An overview of the subject, issue, or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of the literature review,
• Division of works under review into themes or categories [e.g. works that support a particular position, those against, and those offering alternative approaches entirely],
• An explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others,
• Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, are most convincing of their opinions, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research.

The critical evaluation of each work should consider :

• Provenance -- what are the author's credentials? Are the author's arguments supported by evidence [e.g. primary historical material, case studies, narratives, statistics, recent scientific findings]?
• Methodology -- were the techniques used to identify, gather, and analyze the data appropriate to addressing the research problem? Was the sample size appropriate? Were the results effectively interpreted and reported?
• Objectivity -- is the author's perspective even-handed or prejudicial? Is contrary data considered or is certain pertinent information ignored to prove the author's point?
• Persuasiveness -- which of the author's theses are most convincing or least convincing?
• Validity -- are the author's arguments and conclusions convincing? Does the work ultimately contribute in any significant way to an understanding of the subject?

II.  Development of the Literature Review

Four Basic Stages of Writing 1.  Problem formulation -- which topic or field is being examined and what are its component issues? 2.  Literature search -- finding materials relevant to the subject being explored. 3.  Data evaluation -- determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic. 4.  Analysis and interpretation -- discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature.

Consider the following issues before writing the literature review: Clarify If your assignment is not specific about what form your literature review should take, seek clarification from your professor by asking these questions: 1.  Roughly how many sources would be appropriate to include? 2.  What types of sources should I review (books, journal articles, websites; scholarly versus popular sources)? 3.  Should I summarize, synthesize, or critique sources by discussing a common theme or issue? 4.  Should I evaluate the sources in any way beyond evaluating how they relate to understanding the research problem? 5.  Should I provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history? Find Models Use the exercise of reviewing the literature to examine how authors in your discipline or area of interest have composed their literature review sections. Read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or to identify ways to organize your final review. The bibliography or reference section of sources you've already read, such as required readings in the course syllabus, are also excellent entry points into your own research. Narrow the Topic The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to obtain a good survey of relevant resources. Your professor will probably not expect you to read everything that's available about the topic, but you'll make the act of reviewing easier if you first limit scope of the research problem. A good strategy is to begin by searching the USC Libraries Catalog for recent books about the topic and review the table of contents for chapters that focuses on specific issues. You can also review the indexes of books to find references to specific issues that can serve as the focus of your research. For example, a book surveying the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may include a chapter on the role Egypt has played in mediating the conflict, or look in the index for the pages where Egypt is mentioned in the text. Consider Whether Your Sources are Current Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. This is particularly true in disciplines in medicine and the sciences where research conducted becomes obsolete very quickly as new discoveries are made. However, when writing a review in the social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be required. In other words, a complete understanding the research problem requires you to deliberately examine how knowledge and perspectives have changed over time. Sort through other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to explore what is considered by scholars to be a "hot topic" and what is not.

III.  Ways to Organize Your Literature Review

Chronology of Events If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials according to when they were published. This approach should only be followed if a clear path of research building on previous research can be identified and that these trends follow a clear chronological order of development. For example, a literature review that focuses on continuing research about the emergence of German economic power after the fall of the Soviet Union. By Publication Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on environmental studies of brown fields if the progression revealed, for example, a change in the soil collection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies. Thematic [“conceptual categories”] A thematic literature review is the most common approach to summarizing prior research in the social and behavioral sciences. Thematic reviews are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time, although the progression of time may still be incorporated into a thematic review. For example, a review of the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics could focus on the development of online political satire. While the study focuses on one topic, the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics, it would still be organized chronologically reflecting technological developments in media. The difference in this example between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: themes related to the role of the Internet in presidential politics. Note that more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point being made. Methodological A methodological approach focuses on the methods utilized by the researcher. For the Internet in American presidential politics project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of American presidents on American, British, and French websites. Or the review might focus on the fundraising impact of the Internet on a particular political party. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed.

Other Sections of Your Literature Review Once you've decided on the organizational method for your literature review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out because they arise from your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period; a thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue. However, sometimes you may need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. However, only include what is necessary for the reader to locate your study within the larger scholarship about the research problem.

Here are examples of other sections, usually in the form of a single paragraph, you may need to include depending on the type of review you write:

• Current Situation : Information necessary to understand the current topic or focus of the literature review.
• Sources Used : Describes the methods and resources [e.g., databases] you used to identify the literature you reviewed.
• History : The chronological progression of the field, the research literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
• Selection Methods : Criteria you used to select (and perhaps exclude) sources in your literature review. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed [i.e., scholarly] sources.
• Standards : Description of the way in which you present your information.
• Questions for Further Research : What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

IV.  Writing Your Literature Review

Once you've settled on how to organize your literature review, you're ready to write each section. When writing your review, keep in mind these issues.

Use Evidence A literature review section is, in this sense, just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence [citations] that demonstrates that what you are saying is valid. Be Selective Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the research problem, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological. Related items that provide additional information, but that are not key to understanding the research problem, can be included in a list of further readings . Use Quotes Sparingly Some short quotes are appropriate if you want to emphasize a point, or if what an author stated cannot be easily paraphrased. Sometimes you may need to quote certain terminology that was coined by the author, is not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. Do not use extensive quotes as a substitute for using your own words in reviewing the literature. Summarize and Synthesize Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each thematic paragraph as well as throughout the review. Recapitulate important features of a research study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study's significance and relating it to your own work and the work of others. Keep Your Own Voice While the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice [the writer's] should remain front and center. For example, weave references to other sources into what you are writing but maintain your own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with your own ideas and wording. Use Caution When Paraphrasing When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author's information or opinions accurately and in your own words. Even when paraphrasing an author’s work, you still must provide a citation to that work.

V.  Common Mistakes to Avoid

These are the most common mistakes made in reviewing social science research literature.

• Sources in your literature review do not clearly relate to the research problem;
• You do not take sufficient time to define and identify the most relevant sources to use in the literature review related to the research problem;
• Relies exclusively on secondary analytical sources rather than including relevant primary research studies or data;
• Uncritically accepts another researcher's findings and interpretations as valid, rather than examining critically all aspects of the research design and analysis;
• Does not describe the search procedures that were used in identifying the literature to review;
• Reports isolated statistical results rather than synthesizing them in chi-squared or meta-analytic methods; and,
• Only includes research that validates assumptions and does not consider contrary findings and alternative interpretations found in the literature.

Cook, Kathleen E. and Elise Murowchick. “Do Literature Review Skills Transfer from One Course to Another?” Psychology Learning and Teaching 13 (March 2014): 3-11; Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . London: SAGE, 2011; Literature Review Handout. Online Writing Center. Liberty University; Literature Reviews. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2016; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012; Randolph, Justus J. “A Guide to Writing the Dissertation Literature Review." Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation. vol. 14, June 2009; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016; Taylor, Dena. The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Writing a Literature Review. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra.

Writing Tip

Break Out of Your Disciplinary Box!

Thinking interdisciplinarily about a research problem can be a rewarding exercise in applying new ideas, theories, or concepts to an old problem. For example, what might cultural anthropologists say about the continuing conflict in the Middle East? In what ways might geographers view the need for better distribution of social service agencies in large cities than how social workers might study the issue? You don’t want to substitute a thorough review of core research literature in your discipline for studies conducted in other fields of study. However, particularly in the social sciences, thinking about research problems from multiple vectors is a key strategy for finding new solutions to a problem or gaining a new perspective. Consult with a librarian about identifying research databases in other disciplines; almost every field of study has at least one comprehensive database devoted to indexing its research literature.

Frodeman, Robert. The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity . New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Another Writing Tip

Don't Just Review for Content!

While conducting a review of the literature, maximize the time you devote to writing this part of your paper by thinking broadly about what you should be looking for and evaluating. Review not just what scholars are saying, but how are they saying it. Some questions to ask:

• How are they organizing their ideas?
• What methods have they used to study the problem?
• What theories have been used to explain, predict, or understand their research problem?
• What sources have they cited to support their conclusions?
• How have they used non-textual elements [e.g., charts, graphs, figures, etc.] to illustrate key points?

When you begin to write your literature review section, you'll be glad you dug deeper into how the research was designed and constructed because it establishes a means for developing more substantial analysis and interpretation of the research problem.

Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1 998.

Yet Another Writing Tip

When Do I Know I Can Stop Looking and Move On?

Here are several strategies you can utilize to assess whether you've thoroughly reviewed the literature:

• Look for repeating patterns in the research findings . If the same thing is being said, just by different people, then this likely demonstrates that the research problem has hit a conceptual dead end. At this point consider: Does your study extend current research?  Does it forge a new path? Or, does is merely add more of the same thing being said?
• Look at sources the authors cite to in their work . If you begin to see the same researchers cited again and again, then this is often an indication that no new ideas have been generated to address the research problem.
• Search Google Scholar to identify who has subsequently cited leading scholars already identified in your literature review [see next sub-tab]. This is called citation tracking and there are a number of sources that can help you identify who has cited whom, particularly scholars from outside of your discipline. Here again, if the same authors are being cited again and again, this may indicate no new literature has been written on the topic.

Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2016; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

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What is the Purpose of a Literature Review?

4-minute read

• 23rd October 2023

If you’re writing a research paper or dissertation , then you’ll most likely need to include a comprehensive literature review . In this post, we’ll review the purpose of literature reviews, why they are so significant, and the specific elements to include in one. Literature reviews can:

1. Provide a foundation for current research.

2. Define key concepts and theories.

3. Demonstrate critical evaluation.

4. Show how research and methodologies have evolved.

5. Identify gaps in existing research.

6. Support your argument.

Keep reading to enter the exciting world of literature reviews!

What is a Literature Review?

A literature review is a critical summary and evaluation of the existing research (e.g., academic journal articles and books) on a specific topic. It is typically included as a separate section or chapter of a research paper or dissertation, serving as a contextual framework for a study. Literature reviews can vary in length depending on the subject and nature of the study, with most being about equal length to other sections or chapters included in the paper. Essentially, the literature review highlights previous studies in the context of your research and summarizes your insights in a structured, organized format. Next, let’s look at the overall purpose of a literature review.

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Literature reviews are considered an integral part of research across most academic subjects and fields. The primary purpose of a literature review in your study is to:

Provide a Foundation for Current Research

Since the literature review provides a comprehensive evaluation of the existing research, it serves as a solid foundation for your current study. It’s a way to contextualize your work and show how your research fits into the broader landscape of your specific area of study.  

Define Key Concepts and Theories

The literature review highlights the central theories and concepts that have arisen from previous research on your chosen topic. It gives your readers a more thorough understanding of the background of your study and why your research is particularly significant .

Demonstrate Critical Evaluation 

A comprehensive literature review shows your ability to critically analyze and evaluate a broad range of source material. And since you’re considering and acknowledging the contribution of key scholars alongside your own, it establishes your own credibility and knowledge.

Show How Research and Methodologies Have Evolved

Another purpose of literature reviews is to provide a historical perspective and demonstrate how research and methodologies have changed over time, especially as data collection methods and technology have advanced. And studying past methodologies allows you, as the researcher, to understand what did and did not work and apply that knowledge to your own research.  

Identify Gaps in Existing Research

Besides discussing current research and methodologies, the literature review should also address areas that are lacking in the existing literature. This helps further demonstrate the relevance of your own research by explaining why your study is necessary to fill the gaps.

Support Your Argument

A good literature review should provide evidence that supports your research questions and hypothesis. For example, your study may show that your research supports existing theories or builds on them in some way. Referencing previous related studies shows your work is grounded in established research and will ultimately be a contribution to the field.  

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Research Process :: Step by Step

• Introduction
• Select Topic
• Identify Keywords
• Background Information
• Develop Research Questions
• Refine Topic
• Search Strategy
• Popular Databases
• Evaluate Sources
• Types of Periodicals
• Reading Scholarly Articles
• Primary & Secondary Sources
• Organize / Take Notes
• Writing & Grammar Resources
• Annotated Bibliography
• Literature Review
• Citation Styles
• Paraphrasing
• Privacy / Confidentiality
• Research Process
• Selecting Your Topic
• Identifying Keywords
• Gathering Background Info
• Evaluating Sources

Organize the literature review into sections that present themes or identify trends, including relevant theory. You are not trying to list all the material published, but to synthesize and evaluate it according to the guiding concept of your thesis or research question.  

What is a literature review?

A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. Occasionally you will be asked to write one as a separate assignment, but more often it is part of the introduction to an essay, research report, or thesis. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries

A literature review must do these things:

• be organized around and related directly to the thesis or research question you are developing
• synthesize results into a summary of what is and is not known
• identify areas of controversy in the literature
• formulate questions that need further research

Ask yourself questions like these:

• What is the specific thesis, problem, or research question that my literature review helps to define?
• What type of literature review am I conducting? Am I looking at issues of theory? methodology? policy? quantitative research (e.g. on the effectiveness of a new procedure)? qualitative research (e.g., studies of loneliness among migrant workers)?
• What is the scope of my literature review? What types of publications am I using (e.g., journals, books, government documents, popular media)? What discipline am I working in (e.g., nursing psychology, sociology, medicine)?
• How good was my information seeking? Has my search been wide enough to ensure I've found all the relevant material? Has it been narrow enough to exclude irrelevant material? Is the number of sources I've used appropriate for the length of my paper?
• Have I critically analyzed the literature I use? Do I follow through a set of concepts and questions, comparing items to each other in the ways they deal with them? Instead of just listing and summarizing items, do I assess them, discussing strengths and weaknesses?
• Have I cited and discussed studies contrary to my perspective?
• Will the reader find my literature review relevant, appropriate, and useful?

Ask yourself questions like these about each book or article you include:

• Has the author formulated a problem/issue?
• Is it clearly defined? Is its significance (scope, severity, relevance) clearly established?
• Could the problem have been approached more effectively from another perspective?
• What is the author's research orientation (e.g., interpretive, critical science, combination)?
• What is the author's theoretical framework (e.g., psychological, developmental, feminist)?
• What is the relationship between the theoretical and research perspectives?
• Has the author evaluated the literature relevant to the problem/issue? Does the author include literature taking positions she or he does not agree with?
• In a research study, how good are the basic components of the study design (e.g., population, intervention, outcome)? How accurate and valid are the measurements? Is the analysis of the data accurate and relevant to the research question? Are the conclusions validly based upon the data and analysis?
• In material written for a popular readership, does the author use appeals to emotion, one-sided examples, or rhetorically-charged language and tone? Is there an objective basis to the reasoning, or is the author merely "proving" what he or she already believes?
• How does the author structure the argument? Can you "deconstruct" the flow of the argument to see whether or where it breaks down logically (e.g., in establishing cause-effect relationships)?
• In what ways does this book or article contribute to our understanding of the problem under study, and in what ways is it useful for practice? What are the strengths and limitations?
• How does this book or article relate to the specific thesis or question I am developing?

Text written by Dena Taylor, Health Sciences Writing Centre, University of Toronto

http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-types-of-writing/literature-review

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Literature Review in Research Writing

• 4 minute read
• 423.8K views

Table of Contents

Research on research? If you find this idea rather peculiar, know that nowadays, with the huge amount of information produced daily all around the world, it is becoming more and more difficult to keep up to date with all of it. In addition to the sheer amount of research, there is also its origin. We are witnessing the economic and intellectual emergence of countries like China, Brazil, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates, for example, that are producing scholarly literature in their own languages. So, apart from the effort of gathering information, there must also be translators prepared to unify all of it in a single language to be the object of the literature survey. At Elsevier, our team of translators is ready to support researchers by delivering high-quality scientific translations , in several languages, to serve their research – no matter the topic.

What is a literature review?

A literature review is a study – or, more accurately, a survey – involving scholarly material, with the aim to discuss published information about a specific topic or research question. Therefore, to write a literature review, it is compulsory that you are a real expert in the object of study. The results and findings will be published and made available to the public, namely scientists working in the same area of research.

How to Write a Literature Review

First of all, don’t forget that writing a literature review is a great responsibility. It’s a document that is expected to be highly reliable, especially concerning its sources and findings. You have to feel intellectually comfortable in the area of study and highly proficient in the target language; misconceptions and errors do not have a place in a document as important as a literature review. In fact, you might want to consider text editing services, like those offered at Elsevier, to make sure your literature is following the highest standards of text quality. You want to make sure your literature review is memorable by its novelty and quality rather than language errors.

Writing a literature review requires expertise but also organization. We cannot teach you about your topic of research, but we can provide a few steps to guide you through conducting a literature review:

• Choose your topic or research question: It should not be too comprehensive or too limited. You have to complete your task within a feasible time frame.
• Set the scope: Define boundaries concerning the number of sources, time frame to be covered, geographical area, etc.
• Decide which databases you will use for your searches: In order to search the best viable sources for your literature review, use highly regarded, comprehensive databases to get a big picture of the literature related to your topic.
• Search, search, and search: Now you’ll start to investigate the research on your topic. It’s critical that you keep track of all the sources. Start by looking at research abstracts in detail to see if their respective studies relate to or are useful for your own work. Next, search for bibliographies and references that can help you broaden your list of resources. Choose the most relevant literature and remember to keep notes of their bibliographic references to be used later on.
• Review all the literature, appraising carefully it’s content: After reading the study’s abstract, pay attention to the rest of the content of the articles you deem the “most relevant.” Identify methodologies, the most important questions they address, if they are well-designed and executed, and if they are cited enough, etc.

If it’s the first time you’ve published a literature review, note that it is important to follow a special structure. Just like in a thesis, for example, it is expected that you have an introduction – giving the general idea of the central topic and organizational pattern – a body – which contains the actual discussion of the sources – and finally the conclusion or recommendations – where you bring forward whatever you have drawn from the reviewed literature. The conclusion may even suggest there are no agreeable findings and that the discussion should be continued.

Why are literature reviews important?

Literature reviews constantly feed new research, that constantly feeds literature reviews…and we could go on and on. The fact is, one acts like a force over the other and this is what makes science, as a global discipline, constantly develop and evolve. As a scientist, writing a literature review can be very beneficial to your career, and set you apart from the expert elite in your field of interest. But it also can be an overwhelming task, so don’t hesitate in contacting Elsevier for text editing services, either for profound edition or just a last revision. We guarantee the very highest standards. You can also save time by letting us suggest and make the necessary amendments to your manuscript, so that it fits the structural pattern of a literature review. Who knows how many worldwide researchers you will impact with your next perfectly written literature review.

Know more: How to Find a Gap in Research .

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What is a literature review?

A literature review is an integrated analysis -- not just a summary-- of scholarly writings and other relevant evidence related directly to your research question.  That is, it represents a synthesis of the evidence that provides background information on your topic and shows a association between the evidence and your research question.

A literature review may be a stand alone work or the introduction to a larger research paper, depending on the assignment.  Rely heavily on the guidelines your instructor has given you.

Why is it important?

A literature review is important because it:

• Explains the background of research on a topic.
• Demonstrates why a topic is significant to a subject area.
• Discovers relationships between research studies/ideas.
• Identifies major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic.
• Identifies critical gaps and points of disagreement.
• Discusses further research questions that logically come out of the previous studies.

APA7 Style resources

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1. Choose a topic. Define your research question.

Your literature review should be guided by your central research question.  The literature represents background and research developments related to a specific research question, interpreted and analyzed by you in a synthesized way.

• Make sure your research question is not too broad or too narrow.  Is it manageable?
• Begin writing down terms that are related to your question. These will be useful for searches later.
• If you have the opportunity, discuss your topic with your professor and your class mates.

2. Decide on the scope of your review

How many studies do you need to look at? How comprehensive should it be? How many years should it cover? 

• This may depend on your assignment.  How many sources does the assignment require?

3. Select the databases you will use to conduct your searches.

Make a list of the databases you will search. 

Where to find databases:

• use the tabs on this guide
• Find other databases in the Nursing Information Resources web page
• More on the Medical Library web page
• ... and more on the Yale University Library web page

4. Conduct your searches to find the evidence. Keep track of your searches.

• Use the key words in your question, as well as synonyms for those words, as terms in your search. Use the database tutorials for help.
• Save the searches in the databases. This saves time when you want to redo, or modify, the searches. It is also helpful to use as a guide is the searches are not finding any useful results.
• Review the abstracts of research studies carefully. This will save you time.
• Use the bibliographies and references of research studies you find to locate others.
• Check with your professor, or a subject expert in the field, if you are missing any key works in the field.
• Ask your librarian for help at any time.
• Use a citation manager, such as EndNote as the repository for your citations. See the EndNote tutorials for help.

Review the literature

Some questions to help you analyze the research:

• What was the research question of the study you are reviewing? What were the authors trying to discover?
• Was the research funded by a source that could influence the findings?
• What were the research methodologies? Analyze its literature review, the samples and variables used, the results, and the conclusions.
• Does the research seem to be complete? Could it have been conducted more soundly? What further questions does it raise?
• If there are conflicting studies, why do you think that is?
• How are the authors viewed in the field? Has this study been cited? If so, how has it been analyzed?

Tips: 

• Review the abstracts carefully.  
• Keep careful notes so that you may track your thought processes during the research process.
• Create a matrix of the studies for easy analysis, and synthesis, across all of the studies.
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Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco pautasso.

1 Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

2 Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:

• interesting to you (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
• an important aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be enough material to write it), and
• a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

• keep track of the search items you use (so that your search can be replicated [10] ),
• keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to retrieve them later with alternative strategies),
• use a paper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
• define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and
• do not just look for research papers in the area you wish to review, but also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33] .

• discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
• trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
• incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

• be thorough,
• use different keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
• look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

• the major achievements in the reviewed field,
• the main areas of debate, and
• the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .

How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

Funding Statement

This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

The objective of a literature review

Questions to Consider

B. In some fields or contexts, a literature review is referred to as the introduction or the background; why is this true, and does it matter?

The elements of a literature review • The first step in scholarly research is determining the “state of the art” on a topic. This is accomplished by gathering academic research and making sense of it. • The academic literature can be found in scholarly books and journals; the goal is to discover recurring themes, find the latest data, and identify any missing pieces. • The resulting literature review organizes the research in such a way that tells a story about the topic or issue.

The literature review tells a story in which one well-paraphrased summary from a relevant source contributes to and connects with the next in a logical manner, developing and fulfilling the message of the author. It includes analysis of the arguments from the literature, as well as revealing consistent and inconsistent findings. How do varying author insights differ from or conform to previous arguments?

Language in Action

A. How are the terms “critique” and “review” used in everyday life? How are they used in an academic context?

In terms of content, a literature review is intended to:

• Set up a theoretical framework for further research • Show a clear understanding of the key concepts/studies/models related to the topic • Demonstrate knowledge about the history of the research area and any related controversies • Clarify significant definitions and terminology • Develop a space in the existing work for new research

The literature consists of the published works that document a scholarly conversation or progression on a problem or topic in a field of study. Among these are documents that explain the background and show the loose ends in the established research on which a proposed project is based. Although a literature review focuses on primary, peer -reviewed resources, it may begin with background subject information generally found in secondary and tertiary sources such as books and encyclopedias. Following that essential overview, the seminal literature of the field is explored. As a result, while a literature review may consist of research articles tightly focused on a topic with secondary and tertiary sources used more sparingly, all three types of information (primary, secondary, tertiary) are critical.

The literature review, often referred to as the Background or Introduction to a research paper that presents methods, materials, results and discussion, exists in every field and serves many functions in research writing.

Adapted from Frederiksen, L., & Phelps, S. F. (2017). Literature Reviews for Education and Nursing Graduate Students. Open Textbook Library

Review and Reinforce

Two common approaches are simply outlined here. Which seems more common? Which more productive? Why? A. Forward exploration 1. Sources on a topic or problem are gathered. 2. Salient themes are discovered. 3. Research gaps are considered for future research. B. Backward exploration 1. Sources pertaining to an existing research project are gathered. 2. The justification of the research project’s methods or materials are explained and supported based on previously documented research.

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Literature Review: Purpose of a Literature Review

• Literature Review
• Purpose of a Literature Review
• Work in Progress
• Compiling & Writing
• Books, Articles, & Web Pages
• Types of Literature Reviews
• Departmental Differences
• Citation Styles & Plagiarism
• Know the Difference! Systematic Review vs. Literature Review

The purpose of a literature review is to:

• Provide a foundation of knowledge on a topic
• Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication and give credit to other researchers
• Identify inconstancies: gaps in research, conflicts in previous studies, open questions left from other research
• Identify the need for additional research (justifying your research)
• Identify the relationship of works in the context of their contribution to the topic and other works
• Place your own research within the context of existing literature, making a case for why further study is needed.

Videos & Tutorials

VIDEO: What is the role of a literature review in research? What's it mean to "review" the literature? Get the big picture of what to expect as part of the process. This video is published under a Creative Commons 3.0 BY-NC-SA US license. License, credits, and contact information can be found here: https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/tutorials/litreview/

Elements in a Literature Review

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Quantitative research: literature review .

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Exploring the literature review 

Literature review model: 6 steps.

Adapted from The Literature Review , Machi & McEvoy (2009, p. 13).

Your Literature Review

Step 2: search, boolean search strategies, search limiters, ★ ebsco & google drive.

1. Select a Topic

"All research begins with curiosity" (Machi & McEvoy, 2009, p. 14)

Selection of a topic, and fully defined research interest and question, is supervised (and approved) by your professor. Tips for crafting your topic include:

• Be specific. Take time to define your interest.
• Topic Focus. Fully describe and sufficiently narrow the focus for research.
• Academic Discipline. Learn more about your area of research & refine the scope.
• Avoid Bias. Be aware of bias that you (as a researcher) may have.
• Document your research. Use Google Docs to track your research process.
• Research apps. Consider using Evernote or Zotero to track your research.

Consider Purpose

What will your topic and research address?

In The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students , Ridley presents that literature reviews serve several purposes (2008, p. 16-17).  Included are the following points:

• Historical background for the research;
• Overview of current field provided by "contemporary debates, issues, and questions;"
• Theories and concepts related to your research;
• Introduce "relevant terminology" - or academic language - being used it the field;
• Connect to existing research - does your work "extend or challenge [this] or address a gap;" 
• Provide "supporting evidence for a practical problem or issue" that your research addresses.

★ Schedule a research appointment

At this point in your literature review, take time to meet with a librarian. Why? Understanding the subject terminology used in databases can be challenging. Archer Librarians can help you structure a search, preparing you for step two. How? Contact a librarian directly or use the online form to schedule an appointment. Details are provided in the adjacent Schedule an Appointment box.

2. Search the Literature

Collect & Select Data: Preview, select, and organize

Archer Library is your go-to resource for this step in your literature review process. The literature search will include books and ebooks, scholarly and practitioner journals, theses and dissertations, and indexes. You may also choose to include web sites, blogs, open access resources, and newspapers. This library guide provides access to resources needed to complete a literature review.

Books & eBooks: Archer Library & OhioLINK

Databases: scholarly & practitioner journals.

Review the Library Databases tab on this library guide, it provides links to recommended databases for Education & Psychology, Business, and General & Social Sciences.

Expand your journal search; a complete listing of available AU Library and OhioLINK databases is available on the Databases  A to Z list . Search the database by subject, type, name, or do use the search box for a general title search. The A to Z list also includes open access resources and select internet sites.

Databases: Theses & Dissertations

Review the Library Databases tab on this guide, it includes Theses & Dissertation resources. AU library also has AU student authored theses and dissertations available in print, search the library catalog for these titles.

Did you know? If you are looking for particular chapters within a dissertation that is not fully available online, it is possible to submit an ILL article request . Do this instead of requesting the entire dissertation.

Newspapers:  Databases & Internet

Consider current literature in your academic field. AU Library's database collection includes The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Wall Street Journal .  The Internet Resources tab in this guide provides links to newspapers and online journals such as Inside Higher Ed , COABE Journal , and Education Week .

Search Strategies & Boolean Operators

There are three basic boolean operators:  AND, OR, and NOT.

Used with your search terms, boolean operators will either expand or limit results. What purpose do they serve? They help to define the relationship between your search terms. For example, using the operator AND will combine the terms expanding the search. When searching some databases, and Google, the operator AND may be implied.

Overview of boolean terms

About the example: Boolean searches were conducted on November 4, 2019; result numbers may vary at a later date. No additional database limiters were set to further narrow search returns.

Database Search Limiters

Database strategies for targeted search results.

Most databases include limiters, or additional parameters, you may use to strategically focus search results.  EBSCO databases, such as Education Research Complete & Academic Search Complete provide options to:

• Limit results to full text;
• Limit results to scholarly journals, and reference available;
• Select results source type to journals, magazines, conference papers, reviews, and newspapers
• Publication date

Keep in mind that these tools are defined as limiters for a reason; adding them to a search will limit the number of results returned.  This can be a double-edged sword.  How? 

• If limiting results to full-text only, you may miss an important piece of research that could change the direction of your research. Interlibrary loan is available to students, free of charge. Request articles that are not available in full-text; they will be sent to you via email.
• If narrowing publication date, you may eliminate significant historical - or recent - research conducted on your topic.
• Limiting resource type to a specific type of material may cause bias in the research results.

Use limiters with care. When starting a search, consider opting out of limiters until the initial literature screening is complete. The second or third time through your research may be the ideal time to focus on specific time periods or material (scholarly vs newspaper).

★ Truncating Search Terms

Expanding your search term at the root.

Truncating is often referred to as 'wildcard' searching. Databases may have their own specific wildcard elements however, the most commonly used are the asterisk (*) or question mark (?).  When used within your search. they will expand returned results.

Asterisk (*) Wildcard

Using the asterisk wildcard will return varied spellings of the truncated word. In the following example, the search term education was truncated after the letter "t."

Explore these database help pages for additional information on crafting search terms.

• EBSCO Connect: Basic Searching with EBSCO
• EBSCO Connect: Searching with Boolean Operators
• EBSCO Connect: Searching with Wildcards and Truncation Symbols
• ProQuest Help: Search Tips
• ERIC: How does ERIC search work?

★ EBSCO Databases & Google Drive

Tips for saving research directly to Google drive.

Researching in an EBSCO database?

It is possible to save articles (PDF and HTML) and abstracts in EBSCOhost databases directly to Google drive. Select the Google Drive icon, authenticate using a Google account, and an EBSCO folder will be created in your account. This is a great option for managing your research. If documenting your research in a Google Doc, consider linking the information to actual articles saved in drive.

EBSCO Databases & Google Drive

EBSCOHost Databases & Google Drive: Managing your Research

This video features an overview of how to use Google Drive with EBSCO databases to help manage your research. It presents information for connecting an active Google account to EBSCO and steps needed to provide permission for EBSCO to manage a folder in Drive.

About the Video:  Closed captioning is available, select CC from the video menu.  If you need to review a specific area on the video, view on YouTube and expand the video description for access to topic time stamps.  A video transcript is provided below.

• EBSCOhost Databases & Google Scholar

Defining Literature Review

What is a literature review.

A definition from the Online Dictionary for Library and Information Sciences .

A literature review is "a comprehensive survey of the works published in a particular field of study or line of research, usually over a specific period of time, in the form of an in-depth, critical bibliographic essay or annotated list in which attention is drawn to the most significant works" (Reitz, 2014). 

A systemic review is "a literature review focused on a specific research question, which uses explicit methods to minimize bias in the identification, appraisal, selection, and synthesis of all the high-quality evidence pertinent to the question" (Reitz, 2014).

Recommended Reading

About this page

EBSCO Connect [Discovery and Search]. (2022). Searching with boolean operators. Retrieved May, 3, 2022 from https://connect.ebsco.com/s/?language=en_US

EBSCO Connect [Discover and Search]. (2022). Searching with wildcards and truncation symbols. Retrieved May 3, 2022; https://connect.ebsco.com/s/?language=en_US

Machi, L.A. & McEvoy, B.T. (2009). The literature review . Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press: 

Reitz, J.M. (2014). Online dictionary for library and information science. ABC-CLIO, Libraries Unlimited . Retrieved from https://www.abc-clio.com/ODLIS/odlis_A.aspx

Ridley, D. (2008). The literature review: A step-by-step guide for students . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

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• Published: 15 May 2024

Supply chain transformational leadership and resilience: the mediating role of ambidextrous business model

• Taiwen Feng 1   na1 ,
• Zhihui Si 1   na1 ,
• Wenbo Jiang 2 &
• Jianyu Tan 3  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  628 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Business and management

The global prevalence of COVID-19 has caused many supply chain disruptions, which calls for firms to build resilient supply chains. Prior research primarily examined the effects of firm resources or capabilities on supply chain resilience (SCR), with limited attention given to the critical role of supply chain transformational leadership (SCTL). Based on social learning theory, we explore how SCTL impacts SCR via an ambidextrous business model and the moderating role of paradox cognition. We employ hierarchical regression analysis to verify the hypotheses with data from 317 Chinese firms. The results show that SCTL has a positive impact on proactive and reactive SCR, and the ambidextrous business model mediates this relationship. Furthermore, paradox cognition strengthens the effect of SCTL on the ambidextrous business model. This study contributes to literature and practices in the field of transformational leadership and SCR by providing unique insights into how to improve SCR from a leadership perspective.

Introduction

Affected by the global prevalence of COVID-19, frequent supply chain disruptions have occurred (Nikolopoulos et al., 2021 ; Jiang et al., 2023 ; Shen and Sun, 2023 ). Since supply chains are increasingly complex, firms are more likely to suffer from supply chain disruptions (Lechler et al., 2019 ; Spieske and Birkel, 2021 ; Xi et al., 2024 ). It will be difficult for a firm lacking resilient supply chains to survive and compete within a dynamic and uncertain condition. Supply chain resilience (SCR) reflects the capability of a system to maintain desirable functions before/during disruptions and/or timely recover to its normal functions after disruptive events (Gu et al., 2021 ). Understanding the enablers of SCR would help the firm better respond to potential risks caused by supply chain disruptions (Vanpoucke and Ellis, 2020 ).

Firm leaders could play critical roles in reducing disruption risk in supply chains and building a more resilient supply chain (Khunwishit et al., 2018 ). However, little research has checked the effect of transformational leadership within the supply chain context. We define supply chain transformational leadership (SCTL) as a continual influence that the focal firm demonstrates modeling values and reformative behaviors, which motivates its supply chain partners to act similarly with inspiration and close relationships.

While previous studies mainly focused on the roles of specific resources or capabilities on SCR, such as agility, redundancy, and collaboration (Al Naimi et al., 2021 ; Tukamuhabwa et al., 2015 ), the strategic role of SCTL has largely been ignored. Previous studies suggest that transformational leadership encourages employees’ reaction to changes in a firm (Peng et al., 2021 ) and increases team resilience (Dimas et al., 2018 ). Hence, high levels of SCTL could operate as role-modeling behaviors for the focal firm’s partners and foster a more resilient supply chain. According to social learning theory (Bandura, 1977 ; Brown et al., 2005 ), the focal firm with high levels of SCTL acts as a reliable role model whom its followers trust and attempt to emulate. That is to say, supply chain partners can learn transformative behaviors by observing the focal firm. As a result, the focal firm with high levels of SCTL acts as a benchmark for its supply chain followers to build a resilient supply chain. Therefore, we propose that SCTL may strengthen SCR.

Firms throughout supply chains often face conflicting objectives while implementing organizational learning to improve SCR (Lee and Rha, 2016 ). That is, they must balance different types of learning strategies, such as exploring potential opportunities to transform supply chains while also exploiting current resources to optimize supply chains. The tension of balancing exploitation and exploration is termed organizational ambidexterity (Kristal et al., 2010 ). According to an ambidexterity perspective (Aslam et al., 2022 ; Eng et al., 2023 ), the focal firm with high levels of SCTL prefers to deal with supply chain disruptions through both exploring external opportunities and exploiting internal resources. However, little is known about how SCTL affects SCR via organizational ambidexterity.

Our research devotes to filling this research gap through clarifying the mediating effect of an ambidextrous business model that encompasses both novelty and efficiency within the SCTL–SCR link. We define an ambidextrous business model as a firm’s boundary-spanning transaction mode developed to create and capture value by both balancing activities of redesigning a novel business model and reorganizing elements of an existing one. Specifically, a novelty-centered business model could help firms explore a new value proposition to meet changing demands in disruptions, whereas an efficiency-centered business model improves inter-organizational transaction efficiency by facilitating supply chain visibility and reducing transaction cost (Wei et al., 2017 ; Zott and Amit, 2008 ). Drawing on social learning theory (Ojha et al., 2018 ), the focal firm with high levels of SCTL may demonstratively build an ambidextrous business model by fostering a supportive organizational context. Then, the ambidextrous business model in the focal firm motivates other supply chain partners to emulate and actively take a similar business model, improving SCR through shared supply chain ambidexterity. In this manner, an ambidextrous business model may mediate the SCTL–SCR relationship.

Furthermore, the focal firm with paradoxical thinking and cognition could also influence its learning strategies (Brusoni and Rosenkranz, 2014 ). That is, paradoxical thinking and cognition would affect the focal firm’s attitude and identification towards tensions (explore or exploit) arising from its contrasting strategic agendas (Smith and Lewis, 2011 ). When the focal firm possesses high levels of paradox cognition, it is more likely to recognize and embrace tensions, making well-balanced strategic decisions through developing transformational leadership. Hence, we propose that paradox cognition enhances the impact of SCTL on an ambidextrous business model.

In sum, this study explores three questions to uncover the impact of SCTL on SCR. First, whether SCTL is positively related to SCR? Second, does ambidextrous business model mediate the SCTL–SCR relationship? Third, does paradox cognition strengthen the role of SCTL on ambidextrous business model? By answering the above questions, this study makes a contribution to research and practices in the field of transformational leadership and SCR.

Literature review and hypotheses development

Supply chain resilience.

Resilience, a multidisciplinary construct originating from engineering, ecology, and psychology (Holling, 1973 ; Novak et al., 2021 ). Although most scholars have viewed resilience as an ability to resist and/or rebound from disruptive events (El Baz and Ruel, 2021 ; Namdar et al., 2018 ), there still lacks a normative definition widely accepted. Later, resilience is extended and applied to the field of social sciences, such as supply chain management and operational management. Due to the prevalence of COVID-19, resilience is particularly valued in global supply chains as supply chains become increasingly complex (Spieske and Birkel, 2021 ).

The major divergences of SCR concentrate on two aspects: influencing scope and attributive level. With regard to the influencing scope, some authors only treat SCR as a reactive capability (Brandon-Jones et al., 2014 ; El Baz and Ruel, 2021 ), while others propose that both reactive and proactive components are indispensable (Gu et al., 2021 ). With regard to the attributive level, SCR is often viewed as a firm’s capability (Ambulkar et al., 2015 ); however, it is more acceptable to belong to a whole supply chain system (Scholten et al., 2020 ). Hence, we define SCR as the capability of a system to maintain its expected functions before disruptions and timely recover to its normal functions during facing interruptions.

SCR has been segmented into various dimensions corresponding to different nodes, disruptive phases, or sub-capabilities. For example, Pournader et al. ( 2016 ) argue that SCR could be divided by the organizational boundary into supplier, internal, and customer resilience. Han et al. ( 2020 ) suggest that SCR could be classified into stages of readiness, response, and recovery. Jüttner and Maklan ( 2011 ) propose that flexibility, velocity, visibility, and collaboration are essential sub-capabilities comprising SCR. Following Cheng and Lu’s study ( 2017 ), we divide SCR into two dimensions: proactive and reactive SCR. Proactive SCR is the capability of a supply chain system to mitigate shocks and keep its normal state before/during possible disruptions. Reactive SCR means the capability of a supply chain system to quickly respond and return to its normal state after experiencing disruptions.

Although previous research has revealed diverse factors in formulating SCR (Razak et al., 2023 ; Scholten and Schilder, 2015 ), transformational leadership is rarely discussed. Prior studies mainly examine the roles of four groups of resources and capabilities in building SCR, including reengineering, collaboration, agility, and risk management culture (Belhadi et al., 2022 ). First, supply chain reengineering is positively related to SCR. Resources and capabilities, such as network structure, security, redundancy, efficiency, innovation, contingency planning, and market position, usually contribute to the realignment of structures and processes within supply chains (Han et al., 2020 ; Tukamuhabwa et al., 2017 ), which could help firms deal with new changes. Second, supply chain collaboration is valuable to build SCR. By developing information sharing, risk and revenue sharing, trust, communication, coordination, and integration, the cooperation among different supply chain partners becomes mutually high-quality (Ali et al., 2017 ; Dubey et al., 2021 ; Zhu et al., 2024 ). Third, supply chain agility facilitates the construction of SCR. Flexibility, velocity, visibility, ambidexterity, market sensitiveness, and disruption mitigation (El Baz and Ruel, 2021 ; Gu et al., 2021 ; Jain et al., 2017 ; Kochan and Nowicki, 2018 ) can increase the responsiveness of a supply chain system when facing dynamic business environment. Fourth, supply chain risk management culture, which involves risk awareness, knowledge management, and training and development of a risk management team, can create a proper culture atmosphere in favor of SCR (Belhadi et al., 2022 ).

Beyond four fostering factors, some research has also identified the interactive effects of mixed resources or capabilities on SCR, like industry 4.0 technologies, social capital, leadership, and business model (Belhadi et al., 2024 ; Gölgeci and Kuivalainen, 2020 ; Shashi et al., 2020 ; Shin and Park, 2021 ). However, we still lack knowledge about the strategic role of transformational leadership in fostering SCR. Antecedents of SCR in existing literature are shown in Table 1 .

Supply chain transformational leadership and supply chain resilience

Transformational leadership refers to leaders’ suitable behaviors that drive their followers’ reformative behaviors through continuous motivation and partnership (Bass, 1985 , 1999 ). Existing literature demonstrates that transformational leadership could affect employee attitude (Peng et al., 2021 ) and team resilience in a firm (Dimas et al., 2018 ), while the strategic role of transformational leadership across an entire supply chain system needs more explanation. According to social learning theory (Brown et al., 2005 ), we regard the focal firm with high levels of SCTL as a credible role model whom other supply chain partners respect, trust, and emulate. In this manner, other supply chain partners are likely to learn transformative behaviors by observing the focal firm.

We view the development of SCTL as a role modeling-learning process. That is, the focal firm with high levels of SCTL has an exemplary influence on other supply chain partners via observing and learning from benchmarks. Specifically, SCTL includes three elements: inspiration, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration (Defee et al., 2010 ). Inspiration implies that the focal firm with high levels of SCTL often articulates a compelling vision about a desirable future for the supply chain system. The focal firm, with intellectual stimulation, tends to stimulate other supply chain partners to solve issues by adopting creative and innovative methods. Individualized consideration helps the focal firm understand differentiated demands of supply chain followers, and assists them respectively. Based on social learning theory (Bommer et al., 2005 ), the focal firm’s transformative behaviors benefit its followers by the conveyance of competence. Before/during disruptive events, the focal firm clarifies a reliable vision and motivates followers to observe what it does to improve firm resilience. Targeted support makes it easier for other supply chain partners to master and emulate the focal firm’s resilient actions. In addition, coordination and trust among firms are developed in the social learning process (Mostafa, 2019 ), constructing closer supply chain relationships. Therefore, SCTL could enhance the proactive dimension of SCR.

The focal firm with high levels of SCTL would not only strengthen the proactive dimension of SCR, but also contribute to the reactive dimension of SCR. Drawing on social learning theory (Bommer et al., 2005 ), the focal firm’s transformative behaviors increase the self-efficacy of other supply chain partners. After supply chain disruptions, the focal firm demonstrates its response and encourages followers to achieve quick recovery through their differentially new insights. Besides, as firms in the supply chain are closely connected, all members’ resilient actions would transform into SCR when there are common goals and effective interactions (Gölgeci and Kuivalainen, 2020 ). In this manner, SCTL contributes to the reactive aspect of SCR. Hence, we hypothesize:

H1: SCTL has a positive influence on (a) proactive dimension and (b) reactive dimension of SCR.

Supply chain transformational leadership and ambidextrous business model

Ambidexterity is a special dynamic ability balancing exploration and exploitation simultaneously (Kristal et al., 2010 ; Lee and Rha, 2016 ). Previous literature has identified that different leadership styles, such as transformational leadership, could foster ambidexterity in firms (Jansen et al., 2008 ; Tarba et al., 2020 ). Ambidextrous business model means a firm’s boundary-spanning transaction mode developed to create and catch business value by balancing activities of redesigning novel governance, content, and structure and reorganizing elements of an existing business model. Miller ( 1996 ) identifies that novelty and efficiency are classic themes of designing business models. Specifically, a novelty-centered business model aims to create value and catch potential opportunities by redesigning a new business model, while an efficiency-centered business model devotes to increasing efficiency and decreasing operational cost by reconstructing the current business model (Feng et al., 2022 ; Wei et al., 2017 ; Zott and Amit, 2008 ). Under the context of plurality, change, and scarcity, leaders in firms have more intentions to make decisions from an ambidexterity perspective (Smith and Lewis, 2011 ). According to social learning theory (Wang and Feng, 2023 ), leaders in the focal firm with high levels of SCTL tend to express a committed attitude and take exemplary actions to maintain balancing operations. In other words, employees would be guided to conduct certain transformative behaviors, raising a flexible organizational culture with their leaders’ values.

SCTL, which is viewed as a role model-building process, includes three components: inspiration, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration (Defee et al., 2010 ). First, the focal firm with high levels of SCTL often articulates a compelling vision and sets high-quality standards. Inspiration by the focal firm’s leaders shows necessary confidence in their subordinates’ abilities and encourages employees to recognize the importance of individual effort in creating and capturing value through exploring and exploiting business opportunities. Additionally, the focal firm’s leaders promote collective goal-setting and collaboration among employees based on a shared vision, creating a supportive organizational context characterized by discipline, stretch, and trust (Ojha et al., 2018 ; Xi et al., 2023 ). Second, the focal firm with high levels of SCTL pays much attention to meeting emerging challenges. Intellectual stimulation by the focal firm’s leaders demonstrates transformative ideas and stimulates their employees to provide new insights under a challenging but supportive atmosphere, increasing organizational creativity and contributing to a stretch context (Elkins and Keller, 2003 ). Third, the focal firm with high levels of SCTL actively understands and helps its internal members. Individualized consideration by the focal firm’s leaders offers differentiated support via one-to-one knowledge exchange and creates a heartwarming condition that promotes more assistance among employees, fostering a culture of support and trust (Bommer et al., 2005 ). While a supportive organizational context is developed (Pan et al., 2021 ), a firm with high levels of SCTL prefers to design an ambidextrous business model. Thus, we hypothesize:

H2: SCTL has a positive influence on an ambidextrous business model.

Ambidextrous business model and supply chain resilience

The development of an ambidextrous business model could be recognized as a role model-engaging process. According to social learning theory (Wang and Feng, 2023 ), the focal firm with high levels of ambidextrous business model would serve as an example that provides a flexible business model for its followers. Then, supply chain followers are likely to trust and attempt to emulate the focal firm’s business model when sensing or experiencing frequent supply chain disruptions.

In detail, the focal firm with a high level of ambidextrous business model shows its supply chain partners how to maintain agility before/during disruptions through a proper organization arrangement. A novelty-centered business model could help other firms realize that they must create and capture value through designing new activities of governance, content, and structure to predict/respond to changing environments before/during disruptions. An efficiency-centered business model guides followers to continuously change the current supply chain into a more robust system (Wei et al., 2017 ; Zott and Amit, 2008 ). Besides, when all firms with high levels of ambidextrous business models tend to balance novelty and efficiency simultaneously, they would contribute to a more robust supply chain by preventive supply chain ambidexterity. Therefore, the ambidextrous business model enhances the proactive dimension of SCR.

The focal firm with high levels of the ambidextrous business model provides other supply chain members a valuable frame to quickly react after disruptions as well. Specifically, a novelty-centered business model stimulates other firms to adopt new ideas and norms in solving issues after disruptive events, improving their adaptability and responsiveness. An efficiency-centered business model helps followers achieve greater transaction efficiency and lower transaction costs, facilitating the adjustment of actions and strategies to rapidly respond to disruptions. In addition, firms with high levels of ambidextrous business models jointly balance novelty and efficiency, establishing a more resilient supply chain through responsive supply chain ambidexterity. SCTL contributes to the reactive dimension of SCR. Hence, we hypothesize:

H3: Ambidextrous business model has a positive influence on (a) proactive dimension and (b) reactive dimension of SCR.

In sum, the ambidextrous business model serves as a proper mediator within the role modeling-learning process. Drawing on social learning theory, the focal firm with high levels of SCTL demonstrates an ambidextrous business model through fostering a supportive organizational context. And then other supply chain partners would actively learn and emulate the focal firm’s typical business model based on their trust and common values, improving SCR by supply chain ambidexterity. An ambidextrous business model could transform SCTL into proactive and reactive dimensions of SCR. Thus, we hypothesize:

H4: Ambidextrous business model mediates the relationship between SCTL and (a) proactive dimension and (b) reactive dimension of SCR.

The moderating role of paradox cognition

Paradox cognition refers to an epistemic framework and process recognizing and juxtaposing contradictory demands, which could make latent tensions within organizations more explicit (Smith and Tushman, 2005 ). The focal firm with paradoxical thinking and cognition could influence learning strategies (Brusoni and Rosenkranz, 2014 ; Sheng et al., 2023 ). That is, paradox cognition may affect the focal firm’s attitude and identification towards tensions (explore or exploit) arising from its contrasting strategic agendas (Smith and Lewis, 2011 ). Based on social learning theory (Bandura, 1977 ), when the focal firm possesses high levels of paradox cognition, it is more likely to recognize the importance of ambidexterity. In this manner, leaders’ transformative behaviors in the focal firm with high levels of SCTL would be more easily accepted and emulated by employees to balance both explorative and exploitive learning activities (Han et al., 2022 ), which may help build an ambidextrous business model. By contrast, when the focal firm has low levels of paradox cognition, it tends to choose either novelty or efficiency in designing a business model. The SCTL-ambidextrous business model relationship becomes less important because contradictions in the focal firm are latent. Hence, we hypothesize:

H5: Paradox cognition enhances the impact of SCTL on an ambidextrous business model.

Combining the hypotheses above, we build a conceptual model to check the influence of SCTL on SCR (including proactive and reactive SCR), the mediating role of the ambidextrous business model within the SCTL–SCR relationship, and the moderating effect of paradox cognition. The conceptual model is illustrated in Fig. 1 .

This figure represents the hypothetical relationships among constructs.

Research design

Procedures and data collection.

We gathered data from Chinese manufacturers. Affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, manufacturing firms in China suffered from many supply chain disruptions, prompting leaders to realize the necessity of keeping a resilient supply chain (Lin et al., 2021 ; Shen and Sun, 2023 ). It is a challenging objective for manufacturing firms in China as they account for a large share of total exports in the global supply chains. Thus, China provided an appropriate context to explore the antecedents of SCR.

Due to the regional imbalanced characteristic of the Chinese economic force and transportation network (Feng et al., 2019 ; Hosseini et al., 2019 ), we selected sampling firms in five typical provinces: Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, Henan, and Inner Mongolia. Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Shandong, in the eastern coastal areas of China, had relatively high levels of economic force and transportation networks. Henan, in the middle area of China, had average levels of economic force and transportation network. By contrast, Inner Mongolia, in the north and west of China, had relatively low levels of economic force and transportation network.

We adopted three steps to design a questionnaire. First, 12 firm executives, including the chief executive officer, general manager, or vice president, were interviewed to confirm the content validity of our study issue. All these individuals were required to be knowledgeable about their firms’ internal operations as well as external partnerships. Second, an initial questionnaire was developed through literature and expert review, translation, and back-translation. Third, a pre-test with another 20 executives was conducted to provide useful suggestions for modification, forming the formal questionnaire.

We randomly chose 200 firms in each province above and sought cooperation via a cover letter introducing the research intention. All participants were ensured confidentiality. Invitations were sent through emails or telephones, and 435 firms agreed to join our survey total. To mitigate common method bias (CMB), we split each questionnaire into two parts (including parts A and B) and invited different respondents in each firm to complete one part respectively. Part A featured demographic characteristics, competitive intensity, SCTL, novelty-centered business model, and SCR, whereas part B included paradox cognition and efficiency-centered business model.

We distributed and received back the questionnaires through emails from May 2020 to December 2020. 317 valid questionnaires were gathered, with an effective response rate of 72.9%. The final sample included 72 firms in Guangdong, 62 firms in Jiangsu, 67 firms in Shandong, 56 firms in Henan, and 60 firms in Inner Mongolia. The average working experience of 634 respondents was 7.19 years. 64.8% of our respondents held the posts of chief executive officer, general manager, or vice president, and 35.2% were operations directors. The detailed features of sampled firms are presented in Table 2 .

We utilized two steps to verify non-response bias (Armstrong and Overton, 1977 ). First, firm size and ownership were compared for the nonresponding and responding firms. Second, differences in firm size, firm age, industry, and ownership between the early and late responses were also examined. These results of the independent t -test suggested that non-response bias in this study was not a serious issue.

We selected the seven-point Likert scale adopted or adapted from previous studies to measure all constructs in the questionnaire (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree).

Supply chain transformational leadership

A refined seven-item scale from Defee et al. ( 2010 ) was applied to measure SCTL. SCTL was operationalized as respondents’ perceptions of their firms’ influences, which are often the outcome of behavioral factors, including inspiration, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration.

Paradox cognition

A seven-item scale from Smith and Lewis ( 2011 ) was used to measure paradox cognition. Respondents were requested to evaluate the degree of their own firms’ dual awareness when making strategic decisions in the last three years.

Ambidextrous business model

A ten-item scale and a nine-item scale were adjusted by Zott and Amit ( 2007 ) to measure the novelty-centered business model and efficiency-centered business model in turn. Additionally, the average value of these two variables was calculated to measure the ambidextrous business model. This approach not only kept convenience to reserve and made logical interpretations for the useful information from both parts but reflected the nature of ambidexterity–seemingly contradictory yet coexisting tensions (Lubatkin et al., 2006 ; Zhang et al., 2015 ).

Following Cheng and Lu ( 2017 ), SCR was divided into two dimensions: proactive and reactive SCR Two altered four-item scales were adopted for proactive and reactive SCR separately (Ambulkar et al., 2015 ; Brandon-Jones et al., 2014 ; Wieland and Wallenburg, 2013 ).

Control variables

To mitigate the roles of other factors on analytical results as much as possible, we controlled five demographic characteristics, including firm size, firm age, industry, ownership, and competitive intensity (Ambulkar et al., 2015 ; Gölgeci and Ponomarov, 2015 ). Firm age and firm size were measured by the natural logarithm of the number of years since foundation and the natural logarithm of the number of employees, respectively (Li et al., 2008 ). One dummy variable was to control industry (1 = high-tech firm, 0 = otherwise), and two dummy variables (including state-owned and collective firms and private firms) were to control ownership. A four-item scale was adjusted by Jaworski and Kohli ( 1993 ) to measure competitive intensity.

Reliability and validity

First, we did a reliability test and explorative factor analysis (EFA). All constructs revealed high reliability with a Cronbach’s alpha value of more than 0.7 (Flynn et al., 1990 ). Seven principal components were extracted, which was consistent with constructs in the scales (Table 3 ). Second, we made a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) by AMOS 24.0 to ensure validity. The results indicated that the measurement model had good fit indices: χ ²/d f  = 2.034; RMSEA = 0.057; CFI = 0.928; NNFI = 0.923; SRMR = 0.038. All constructs’ composite reliability (CR) was more than 0.7, with item loadings varying from 0.760 to 0.939, and all average variance extracted (AVE) values were more than 0.5 (Table 3 ). Thus, the results indicated sufficient convergent validity. Besides, the comparison between shared variances of constructs and the square root of AVE demonstrated that all correlations were less than the corresponding square roots of AVEs (Table 4 ), identifying acceptable discriminant validity. Tables 3 and 4 reported the measure items, reliability, and validity assessment.

Common method bias

We utilized three means to test CMB. First, Harman’s single-factor test was conducted, revealing that there were seven principal components (Table 3 ), and no single factor accounted for most variances in these measures. Second, the fit indices of CFA between the actual seven-factor model and the one-factor model were compared, indicating that the one-factor model got significantly worse fit indices. Third, another common method factor was supplemented to the seven-factor CFA model above and it discovered that the fit indices did not change significantly. As a result, there was no serious CMB.

We adopted hierarchical regression analysis and the bootstrapping method by SPSS 23.0 to examine the research hypotheses. First, the effect of SCTL on SCR was examined. Then, the influence of SCTL on the ambidextrous business model, the effect of the ambidextrous business model on SCR, and the mediating impact of the ambidextrous business model within the SCTL–SCR link were tested. Finally, the moderating effect of paradox cognition in the SCTL–ambidextrous business model relationship was examined. Table 5 reports the results of the hierarchical regression model.

To minimize possible multicollinearity, we generated an interaction with mean-centering of both the independent variable and the moderating variable (Aiken and West, 1991 ). The maximal value of the variance inflation factor (VIF) is 1.739, which is much less than the recommended cut-off of 10. Thus, the multicollinearity is not serious.

H1a and H1b predict the positive impact of SCTL on both dimensions of SCR. Models 5 and 9 in Table 5 show that SCTL has a significantly positive effect on the proactive dimension ( β  = 0.122, p  < 0.05) and reactive dimension ( β  = 0.166, p  < 0.01). Therefore, H1a and H1b are supported.

H2 predicts the positive influence of SCTL on the ambidextrous business model. Model 2 in Table 5 indicates that SCTL has a significantly positive impact on ambidextrous business models ( β  = 0.140, p  < 0.05). Hence, H2 is supported.

H3a and H3b predict the positive role of the ambidextrous business model on both dimensions of SCR. Models 6 and 10 in Table 5 suggest that the ambidextrous business model has a positive effect on the proactive dimension ( β  = 0.241, p  < 0.001) and reactive dimension ( β  = 0.256, p  < 0.001). Therefore, H3a and H3b are supported.

H4a and H4b hypothesize that the ambidextrous business model mediates the relationships between SCTL and two dimensions of SCR. According to Baron and Kenny ( 1986 ), Models 2, 5, and 7 in Table 5 jointly demonstrate that the ambidextrous business model ( β  = 0.228, p  < 0.001) fully mediates the relationship between SCTL ( β  = 0.090, p  > 0.1) and proactive dimension, which supports H4a. Similarly, Models 2, 9, and 11 in Table 5 collectively exhibit that the ambidextrous business model ( β  = 0.237, p  < 0.001) partially mediates the relationship between SCTL ( β  = 0.133, p  < 0.05) and reactive dimension, which supports H4b.

To ensure the robustness of the results, we further used the PROCESS macro to conduct a bootstrapped mediation analysis. As depicted in Table 6 , the results keep consistency with the corresponding results in Table 5 , ensuring the effectiveness of analytical findings before.

H5 hypothesizes that paradox cognition strengthens the impact of SCTL on the ambidextrous business model. Model 3 in Table 5 presents that the interaction of SCTL and paradox cognition is significantly positive ( β  = 0.094, p  < 0.1), which supports H5. Moreover, we applied a simple slope analysis to verify the moderating effect of paradox cognition so that a clearer explanation could be given. As illustrated in Fig. 2 , when levels of paradox cognition are higher, the role of SCTL in the ambidextrous business model becomes stronger. Hence, the result further supports a strengthened effect of paradox cognition in the SCTL–ambidextrous business model relationship.

This figure reflects the moderating effect of paradox cognition on the relationship between supply chain transformational leadership and ambidextrous business model.

Discussions and implications

Discussions.

This study intends to verify the impact of SCTL on both dimensions of SCR (including proactive and reactive SCR) through the ambidextrous business model and the moderating role of paradox cognition. Our results exhibit that SCTL has a positive influence on proactive and reactive SCR. This finding is similar to studies that explore the effect of leader–member exchange on network resilience performance in the supply chain context (Shin and Park, 2021 ) or the effect of transformational supply chain leadership on operational performance (Defee et al., 2010 ). However, these studies only emphasize the necessity of inter-organizational relationships and capabilities within the influential process of supply chain leadership on supply chain performance. Our results show that SCTL contributes to proactive and reactive SCR in a social learning process where both firm resilience and supply chain collaboration are indispensable parts.

Our results demonstrate that an ambidextrous business model mediates the impact of SCTL on SCR. This finding is inconsistent with existing studies about the antecedents or consequences of business models (Schoemaker et al., 2018 ; Shashi et al., 2020 ). One possible explanation is that the ambidextrous business model aims at designing new business models to capture and create value while also reconfiguring new combinations to improve transaction efficiency. Our results also indicate that the ambidextrous business model fully mediates the relationship between SCTL and proactive SCR while partially mediates the relationship between SCTL and reactive SCR. That is, the ambidextrous business model occupies a more important position in the SCTL-proactive dimension link. A possible reason could be that compared with intellectual stimulation, the influence of inspiration and individualized consideration is more dispersive within a longer time, improving the necessity of an ambidextrous business model. These results provide new insights to realize how SCTL enhances SCR.

In addition, we identify that paradox cognition strengthens the effect of SCTL on an ambidextrous business model. When the focal firm has high levels of paradox cognition, it tends to recognize the importance of ambidexterity. In this manner, the focal firm’s transformative behaviors would be more easily accepted and emulated by employees to balance both explorative and exploitive learning activities (Han et al., 2022 ), building an ambidextrous business model. This outcome verifies our research hypothesis, indicating the importance of paradox cognition in the SCTL–ambidextrous business model link.

Theoretical contributions

This study contributes to managerial research in three aspects. First, we enrich the antecedents of SCR by confirming the role of SCTL. Existing studies emphasize the impacts of specific resources or capabilities on SCR, such as agility, redundancy, and collaboration (Al Naimi et al., 2021 ; Tukamuhabwa et al., 2015 ), while the strategic effect of SCTL is rarely discussed. Previous literature has identified that transformational leadership could improve employee attitude (Peng et al., 2021 ) and team resilience (Dimas et al., 2018 ) at the firm level. Our research extends the concept of transformational leadership to the whole supply chain system and proposes that the focal firm with high levels of SCTL can improve proactive and reactive SCR. Hence, we contribute to the field of SCTL and SCR.

Second, we reveal the ‘black box’ of how SCTL impacts SCR by examining the mediating role of the ambidextrous business model. Existing studies reveal the influence of transformational leadership on organizational ambidexterity (Eng et al., 2023 ) and the impact of organizational ambidexterity on SCR (Aslam et al., 2022 ), while we still lack understanding of how SCTL affects SCR. Previous literature has demonstrated that redesigning a supply chain with high levels of concentration plays a significant role in protecting firm performance when suffering from disruptions (Liu et al., 2023 ). Hence, we contribute to the SCTL and SCR literature by showing a partial mediating effect of the ambidextrous business model in the SCTL–proactive SCR relationship and a fully mediating effect of ambidextrous business model in the SCTL–reactive SCR relationship.

Third, we clarify the boundary condition for the SCTL–ambidextrous business model relationship by examining the moderating effect of paradox cognition. Existing studies show that the efficiency of the learning process would be influenced by external stakeholders (Song et al., 2020 ; Wang and Feng, 2023 ), while the interactive role of internal factors is largely ignored. Previous literature has argued that organizational learning may be influenced by paradoxical thinking and cognition (Brusoni and Rosenkranz, 2014 ). Our findings suggest that paradox cognition would affect the focal firm’s attitude and identification towards tensions (explore or exploit) arising from its contrasting strategic agendas. Under high levels of paradox cognition, the focal firm is more likely to recognize and embrace tensions, making well-balanced decisions. Thus, the efficiency of social learning from SCTL to ambidextrous business model improves, which further emphasizes the necessity of developing paradox cognition within the learning process.

Managerial implications

This study offers three suggestions for managerial practice. First, managers should undertake leading roles and encourage member firms within the supply chain to improve SCR. In a dynamic and uncertain context, the focal firm with high levels of SCTL is effective to motivate its supply chain partners’ transformative behaviors. Managers should develop a reliable role model whom their followers trust and attempt to emulate. They should also develop two types of SCR, including proactive and reactive SCR. Additionally, they should articulate a compelling vision for all supply chain members, providing individualized training to meet the differentiated needs of firms and stimulating supply chain partners to create new insights with a supportive and challenging atmosphere.

Second, managers should establish an ambidextrous business model in firms. The focal firm with high levels of SCTL often demonstrates an ambidextrous business model by fostering a supportive organizational context. Managers should design an ambidextrous business model balancing both novelty and efficiency. Furthermore, they are suggested to motivate other supply chain followers to learn and emulate the focal firm’s transformative behaviors through a shared system vision, promoting communication and coordination among supply chain members.

Third, managers should foster a paradox cognition framework within their firms. Under high levels of paradox cognition, the focal firm is more likely to recognize the importance of ambidexterity and solve tensions from an ambidexterity perspective. Transformative behaviors of the focal firm would be more easily accepted and emulated by its employees. Managers should provide a proper organizational context for employees to improve their paradoxical thinking and cognition to quickly respond to disruptions.

Conclusion and limitations

Drawing on social learning theory, this study clarifies the impact of SCTL on SCR. Our findings reveal that SCTL has a positive influence on both proactive and reactive SCR. In addition, the ambidextrous business model fully mediates the relationship between SCTL and proactive SCR while also partially mediating the relationship between SCTL and reactive SCR. Paradox cognition strengthens the effect of SCTL on the ambidextrous business model.

This study has a few limitations, of course. First, we must demonstrate the effect of SCTL on SCR. Future research could try investigating the roles of other factors, such as transactional leadership to enrich antecedents of SCR. Second, this study only explores the mediating role of the ambidextrous business model between SCTL and SCR. In the future, other possible realization paths from the configurational perspective should be verified (Feng and Sheng, 2023 ). Third, we must identify the moderating impact of paradox cognition within the SCTL–ambidextrous business model relationship. Scholars are suggested to discover more possible boundary conditions like dynamic environment, and build a moderated mediation model to further explore the roles of potential moderators.

Data availability

All data generated and analyzed during the current study are included in this article and a supplementary Excel spreadsheet called ‘Dataset’ which contains all items’ values from questionnaires and other control variables’ values.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72172040), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (HIT.HSS.ESD202333), and the Taishan Scholar Project of Shandong Province (tsqn201909154).

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School of Economics and Management, Harbin Institute of Technology (Weihai), Weihai, China

Taiwen Feng & Zhihui Si

School of Economics and Management, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China

Wenbo Jiang

College of New Energy, Harbin Institute of Technology (Weihai), Weihai, China

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Taiwen Feng: Conceptualization, investigation, data curation, funding acquisition, supervision, writing-review and editing. Zhihui Si: Methodology, data curation, formal analysis, writing-original draft, and editing. Wenbo Jiang: Investigation, data curation, writing-review, and editing. Jianyu Tan: Data curation, writing-review, and editing.

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The survey process and procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki. Ethics approval was obtained from the Professor Committee at the School of Economics and Management of Harbin Institute of Technology (Weihai), China. The ethical approval protocol number 2020-01.

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Feng, T., Si, Z., Jiang, W. et al. Supply chain transformational leadership and resilience: the mediating role of ambidextrous business model. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 628 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03099-x

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Economic complexity, greenfield investments, and energy innovation: policy implications for sustainable development goals in newly industrialised economies

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• Muhammad Farhan Bashir   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5103-4639 1 ,
• Roula Inglesi-Lotz 2 ,
• Ummara Razi 3 , 4 &
• Luqman Shahzad 5  

The crucial role of environmental assessment quality has been recognised by environmental and sustainable development goals in addressing climate change challenges. By focusing on the key identifier of environmental assessment, progress can be made towards overcoming climate change issues effectively. The current study considers environmental commitments under COP28 to study the role of economic complexity, greenfield investments, and energy innovation in environmental degradation in newly industrialised economies from 1995 to 2021. We employ novel panel estimations from CS-ARDL, CS-DL, AMG, and CCEMG to confirm that economic growth and greenfield investments degrade environmental quality. On the other hand, energy innovation and urbanisation improve environmental sustainability. Lastly, we confirm the EKC hypothesis for economic complexity as well. Given the reported empirical findings, the study suggests policymakers must focus on economic complexity to transform industrial sectors’ economic potential. Furthermore, foreign investment projects must be linked with environmental goals to increase renewable energy capacity.

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Turkey, Thailand, South Africa, Philippines, Mexico, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, China, Brazil.

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Moreover, we acknowledge funding support from Project (Grant No:2023JJ40061) supported by Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province.

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Muhammad Farhan Bashir

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Roula Inglesi-Lotz

Department of Economic and Finance, Sunway Business School, Sunway University, Subang Jaya, Malaysia

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Muhammad Farhan Bashir: conceptualization, methodology, writing draft, writing—revision; Roula Inglesi-Lotz: data curation, writing draft, methodology, data analysis; Ummara Razi: writing draft; Luqman Shahzad: data curation; methodology.

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Bashir, M.F., Inglesi-Lotz, R., Razi, U. et al. Economic complexity, greenfield investments, and energy innovation: policy implications for sustainable development goals in newly industrialised economies. Environ Sci Pollut Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-024-33433-4

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-024-33433-4

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Female labor force participation

Across the globe, women face inferior income opportunities compared with men. Women are less likely to work for income or actively seek work. The global labor force participation rate for women is just over 50% compared to 80% for men. Women are less likely to work in formal employment and have fewer opportunities for business expansion or career progression. When women do work, they earn less. Emerging evidence from recent household survey data suggests that these gender gaps are heightened due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Women’s work and GDP

Women’s work is posited to be related to development through the process of economic transformation.

Levels of female labor force participation are high for the poorest economies generally, where agriculture is the dominant sector and women often participate in small-holder agricultural work. Women’s participation in the workforce is lower in middle-income economies which have much smaller shares of agricultural activities. Finally, among high-income economies, female labor force participation is again higher, accompanied by a shift towards a service sector-based economy and higher education levels among women.

This describes the posited  U-shaped relationship  between development (proxied by GDP per capita) and female labor force participation where women’s work participation is high for the poorest economies, lower for middle income economies, and then rises again among high income economies.

This theory of the U-shape is observed globally across economies of different income levels. But this global picture may be misleading. As more recent studies have found, this pattern does not hold within regions or when looking within a specific economy over time as their income levels rise.

In no region do we observe a U-shape pattern in female participation and GDP per capita over the past three decades.

Structural transformation, declining fertility, and increasing female education in many parts of the world have not resulted in significant increases in women’s participation as was theorized. Rather, rigid historic, economic, and social structures and norms factor into stagnant female labor force participation.

Historical view of women’s participation and GDP

Taking a historical view of female participation and GDP, we ask another question: Do lower income economies today have levels of participation that mirror levels that high-income economies had decades earlier?

The answer is no.

This suggests that the relationship of female labor force participation to GDP for lower-income economies today is different than was the case decades past. This could be driven by numerous factors -- changing social norms, demographics, technology, urbanization, to name a few possible drivers.

Gendered patterns in type of employment

Gender equality is not just about equal access to jobs but also equal access for men and women to good jobs. The type of work that women do can be very different from the type of work that men do. Here we divide work into two broad categories: vulnerable work and wage work.

The Gender gap in vulnerable and wage work by GDP per capita

Vulnerable employment is closely related to GDP per capita. Economies with high rates of vulnerable employment are low-income contexts with a large agricultural sector. In these economies, women tend to make up the higher share of the vulnerably employed. As economy income levels rise, the gender gap also flips, with men being more likely to be in vulnerable work when they have a job than women.

From COVID-19 crisis to recovery

The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated these gender gaps in employment. Although comprehensive official statistics from labor force surveys are not yet available for all economies,  emerging studies  have consistently documented that working women are taking a harder hit from the crisis. Different patterns by sector and vulnerable work do not explain this. That is, this result is not driven by the sectors in which women work or their higher rates of vulnerable work—within specific work categories, women fared worse than men in terms of COVID-19 impacts on jobs.

Among other explanations is that women have borne the brunt of the increase in the demand for care work (especially for children). A strong and inclusive recovery will require efforts which address this and other underlying drivers of gender gaps in employment opportunities.

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REVIEW article

This article is part of the research topic.

Pathogen-Induced Immunosenescence: Where do Vaccines Stand?

TB and HIV Induced Immunosenescence: Where do vaccines play a role? Provisionally Accepted

• 1 Western University of Health Sciences, United States
• 2 Chamberlain University, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

This paper tackles the complex interplay between Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) and Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) infections, particularly their contribution to immunosenescence, the age-related decline in immune function. Using the current literature, we discuss the immunological mechanisms behind TB and HIV-induced immunosenescence and critically evaluate the BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guérin) vaccine's role. Both HIV-1 and M. tuberculosis demonstrably accelerate immunosenescence: M. tuberculosis through DNA modification and heightened inflammation, and HIV-1 through chronic immune activation and T cell production compromise. HIV-1 and M. tuberculosis co-infection further hastens immunosenescence by affecting T cell differentiation, underscoring the need for prevention and treatment. Furthermore, the use of the BCG tuberculosis vaccine is contraindicated in patients who are HIV positive and there is a lack of investigation regarding the use of this vaccine in patients who develop HIV co-infection with possible immunosenescence. As HIV does not currently have a vaccine, we focus our review more so on the BCG vaccine response as a result of immunosenescence. We found that there are overall limitations with the BCG vaccine, one of which is that it cannot necessarily prevent reoccurance of infection due to effects of immunosenescence or protect the elderly due to this reason. Overall, there is conflicting evidence to show the vaccine's usage due to factors involving its production and administration. Further research into developing a vaccine for HIV and improving the BCG vaccine is warranted to expand scientific understanding for public health and beyond.

Keywords: immunosenescence, M. tuberculosis, Vaccine3, BCG, HIV

Received: 14 Feb 2024; Accepted: 13 May 2024.

Copyright: © 2024 Singh, Patel, Seo, Ahn, Shen, Nakka, Kishore and Venketaraman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Mx. Vishwanath Venketaraman, Western University of Health Sciences, Pomona, 91766-1854, California, United States

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