Source: Developed for this study
Extant guidelines for conducting literature reviews in various
disciplines including business Snyder (2019), psychology (Baumeister &
Leary, 1997), management (Tranfield, Denyer, & Smart, 2003), human
resource (Torraco, 2005), medicine (Liberati et al., 2009; Wong,
Greenhalgh, Westhorp, Buckingham, & Pawson, 2013), social sciences
(Davis, Mengersen, Bennett, & Mazerolle, 2014), marketing (Palmatier,
Houston, & Hulland, 2018), and (Onwuegbuzie & Frels, 2016). For IS, we
found the works of Okoli and Schabram (2010), and Okoli (2015a). A
phrase we consistently came across in literature was “comprehensive
literature review”. Specifically, we were concerned about the
term/concept “comprehensive”. This term seemed to be used
interchangeably with “systematic”. However, they do not mean entirely
the same. We perceive that in the context of narrative literature
review, “comprehensive” may be the most appropriate terms whilst in
systematic literature review, “exhaustive” may serve a better purpose.
Unfortunately, majority of authors do not comprehensively search and
synthesis extant literature, which effectively impact the
generalizability of the findings of such studies. As one editor-in-chief
asserts in response to a narrative review/conceptual paper we wrote: