Academic theories as the major objects to study in literature review

On conducting literature review, many of my business students have difficulty to understand, evaluate and choose suitable theories to be employed in their dissertation projects. One reason is that, their dissertation project supervisors, not being their private tutors, will not teach their supervisees academic theories as reported in the academic literature relevant to the students' project works.

It is not the purpose of this note to discuss how students could learn the academic theories by themselves. Rather, I want to point out why academic theories are the main objects to study in literature review for students' dissertation project works.

Basically, a theory is a system of ideas intended to explain something based on certain principles. From this definition, it can then be said that an academic theory is a system of academic ideas intended to explain something based on certain principles as discussed by the pertinent academic community. Moreover, such an academic theory, to be useful, is expected to have a certain extent of wide applicability.

Beyond that, as the agile literature review approach (ALRA) of this writer recommends to business students, the literature review should examine the following five categories of academic ideas:

1. concept definitions (with defining characteristics) and their operationalization. They comprise the "know-what" knowledge type.

2. analytical academic ideas that examine the explanation mechanisms on certain objects of study (i.e. the notion of theory); they cover the "know-why" type of knowledge.

3. analytical academic ideas on how to evaluate certain objects of study. They cover the "know-how" type of knowledge.

4. analytical academic ideas on how to design and implement certain business practices. They cover the "know-how" type of knowledge.

5. analytical academic ideas on how to critically reflect on the socially constructed nature of academic ideas (i.e., items 1-4 above). They cover the critical knowledge to examine other categories of knowledge (e.g., academic ideas.

We can loosely label these academic ideas in the five categories theories, even though only the category 2 academic ideas should be considered as theories, to be proper, based on the definition of theory mentioned above.

In ALRA, I recommend students to select analytical academic ideas (i.e., analytical academic ideas 2, 3, and 4) to produce a theoretical framework level-1a as a major product of their literature review. Subsequently, the students doing their dissertation projects are asked to employ the chosen set of analytical academic ideas (notably, the chosen theories) to inform their research design and findings analysis. Certainly, in the dissertation chapter content of literature review, all five categories of academic ideas are to be employed in the review writing. 

As to the theoretical framework level-1a construction, students are encouraged to select a few analytical academic ideas that are relatively complex and sophisticated. I especially make this recommendation to my MBA students as the expectation on their intellectual competence is higher than that of the undergraduate students. Obviously, universities will not accept MBA students to make use of the PEST analysis or the SWOT analysis  as their prime analytical academic concepts for their dissertation works. Eventually, students should, via their literature review writing, show that they have achieved the expected high-level learning from the literature review endeavor in terms of Bloom's taxonomy of learning.

No matter what, out of the discussion above in the fields of business management and in the agile literature review approach, it should be clear that academic theories are the major objects to study in the literature review exercise.