How to Undertake an Impactful Literature Review: Understanding Review Approaches and Guidelines for High-impact Systematic Literature Reviews

Abstract

Literature reviews lay the foundation for academic investigations, especially for early career researchers. However, in the planning phase, we generally lack clarity on approaches, due to which a lot of review articles are rejected or fail to create a significant impact. The systematic literature review (SLR) is one of the important review methodologies which is increasingly becoming popular to synthesize literature in any discipline in general and management in particular. In this article, we explain the SLR methodology and provide guidelines for performing and documenting these studies. Through systematic processes, these reviews offer suggestions to synthesize literature to identify research gaps and indicate research directions. Lastly, this article serves as a guide for researchers and academics in conducting an extensive literature review.