literature review method in research

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• Literature Review Research
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Literature Review

• What is a Literature Review?
• What is NOT a Literature Review?
• Purposes of a Literature Review
• Types of Literature Reviews
• Literature Reviews vs. Systematic Reviews
• Systematic vs. Meta-Analysis

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.

Also, we can define a literature review as the collected body of scholarly works related to a topic:

• Summarizes and analyzes previous research relevant to a topic
• Includes scholarly books and articles published in academic journals
• Can be an specific scholarly paper or a section in a research paper

The objective of a Literature Review is to find previous published scholarly works relevant to an specific topic

• Help gather ideas or information
• Keep up to date in current trends and findings
• Help develop new questions

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.
• Helps focus your own research questions or problems
• Discovers relationships between research studies/ideas.
• Suggests unexplored ideas or populations
• Identifies major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic.
• Tests assumptions; may help counter preconceived ideas and remove unconscious bias.
• Identifies critical gaps, points of disagreement, or potentially flawed methodology or theoretical approaches.
• Indicates potential directions for future research.

All content in this section is from Literature Review Research from Old Dominion University 

Keep in mind the following, a literature review is NOT:

Not an essay 

Not an annotated bibliography  in which you summarize each article that you have reviewed.  A literature review goes beyond basic summarizing to focus on the critical analysis of the reviewed works and their relationship to your research question.

Not a research paper   where you select resources to support one side of an issue versus another.  A lit review should explain and consider all sides of an argument in order to avoid bias, and areas of agreement and disagreement should be highlighted.

A literature review serves several purposes. For example, it

• provides thorough knowledge of previous studies; introduces seminal works.
• helps focus one’s own research topic.
• identifies a conceptual framework for one’s own research questions or problems; indicates potential directions for future research.
• suggests previously unused or underused methodologies, designs, quantitative and qualitative strategies.
• identifies gaps in previous studies; identifies flawed methodologies and/or theoretical approaches; avoids replication of mistakes.
• helps the researcher avoid repetition of earlier research.
• suggests unexplored populations.
• determines whether past studies agree or disagree; identifies controversy in the literature.
• tests assumptions; may help counter preconceived ideas and remove unconscious bias.

As Kennedy (2007) notes*, 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 original studies. Third, there are the perceptions, conclusions, opinion, and interpretations that are shared informally that become part of the lore of 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 several approaches to how they can be done, depending upon the type of analysis underpinning your study. Listed below are definitions of types of literature reviews:

Argumentative Review      This form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply imbedded 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 to make summary claims of the sort found in systematic reviews.

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. A well-done integrative review meets the same standards as primary research in regard to clarity, rigor, and replication.

Historical Review      Few things rest in isolation from historical precedent. Historical reviews are focused 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 [content], but how they said it [method of analysis]. This approach provides a framework of understanding at different levels (i.e. those of theory, substantive fields, research approaches and data collection and analysis techniques), enables researchers to draw on 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, and helps highlight many ethical issues which we should be aware of and consider as we go through our 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 analyse data from the studies that are included in the review. 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?"

Theoretical Review      The purpose of this form is to concretely examine the corpus of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue, concept, theory, phenomena. The theoretical literature review help 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.

* Kennedy, Mary M. "Defining a Literature."  Educational Researcher  36 (April 2007): 139-147.

All content in this section is from The Literature Review created by Dr. Robert Larabee USC

Robinson, P. and Lowe, J. (2015),  Literature reviews vs systematic reviews.  Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 39: 103-103. doi: 10.1111/1753-6405.12393

What's in the name? The difference between a Systematic Review and a Literature Review, and why it matters . By Lynn Kysh from University of Southern California

Systematic review or meta-analysis?

A  systematic review  answers a defined research question by collecting and summarizing all empirical evidence that fits pre-specified eligibility criteria.

A  meta-analysis  is the use of statistical methods to summarize the results of these studies.

Systematic reviews, just like other research articles, can be of varying quality. They are a significant piece of work (the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at York estimates that a team will take 9-24 months), and to be useful to other researchers and practitioners they should have:

• clearly stated objectives with pre-defined eligibility criteria for studies
• explicit, reproducible methodology
• a systematic search that attempts to identify all studies
• assessment of the validity of the findings of the included studies (e.g. risk of bias)
• systematic presentation, and synthesis, of the characteristics and findings of the included studies

Not all systematic reviews contain meta-analysis. 

Meta-analysis is the use of statistical methods to summarize the results of independent studies. By combining information from all relevant studies, meta-analysis can provide more precise estimates of the effects of health care than those derived from the individual studies included within a review.  More information on meta-analyses can be found in  Cochrane Handbook, Chapter 9 .

A meta-analysis goes beyond critique and integration and conducts secondary statistical analysis on the outcomes of similar studies.  It is a systematic review that uses quantitative methods to synthesize and summarize the results.

An advantage of a meta-analysis is the ability to be completely objective in evaluating research findings.  Not all topics, however, have sufficient research evidence to allow a meta-analysis to be conducted.  In that case, an integrative review is an appropriate strategy. 

Some of the content in this section is from Systematic reviews and meta-analyses: step by step guide created by Kate McAllister.

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• What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

Published on 22 February 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 7 June 2022.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research.

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarise sources – it analyses, synthesises, and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

Why write a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1: search for relevant literature, step 2: evaluate and select sources, step 3: identify themes, debates and gaps, step 4: outline your literature review’s structure, step 5: write your literature review, frequently asked questions about literature reviews, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a dissertation or thesis, you will have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position yourself in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your dissertation addresses a gap or contributes to a debate

You might also have to write a literature review as a stand-alone assignment. In this case, the purpose is to evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of scholarly debates around a topic.

The content will look slightly different in each case, but the process of conducting a literature review follows the same steps. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research objectives and questions .

If you are writing a literature review as a stand-alone assignment, you will have to choose a focus and develop a central question to direct your search. Unlike a dissertation research question, this question has to be answerable without collecting original data. You should be able to answer it based only on a review of existing publications.

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research topic. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list if you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can use boolean operators to help narrow down your search:

Read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

To identify the most important publications on your topic, take note of recurring citations. If the same authors, books or articles keep appearing in your reading, make sure to seek them out.

You probably won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on the topic – you’ll have to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your questions.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models and methods? Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• How does the publication contribute to your understanding of the topic? What are its key insights and arguments?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible, and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can find out how many times an article has been cited on Google Scholar – a high citation count means the article has been influential in the field, and should certainly be included in your literature review.

The scope of your review will depend on your topic and discipline: in the sciences you usually only review recent literature, but in the humanities you might take a long historical perspective (for example, to trace how a concept has changed in meaning over time).

Remember that you can use our template to summarise and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using!

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It’s important to keep track of your sources with references to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography, where you compile full reference information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

You can use our free APA Reference Generator for quick, correct, consistent citations.

To begin organising your literature review’s argument and structure, you need to understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly-visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat – this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organising the body of a literature review. You should have a rough idea of your strategy before you start writing.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarising sources in order.

Try to analyse patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organise your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text, your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

If you are writing the literature review as part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate your central problem or research question and give a brief summary of the scholarly context. You can emphasise the timeliness of the topic (“many recent studies have focused on the problem of x”) or highlight a gap in the literature (“while there has been much research on x, few researchers have taken y into consideration”).

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, make sure to follow these tips:

• Summarise and synthesise: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole.
• Analyse and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole.
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources.
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transitions and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts.

In the conclusion, you should summarise the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasise their significance.

If the literature review is part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate how your research addresses gaps and contributes new knowledge, or discuss how you have drawn on existing theories and methods to build a framework for your research. This can lead directly into your methodology section.

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a dissertation , thesis, research paper , or proposal .

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarise yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your  dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

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

• Planning the Review
• The Research Question
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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. 

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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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Literature Reviews

• Getting started

What is a literature review?

Why conduct a literature review, stages of a literature review, lit reviews: an overview (video), check out these books.

• Types of reviews
• 1. Define your research question
• 2. Plan your search
• 3. Search the literature
• 4. Organize your results
• 5. Synthesize your findings
• 6. Write the review
• Artificial intelligence (AI) tools
• Thompson Writing Studio This link opens in a new window
• Need to write a systematic review? This link opens in a new window

Contact a Librarian

Ask a Librarian

Definition: A literature review is a systematic examination and synthesis of existing scholarly research on a specific topic or subject.

Purpose: It serves to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge within a particular field.

Analysis: Involves critically evaluating and summarizing key findings, methodologies, and debates found in academic literature.

Identifying Gaps: Aims to pinpoint areas where there is a lack of research or unresolved questions, highlighting opportunities for further investigation.

Contextualization: Enables researchers to understand how their work fits into the broader academic conversation and contributes to the existing body of knowledge.

tl;dr  A literature review critically examines and synthesizes existing scholarly research and publications on a specific topic to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current state of knowledge in the field.

What is a literature review NOT?

❌ An annotated bibliography

❌ Original research

❌ A summary

❌ Something to be conducted at the end of your research

❌ An opinion piece

❌ A chronological compilation of studies

The reason for conducting a literature review is to:

Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students

While this 9-minute video from NCSU is geared toward graduate students, it is useful for anyone conducting a literature review.

Writing the literature review: A practical guide

Available 3rd floor of Perkins

Writing literature reviews: A guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences

Available online!

So, you have to write a literature review: A guided workbook for engineers

Telling a research story: Writing a literature review

The literature review: Six steps to success

Systematic approaches to a successful literature review

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Writing a Literature Review

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

• An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
• A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
• Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
• Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

• Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
• Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

• Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
• Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
• Qualitative versus quantitative research
• Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
• Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

• It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
• Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
• Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
• Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

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• Steps in Conducting a Literature Review

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

APA Style Blog - for those harder to find answers

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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Research Methods: Literature Reviews

• Annotated Bibliographies
• Literature Reviews
• Scoping Reviews
• Systematic Reviews
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
• Persuasive Arguments
• Subject Specific Methodology

A literature review involves researching, reading, analyzing, evaluating, and summarizing scholarly literature (typically journals and articles) about a specific topic. The results of a literature review may be an entire report or article OR may be part of a article, thesis, dissertation, or grant proposal. A literature review helps the author learn about the history and nature of their topic, and identify research gaps and problems.

Steps & Elements

Problem formulation

• Determine your topic and its components by asking a question
• Research: locate literature related to your topic to identify the gap(s) that can be addressed
• Read: read the articles or other sources of information
• Analyze: assess the findings for relevancy
• Evaluating: determine how the article are relevant to your research and what are the key findings
• Synthesis: write about the key findings and how it is relevant to your research

Elements of a Literature Review

• Summarize subject, issue or theory under consideration, along with objectives of the review
• Divide works under review into categories (e.g. those in support of a particular position, those against, those offering alternative theories entirely)
• Explain how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others
• Conclude 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 an area of research

Writing a Literature Review Resources

• How to Write a Literature Review From the Wesleyan University Library
• Write a Literature Review From the University of California Santa Cruz Library. A Brief overview of a literature review, includes a list of stages for writing a lit review.
• Literature Reviews From the University of North Carolina Writing Center. Detailed information about writing a literature review.
• Undertaking a literature review: a step-by-step approach Cronin, P., Ryan, F., & Coughan, M. (2008). Undertaking a literature review: A step-by-step approach. British Journal of Nursing, 17(1), p.38-43

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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.

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A literature review is a discussion of the literature (aka. the "research" or "scholarship") surrounding a certain topic. A good literature review doesn't simply summarize the existing material, but provides thoughtful synthesis and analysis. The purpose of a literature review is to orient your own work within an existing body of knowledge. A literature review may be written as a standalone piece or be included in a larger body of work.

You can read more about literature reviews, what they entail, and how to write one, using the resources below. 

Am I the only one struggling to write a literature review?

Dr. Zina O'Leary explains the misconceptions and struggles students often have with writing a literature review. She also provides step-by-step guidance on writing a persuasive literature review.

An Introduction to Literature Reviews

Dr. Eric Jensen, Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, and Dr. Charles Laurie, Director of Research at Verisk Maplecroft, explain how to write a literature review, and why researchers need to do so. Literature reviews can be stand-alone research or part of a larger project. They communicate the state of academic knowledge on a given topic, specifically detailing what is still unknown.

This is the first video in a whole series about literature reviews. You can find the rest of the series in our SAGE database, Research Methods:

Videos covering research methods and statistics

Identify Themes and Gaps in Literature (with real examples) | Scribbr

Finding connections between sources is key to organizing the arguments and structure of a good literature review. In this video, you'll learn how to identify themes, debates, and gaps between sources, using examples from real papers.

4 Tips for Writing a Literature Review's Intro, Body, and Conclusion | Scribbr

While each review will be unique in its structure--based on both the existing body of both literature and the overall goals of your own paper, dissertation, or research--this video from Scribbr does a good job simplifying the goals of writing a literature review for those who are new to the process. In this video, you’ll learn what to include in each section, as well as 4 tips for the main body illustrated with an example.

• Literature Review This chapter in SAGE's Encyclopedia of Research Design describes the types of literature reviews and scientific standards for conducting literature reviews.
• UNC Writing Center: Literature Reviews This handout from the Writing Center at UNC will explain what literature reviews are and offer insights into the form and construction of literature reviews in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
• Purdue OWL: Writing a Literature Review The overview of literature reviews comes from Purdue's Online Writing Lab. It explains the basic why, what, and how of writing a literature review.

Organizational Tools for Literature Reviews

One of the most daunting aspects of writing a literature review is organizing your research. There are a variety of strategies that you can use to help you in this task. We've highlighted just a few ways writers keep track of all that information! You can use a combination of these tools or come up with your own organizational process. The key is choosing something that works with your own learning style.

Citation Managers

Citation managers are great tools, in general, for organizing research, but can be especially helpful when writing a literature review. You can keep all of your research in one place, take notes, and organize your materials into different folders or categories. Read more about citations managers here:

• Manage Citations & Sources

Concept Mapping

Some writers use concept mapping (sometimes called flow or bubble charts or "mind maps") to help them visualize the ways in which the research they found connects.

There is no right or wrong way to make a concept map. There are a variety of online tools that can help you create a concept map or you can simply put pen to paper. To read more about concept mapping, take a look at the following help guides:

• Using Concept Maps From Williams College's guide, Literature Review: A Self-guided Tutorial

Synthesis Matrix

A synthesis matrix is is a chart you can use to help you organize your research into thematic categories. By organizing your research into a matrix, like the examples below, can help you visualize the ways in which your sources connect. 

• Walden University Writing Center: Literature Review Matrix Find a variety of literature review matrix examples and templates from Walden University.
• Writing A Literature Review and Using a Synthesis Matrix An example synthesis matrix created by NC State University Writing and Speaking Tutorial Service Tutors. If you would like a copy of this synthesis matrix in a different format, like a Word document, please ask a librarian. CC-BY-SA 3.0
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The Linkage Between Digital Transformation and Organizational Culture: Novel Machine Learning Literature Review Based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation

• Open access
• Published: 21 May 2024

Cite this article

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• Tobias Reisberger   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0003-0190-7368 1 ,
• Philip Reisberger   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0004-4678-4151 1 ,
• Lukáš Copuš   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9502-830X 1 ,
• Peter Madzík   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1655-6500 1 &
• Lukáš Falát   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2597-7059 2  

Organizational culture is a crucial component of innovation in company success, particularly in the setting of the information economy. The purpose of this research is to conduct a bibliometric analysis in order to identify dominant research topics, their potential shifts, and recent developments in the fields of organizational culture and digital transformation. It demonstrates a machine learning–supported method for identifying and segmenting the current state of this research field. The literature was identified from the Scopus database through a search query. The analyzed amount of papers (3065) was published in 1619 sources (journals, proceedings, books, etc.) with various research impacts. Identifying the dominant research topics resulted in eight topics: Social Media Connectivity; Digital Innovation Ecosystems; Socio-economic Sustainability; Digital Workforce Transformation; Digital Competence and Cultural Transformation; Knowledge, Culture, and Innovation; Data and Resource Management; and Digital Transformation Maturity. The results showed a shift in the research field on organizational culture related to digital transformation towards the subject area of business, management, and accounting, with increasing research interest and impact for the Digital Workforce Transformation as well as for the Knowledge, Culture, and Innovation topics.

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

In recent years, the world has gone through many events that have changed how we live, relax, work, or communicate. These changes are still resonating in the business environment, for example, in the transition to partial or complete work from home and bring several challenges that organizations have to deal with (Yang et al., 2023 ). One of the crucial areas is the socialization of employees and the formation and maintenance of organizational values expressed by the organizational culture (Noto et al., 2023 ).

Organizational culture has been well-researched since the early 1980s (O’Reilly et al., 1991 ; Schein, 1985 ). The focus originated in American-based qualitative studies and shifted over time towards a more international perspective (Cameron & Quinn, 1999 ; Denison & Mishra, 1995 ; Hofstede, 1998 ), as well as adopting a more quantitative viewpoint with many published papers (O’Reilly et al., 2014 ). Several different areas of organizational culture have already been analyzed, including performance, motivation, leadership, and innovation, among many others (Affes & Affes, 2022 ; Aasi & Rusu, 2017 ; Abu Bakar et al., 2021 ). One of the up-to-date research areas is the topic of digitalization.

The advent of automation and digitalization and the resulting digital transformation in recent history have significantly impacted many markets and organizations and influenced the behaviors and expectations of customers. Digital transformation is driven by several external factors, including the rapid growth and adoption of new technologies that foster e-commerce, big data, a changing competitive landscape, and altered consumption behavior, driven by better-informed, connected, and more empowered customers (Verhoef et al., 2021 ). It provides many challenges and opportunities, including relevant impacts on organizational culture (Alloghani et al., 2022 ). In recent years, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant influence on organizational culture (Daum & Maraist, 2021 ; Spicer, 2020 ).

Even before the pandemic, the fast development of digital technologies, including automation, smart technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and robots, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT) is radically altering the nature of work and of organizations (Nimawat & Gidwani, 2021 ). The combination of technological advancements was coined as the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0 by Klaus Schwab in late 2015 (Schwab, 2015 ). The speed and scope of current technological changes are prompting concerns about the extent to which new technologies will fundamentally alter organizational cultures, workplaces, or completely replace workers (Acemoglu & Autor, 2011 ; Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014 ; Frey & Osborne, 2017 ).

These Industry 4.0 developments and an agile workforce are all components of a global digital transformation that changed the workplace dynamics and led to significant changes in organizations and employee behavior. Due to the unexpected interruption brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, working from anywhere has become the new standard for millions of people worldwide (Özkazanç-Pan & Pullen, 2020 ).

The combination of these two driving forces will have a lasting effect on the formation and effectiveness of organizational culture in the future (Kniffin et al., 2021 ; Trenerry et al., 2021 ). However, the number and range of publications in recent years on organizational culture, digital transformation, Industry 4.0, and COVID-19 make it necessary to provide a structured overview of the published literature.

Firstly, this paper shall give an overview of the research being conducted on organizational culture and digital transformation and identify the main research areas, authors and journals. The methods utilized are outlined, along with the applied bibliometric tools. Secondly, this paper aims to provide an overview of the status quo of research by identifying the different research clusters with its critical analysis.

Literature Review

Research on organizational culture and digital transformation.

Over time, the concept of organizational culture has been the center of attention for many researchers. It has been the main focus of study of several scientific works, especially in management and business (Mohelska & Sokolova, 2018 ; Streimikiene et al., 2021 ; Vallejo, 2011 ).

The concept of organizational culture has been studied from different angles, with researchers exploring the role that organizational culture can play and which factors impact organizational culture (Guzal-Dec, 2016 ; Polyanska et al., 2019 ; Zeng & Luo, 2013 ).

A high number of researchers agree with Schein’s ( 1985 ) model, which asserts that there are three levels at which an organizational culture may be conceptualized: fundamental presumptions and beliefs, norms and values, and cultural artifacts (Chatman & O’Reilly, 2016 ). From the perspective of the organization and its working environment, organizational culture emerges from behavior in which basic assumptions and beliefs are shared and seen as given by organizational members (Schein, 1985 ).

Academics primarily focused on organizational culture’s definition, connotation, structural components and type categorization in the 1980s; most of this research was qualitative (Cui et al., 2018 ). Even though there was no universal agreement on the meanings of organizational culture at the time, Schein’s framework (Schein, 1992 ) was somewhat representational in the academic world. Research on organizational culture then evolved from mainly qualitative research to quantitative studies in the 1990s (Cameron & Quinn, 1999 ; Denison & Mishra, 1995 ; Hofstede, 1998 , 2001 ; O’Reilly et al., 2014 ). According to Cui et al. ( 2018 ), contemporary views of organizational culture are seen as a key factor for success, promoting organizational effectiveness and performance (Gregory et al., 2009 ), organizational innovation (Hogan & Coote, 2014 ), and organizational identity (Ravasi & Schultz, 2006 ). Organizational culture is now considered a key component of innovation in company success, particularly in the setting of the information economy (Büschgens et al., 2013 ). Cartwright identifies nine relevant factors that drive the cultural transformation in organizations that enable successful business practices (Cartwright, 1999 ).

Organizational culture has two basic academic foundations: sociology (organizations have culture) and anthropology (organizations are cultures). The sociological position has become dominant in recent years (Cameron & Quinn, 1999 ). Based on this, there are two opposing viewpoints regarding the possibility of managing organizational culture — the functionalist and symbolist view (Schueber, 2009 ). The functionalist perspective regards culture as an organizational variable (Alvesson, 1993 ), and it can be determined by management (Meek, 1988 ; Silverzweig & Allen, 1976 ). According to the functionalist perspective, culture is seen as something that the organization possesses and can be controlled (Barley et al., 1988 ; Smircich, 1983 ). The symbolist viewpoint regards culture as a representation of what an organization is rather than anything it has . This implies major challenges in controlling or managing organizational culture (Morgan, 1986 ; Smircich, 1983 ). Functionalists would argue that the culture should be changed to fit the strategy, whereas symbolists would propose that the strategy should be adjusted to the organization’s culture (Ogbonna, 1992 ; Senior, 1997 ). In this paper, the functionalist view is supported by implications of the results.

Digitalization is defined as “the transformation of business models as a result of fundamental changes to core internal processes, customer interfaces, products and services, as well as the use of information and communications technologies” (Isensee et al., 2020 ). However, digitalization and digital transformation are quite different. A company may embark on several digitalization initiatives, from automating procedures to retraining staff members to utilize computers. On the other hand, businesses cannot conduct digital transformation as projects. Instead, this more general phrase refers to a client-centered strategic business transformation that calls for adopting digital technology and organizational changes across all departments (Verhoef et al., 2021 ).

An executive’s view that does not distinguish between digitalization and digital transformation could lead to an insufficient strategic focus (Li & Shao, 2023 ). Digital transformation efforts will often involve several digitalization projects, which require management sponsorship and the willingness to change existing structures and practices. Various papers have studied the challenges that may arise from organizational culture when adopting new technologies and structures, e.g., agile practices (Anwar et al., 2016 ; Ghimire et al., 2020 ; Raharjo & Purwandari, 2020 ), technology adoption (Melitski et al., 2010 ), or even Green Supply Chain Management (El Baz & Iddik, 2021 ). As the business becomes primarily customer-driven, digital transformation necessitates improving how well the organization manages change (Anghel, 2019 ).

Industry 4.0 began in the twenty-first century with the development of cyber-physical systems (CPS), the Internet of Things (IoT), the Internet of Services, smart factories, and cloud computing. It continues today (Hermann et al., 2016 ; Kagermann et al., 2013 ; Liao et al., 2017 ; Xu et al., 2018 ). It is characterized as a combination of CPS and IoT in the manufacturing industry, which can have repercussions for value creation, company growth, work organization, and downstream businesses (Kagermann et al., 2013 ; Kiel et al., 2017 ). The advent of Industry 4.0 involves significant changes for organizations and societies and has various effects on nations, businesses, industries, and society (Schwab, 2015 ). Industry 4.0 implementation is a complicated process involving horizontal, vertical and seamless integration and will rely on the synergies between the business and stakeholders from many functional domains (Müller, 2019a , 2019b ; Wang et al., 2016 ). In particular, many organizations fail to capture their Industry 4.0 vision and strategy throughout the change process (Schumacher et al., 2016a ). Other important factors that hinder the application of a successful digital transformation towards a functional Industry 4.0 concept are fear of uncertainty and wrong expectation of requirements (Balasingham, 2016 ). Willingness to adopt this technology is another reason to fail (Adebanjo et al., 2021 ). Organizations aiming to incorporate and adopt digital transformation into their operational procedures must recognize and assess important critical factors (Nimawat & Gidwani, 2021 ).

Organizational communication and collaboration styles have changed due to globalization, advancements in information and communication technologies (ICTs), an increase in hybrid work models and the rise of computer-mediated groups (Sharma et al., 2022 ). With the knowledge economy, digital culture, and recent technological innovations, new working styles have quietly emerged in organizations (Powell et al., 2004 ). Then, the spreading of the coronavirus and the required shift in transition to remote working acted as a catalyst for how organizations operate and employees engage. The drastic changes in the workplace naturally affected employees and spurred changes in their behavior and attitudes (Caligiuri et al., 2020 ). The corresponding research topic of COVID-19-related impacts and the implications on digital transformation in the context of organizational culture is relatively new. Many partial aspects that have gained new relevance during the corona pandemic have already received attention in the research community over the past 20 years.

Therefore, this study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis in order to identify dominant research topics, their potential shifts, and recent developments in the fields of organizational culture and digital transformation. The most significant research articles or authors and their related relationships can be found using the scientific computer-aided review process known as bibliometric analysis. It can help to forecast the possible direction of such identified fields and is widely applied in academic research (Diem & Wolter, 2013 ). This method aids in providing a thorough overview of the subject as well as visually summarizing its patterns and trends (Baker et al., 2020 ; Zhou et al., 2020 ).

Overview of Bibliometric Reviews

The topic of organizational culture has had a large number of contributors in the past decades. Several articles were published on organizational culture as bibliometric studies (Cicea et al., 2022 ). Only a few reviews were conducted on digital transformation in organizations related to organizational culture (e.g., as digitalization). Table 1 lists a few publications on these topics.

Overview of Systematic Reviews

Apart from bibliometric literature reviews, many authors have conducted systematic literature reviews on various research areas relating to organizational culture and digital transformation. As seen in the following non-conclusive overview in Table  2 and Table  3 , researchers have focused their attention on heterogeneous study fields like performance-orientation, entrepreneurship, Industry 4.0, agile practices, work-from-anywhere, SMEs, and many others. This broad overview indicates that the topic of organizational culture plays a very relevant role in recent research, especially in the context of digital transformation.

The provided overview on digital transformation research mainly focuses on functional areas and its application. The center of research is the implementation, readiness, adoption, as well as barriers, opportunities, and challenges. Additionally, research fields like examining potential directions (Belinski et al., 2020 ; Kamble et al., 2018 ; Pagliosa et al., 2019 ; Piccarozzi et al., 2018 ; Schneider, 2018 ; Sony & Naik, 2020 ); implementation, readiness and adoption (Çınar et al., 2021 ; Pacchini et al., 2019 ; Sung & Kim, 2021 ); barriers, opportunities, and challenges to the adoption and implementation of Industry 4.0 (Bajic et al., 2021 ; Raj et al., 2020 ); and sustainability (de Sousa Jabbour et al., 2018 ; Luthra & Mangla, 2018 ) are analyzed.

The main focus areas, among many others, which are influenced by digital transformation are agile and collaborative teamwork and management (Kerber & Buono, 2004 ; Huang et al., 2003 ; Sheppard, 2020 ; Parry & Battista, 2019 ; Singer-Velush et al. 2020 ; Hamouche, 2020 ), adaptive business culture in dynamic , supportive , environments , with focus on employee well-being , work design , open innovation , workforce effectiveness (Am et al., 2020 ; Ngoc Su et al., 2021 ; Baker et al., 2006 ; Žižek et al., 2021 ; Parry & Battista, 2019 ; Bélanger et al., 2013 ; Carnevale & Hatak, 2020 ), and recent technological developments (Ågerfalk et al., 2020 ; Bloom et al., 2015 ; Bondarouk & Ruël, 2009 ; Johnson et al., 2020 ; Spreitzer et al., 2017 ; Wiggins et al., 2020 ).

Research Gap

The research mentioned in the aforementioned literature review sought to examine several factors of organizational culture and digital transformation. However, reviews of literature based solely on a systematic or bibliometric methodology have significant drawbacks. Studies of systematic literature reviews are frequently in-depth and typically handle only a small number of documents. As a result, the findings are more constrained (Moher et al., 2015 ; Page et al., 2021 ). Contrarily, bibliometric reviews are concentrated on a wider range of the studied areas. They mostly reveal major trends as an outcome (Cobo et al., 2011 ; van Eck & Waltman, 2010 ). Using machine learning to find latent patterns in textual data is one of the most popular study methods in the field of bibliometric review (Han, 2020 ; Mariani & Baggio, 2022 ). Automated processing is used to analyze the scientific publications for our study. It employs an advanced machine learning–based methodology to extract topics from the scientific literature. This paper contributes to the existing literature by answering the following research questions:

Research Question 1 (RQ1) . How has the organizational culture — digital transformation relationship evolved over time?

The number of publications on digital transformation is growing, and organizational culture is a well-established research area with years of academic work. Consequently, a bibliometric analysis of the growth of the top journals, articles, and most cited publications may be able to provide relevant insights.

Research Question 2 (RQ2) . What are the dominant research topics on organizational culture and digital transformation?

The total number of publications on the subject of this study is rapidly increasing. Therefore, we may apply machine learning to extract particular study ideas from a large body of published scientific literature.

Research Methodology

This paper aims to establish the trends of research papers in the field of organizational culture research with a focus on digital transformation. The authors conducted the review of the literature using bibliometric analysis and a machine learning method.

Researchers often undertake bibliometric analysis with the main goal to determine the body of knowledge on a certain subject, to provide an assessment of the research already conducted, and to develop networking structures for the scientific community. Five steps ( study design , data collection , data analysis , data visualization , and interpretation of results ) represent the workflow of science mapping and were used to apply the bibliometric approach and network analysis (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017 ).

The review usually starts by determining the database that contains the input data. The only source for this paper are the bibliographic records from the Scopus database as data collection input. This source has been considered reliable in prior works. Scopus, developed by Elsevier B.V., is the largest database of scientific peer-review literature hosting more than 27,950 journal published articles (Elsevier, 2023 ). It was chosen for this study as it is the largest and most relevant scientific database in the world, covering most of the publications available. This includes consistent repositories of documents as well as additional information such as country of all the authors, citations per document, and further information that is relevant in terms of quality and quantity for the study.

The search query was developed after identifying the research area. This was done by splitting the topic into three fields of research. The first set was organization with the corresponding synonyms followed by culture (second set). The third was digital transformation and its phases digitization and digitalization following Verhoef et al. ( 2021 ) and its synonyms including Industry 4.0 . The database was queried using additional synonyms and alternative spellings to increase the study’s coverage.

To collect these articles, the combination of the following keywords was selected:

Digital transformation , digitalization , digitalisation , digitization , digitisation combined with Industry 4.0 search terms fourth industrial revolution , 4IR , 4-IR , industry 4.0 and the organizational culture related keyword organisation *, organization *, firm , company , corporate , enterprise , business and culture .

The search criteria were then determined. The authors used the title , abstract and keywords from the articles provided by the Scopus database (TITLE-ABS-KEY). This resulted in 3077 identified papers. The search query and result are shown in Table  4 . The search was conducted on March 30, 2023.

After collecting the data, all documents with no abstracts were removed. The authors also removed all documents with abstracts defined as: “[No abstract available]”. After this removal, the dataset consisted of 3065 documents. The applied dataset was made up of the following eight variables: authors, title, year, source, cited by, abstract, authors keywords, index keywords. A total of 139 documents were tagged as Review . In addition, to answer the research question RQ1, we joined our dataset with a dataset that defined individual subject areas for each journal. Thanks to such an expanded dataset, we were able to better structure the results.

Topic Modelling

In order to be able to answer research question RQ2, we needed to perform an analysis of the sentific field. There are several ways to conduct a literature review. Instead of the standard literature review process, we decided to carry out the literature review based on machine learning. This way of analyzing the scientific field allowed us to assess a much larger number of documents and thus make the literature review more relevant. Our review based on machine learning analyzed 3065 document abstracts in total.

Before the actual process of identifying individual research topics in the selected area, it was necessary to perform text preprocessing and then divide the analyzed documents into individual topics. Data preprocessing included several steps which are common in text analytics. After removing some special characters, we removed punctuation, further removed numbers and stopwords defined in the tm package in R. In addition, we defined other custom stopwords that were removed from the corpus of abstracts. Then we then removed the extra spaces and stemmed the words in the document. The last step was to delete custom stopwords Footnote 1 specific to our area of interest. In this case, these were words that were irrelevant to our field of research and, in our opinion, did not add value to the resulting analysis. We defined these words based on the frequency analysis of stemmed words from the corpus of analyzed abstracts. The mentioned procedures were performed in the R programming language using the tm and SnowballC packages. After removing the specific stopwords, we finally removed the extra spaces. Subsequently, a document-term matrix (dtm) was created, which contained the frequencies of all individual words in every document. Since the dtm itself also contained low-frequency words, we removed words that appeared in less than 0.5% of the abstracts in the resulting matrix. The resulting dtm contained 1108 words.

After preprocessing the text of the abstracts, we proceeded to structure the abstracts into research topics. We implemented the mentioned process, also called topic modeling, using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation method, also known as LDA (Blei et al., 2003 ). LDA is a probabilistic generative process, the result of which is a set of topics that represent the composition of the entire space into individual parts. Based on the words in individual documents, the so-called latent topical structure is created, while latent topics are a mixture of several documents. Based on the posterior estimates of the hidden variables, we can estimate the structure of the latent topics. Hidden variables in our case represent latent topical structure (Blei & Lafferty, 2009 ).

Topic modeling using LDA was implemented in the R programming language using the topicmodels library. Topic modeling itself assumes the number of topics into which the entire space needs to be divided. There are several approaches for finding the number of topics. Since the approach based on the evaluation of statistical criteria resulted in a large number of topics, we decided to prefer an expert approach. This approach consisted in manually assessing the interpretability of the most frequent words in individual alternatives. As part of the testing itself for a suitable number of topics, we gradually manually evaluated solutions with the number of topics k  = {6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12}.

To quantify the parameters of the LDA model, we used Gibbs sampling (Gelfand, 2000 ; Griffiths & Steyvers, 2004 ; Grün & Hornik, 2011 ). For parameter quantification, we used 2000 iterations, taking into account only every 200th observation for a higher degree of independence between. For each k, we repeated the process five times, always recording only the best solution. Based on the results of the expert analysis, we chose a solution with the number of topics k  = 8. Finally, we realized the visualization of topics, which was performed using the ldavis package (Sievert & Shirley, 2014 ).

Development of Related Research Papers

The direct or indirect role of organizational culture in various processes of digital transformation has been the subject of a lot of research. The studies that formed the basis for our analysis were identified from the Scopus bibliometric database through a search query, which is presented in the “ Research Methodology ” section. The data was collected on March 30, 2023, while on this date, 3065 valid documents were registered in the mentioned database. A significant increase in the number of studies has only been noticeable since 2018. Still, it must be said that studies investigating the links between organizational culture and digitalization appeared sporadically even before that. Figure  1 shows an overview of the annual development of published papers and the number of citations related to the given papers. We can notice that in the last 5 years, research has an exponential character (measured through the number of published papers per year), but at the same time, this research area is interesting for academics (measured through the absolute number of citations).

Development of published papers related to organizational culture and digital transformation

The analyzed amount of papers were published in 1619 sources (journals, proceedings, books, etc.) with various research impacts. Table 5 shows the ranking of the sources that had the greatest impact on research on organizational culture and digital transformation in terms of the total number of citations. The research impact is primarily dominated by journals that directly or indirectly deal with the business environment, which is natural considering the nature of the papers. Of the ten listed top influential papers, as many as seven are from the last 5 years, which indicates that since 2018, research interest and the research impact of the given topic have grown dramatically.

Each analyzed document in our dataset was assigned to one of the 28 subject areas used by the Scopus database for their classification. Such an assignment took place based on pairing information about the journal in which the given article is located with the categorization of the journal according to the subject areas of the Scopus database. Figure  2 shows an overview of research interest and research impact for the individual subject areas.

Overview of research impact and research interest of subject areas

Until 2019, ENGI (engineering) was the most frequent category, while a dramatic increase in papers in the BUSI (business, management, and accounting) group can be seen in the last four years. This increase has caused BUSI to be the subject area with the most outstanding research impact and research interest. No such significant changes were recorded in the other subject areas. Possible reasons for the increased interest of researchers in the field of BUSI in the topic of organizational culture and digital transformation are indirectly indicated by some current studies. For example, the study by Priyanto et al. ( 2023 ) emphasizes the importance of proactively modernizing a business to maintain a competitive edge. The need to increase the competitive edge was also pointed out in the study by Troise et al. ( 2022 ), in which the authors examined the relationships between SMEs’ agility (measured by digital technologies capability, relational capability, and innovation capability) and the effects of agility on three outcomes (financial performance, product and process innovation). These studies and many others (Alomari, 2021 ; Carvalho et al., 2020 ; Chaurasia et al., 2020 ; Tessarini Junior & Saltorato, 2021 ) emphasize the managerial aspect of digitalization, which could explain the dramatic increase in research interest and research impact that we have seen over the last 4 years.

These results are also confirmed by a more detailed analysis of the development of the annual number in the five most numerous subject areas (Fig.  3 ). In the left part, we can see the absolute number of articles in the given subject areas, while the dominance of BUSI is visible mainly in the last three years. However, comparing the share of papers in particular subject areas is very interesting (right part of Fig.  3 ). We see that the increase in the BUSI subject area is continuous, while the share of SOCI (social sciences) and COMP (computer science) is decreasing in the long term. Areas such as ENGI and DECI (decision science) maintain a relatively constant share. According to the long-term trend, it can be assumed that the share of the BUSI subject area will grow in research on topics related to organizational culture and digital transformation in the coming years.

Development of papers in top 5 subject areas — absolute numbers (left) and share (right)

Topics Identification and Their Development

By analyzing the abstracts of the individual papers, it was possible to categorize documents into thematically related clusters using LDA. Such clusters contain papers with the occurrence of the same terms and are called topics. The individual steps of extracting topics from the analyzed dataset are listed in the “ Topic Modelling ” section. To choose the number of topics, several experiments were carried out with the aim of identifying such a constellation in which the individual topics would be well interpretable and, at the same time, sufficiently distinguishable from each other. The number of topics k  = 8 was selected by expert assessment according to these criteria. The results and a brief description of the topics via the top-5 most frequent terms can be found in Fig.  4 as an intertopic distance map between two principal components (PC).

Intertopic distance map

Eight identified topics were analyzed with regard to the most frequented words, and at the same time, the most cited articles in the given topic were also used for their better characterization. This allowed these topics to be named and briefly characterized:

Social Media Connectivity (Topic-1)

This topic includes various aspects of digital and social media, as well as online platforms and the cultural impacts of digital technologies. The Social Media Connectivity topic focuses on main areas like the rise of social media (Munar, 2012 ; van Dijck, 2013 ), its platforms (Mikos, 2016 ; Morris, 2015 ), as well as structural change (Kim, 2020 ; Peukert, 2019 ). The articles of topic-1 explore a wide range of subjects in particular such as social media strategies, digital engagement with heritage, digital storytelling, cultural globalization, and the transformative effects of digital technological change. There are many different inter-organizational subcultures present within organizations that are dealing with convergence and cooperation across media platforms. According to Erdal ( 2009 ), cooperation between those cultures is frequently linked to competition. It is the topic with the most significant research interest (measured through the number of papers), and at the same time, it is the topic with the highest research impact (measured through the number of citations). There are 458 related papers in this topic with a sum of all citations of 91% (based on a 6000 citation strip).

Digital Innovation Ecosystems (Topic-2)

This topic captures the overarching theme of digital transformation across various domains. It emphasizes the integration of digital technologies, innovation processes and the development of ecosystems to drive transformative change in industries and organizations with regard to culture. Regarding the function of organizational culture throughout this transformation process, two alternative viewpoints may be seen. When individuals are empowered to use their problem-solving skills, their capacity for learning and their sense of responsibility, a culture may result in a workforce that is people-centered and engaged driving the integration of digital technologies. On the other hand, there is a culture that focuses primarily on promoting this technology for the purpose of managing or substituting processes neglecting the input and use of people (Rossini et al., 2021 ). The main subjects of this topic include healthcare (Jacob et al., 2020 ), manufacturing (Reinhardt et al., 2020 ), and a digital transformation focus of information systems and organizational practices (Ulas, 2019 ). Additionally, the challenges for the organization and management in rapidly changing environments are analyzed (Granlund & Taipaleenmäki, 2005 ). This topic has a relatively considerable research interest with 419 papers published, but its research impact is average with 51%.

Socio-economic Sustainability (Topic-3)

The Socio-economic Sustainability topic captures the intersection of digital transformation, sustainability and socio-economic considerations across a wide variety of domains such as urban development (Anttiroiko, 2016 ), corporate responsibility and sustainability (Etter et al., 2019 ; Lăzăroiu et al., 2020 ), technology management (Tasleem et al., 2019 ), and organizational practices with regard to culture, among others. In the case of sustainable performance, all forms of organizational culture — based on the types defined by Quinn and Spreitzer ( 1991 ) — have a positive effect on sustainable performance (Gebril Taha & Espino-Rodríguez, 2020 ). There is also a strong correlation between organizational culture and eco-innovation (Reyes-Santiago et al., 2017 ). Furthermore, the sharing economy and its cultural effects towards consumption and ownership are analyzed (Dabbous & Tarhini, 2021 ). The third topic has an average research interest, counting 367 papers and a slightly below-average research impact of 42% compared to the other topics.

Digital Workforce Transformation (Topic-4)

Digital Workforce Transformation highlights the themes of digital transformation with the focus of organizational resilience, leadership, and the impact of technology on work culture and employee well-being. The main focus is on the employee-work relationship, including subjects like leadership (Cortellazzo et al., 2019 ; Guzmán et al., 2020 ), employee well-being (Coldwell, 2019 ; Theurer et al., 2018 ), and resilience (McFadden et al., 2015 ). In particular, the implications on cultural organizational characteristics, operations, digital transformation, and financial planning of COVID-19 for work, workers, and organizations are analyzed (Kniffin et al., 2021 ; Obrenovic et al., 2020 ). As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations have changed their mode of operation. They adopted a pure work from home model or make use of a hybrid mode of operation. Establishing a communicative work from home culture will result in increased employee satisfaction (Fay & Kline, 2011 ; Mandal et al., 2023 ). Organizations have to educate their employees concerning these new processes and technologies. Individuals dislike change, so organizations must coordinate training and awareness programs to demonstrate the advantages of new digital platforms and related technologies (Mandal et al., 2023 ). Regarding research interest, this topic is average with 381 papers, and its research impact is slightly below average with 42%.

Digital Competence and Cultural Transformation (Topic-5)

This topic refers to the concepts of competence in the digital era, cultural transformation, innovation, and sustainability. These articles explore different aspects of digital transformation (Suárez-Guerrero et al., 2016 ), the impact of digital competence on various sectors (Konttila et al., 2019 ), cultural factors in innovation and enterprise, and the intersection of technology and culture (Mohelska & Sokolova, 2018 ). The role of leadership in the transformation of organizational culture is also a focus of analysis (Sá & Serpa, 2020 ). From the point of view of research interest, this is a minor topic (355 papers) that simultaneously has a relatively small research impact (33%).

Knowledge, Culture and Innovation (Topic-6)

Knowledge, Culture, and Innovation captures the common themes of knowledge management (Gandini, 2016 ; Yeh et al., 2006 ), organizational culture (Dubey et al., 2019 ), innovation, and the transformative effects (Ungerman et al., 2018 ) of digitalization across various sectors. Digital innovation is linked to organizational culture by the digital capabilities of an organization (Zhen et al., 2021 ). The capabilities required by management in dynamic environments are examined in particular (Karimi & Walter, 2015 ). Research interest, counting 388 papers, as well as research impact, with 56%, of this topic are both average.

Data and Resource Management (Topic-7)

The Data and Resource Management topic encompasses the concepts of digitalization, Industry 4.0, data management, quality management, organizational culture and the impact of technology on various industries (Durana et al., 2019 ; Gunasekaran et al., 2019 ; Sony et al., 2020 ). These titles explore different aspects of implementing Industry 4.0, including the utilization of big data (Chiang et al., 2017 ), improving organizational performance through digital transformation (Ananyin et al., 2018 ) and the role of data-driven decision-making in different sectors. A number of relevant factors for Industry 4.0 implementation like the development of Industry 4.0-specific know-how, securing financial resources, integration of employees into the implementation process, and the establishment of an open-minded and flexible corporate culture are analyzed. (Veile et al., 2020 ). The research interest of this topic is the smallest of all with only 315 papers, and its research impact is also relatively small with 34%.

Digital Transformation Maturity (Topic-8)

This topic covers the concepts of digital transformation, Industry 4.0, maturity models, organizational culture, and the impact of technology on business strategies and performance (Gajsek et al., 2019 ; Teichert, 2019 ). These titles explore various aspects of digitalization, technology implementation, strategic management, organizational resilience, and the adoption factors of Industry 4.0 in the manufacturing industry (Kohnová et al., 2019 ). The analysis shows that factors like organizational identity, dematerialization, and collaboration play a key role in the digital transformation (Tronvoll et al., 2020 ). The size of research interest of this topic is average (382 papers), but its research impact is among the largest (of 80%).

These topics are sufficiently distinguishable from each other not only from an interpretive point of view but also within the position in the intertopic distance map (Fig.  4 ). In the coordinates of two principal components, almost all topics are relatively isolated, meaning they are sufficiently distinguishable from each other. In one case, however, a statistical similarity was identified, namely for topic-2 Digital Innovation Ecosystems and topic-8 Digital Transformation Maturity (Fig.  4 top left). This finding suggests that there is some interrelationship between the two topics. After a closer examination of the articles from both topics, it was found that topic-2 and topic-8 share a rather similar basis of content. The central point of investigation in these articles is the identification of various (success) factors and challenges that arise for organizations and their cultures during the phase of digital transformation (AlBar & Hoque, 2019 ; Cichosz et al., 2020 ; Shardeo et al., 2020 ). Topic-2 builds on this common foundation by focusing on systems and functional aspects. There, the organization’s implementation, integration, and management of tools and data (ERP, big data) is examined. Additionally, this topic focuses on the organization’s life cycle, evolution, business models, and processes like DevOps and Agile development (Gupta et al., 2019 ; Jacob et al., 2020 ; Nascimento et al., 2019 ). On the other hand, the majority of the articles in topic-8 focus on a perspective with regard to the organizational readiness of the organization towards changes related to Industry 4.0, including the impacts those changes will have on culture, the implications for strategy, and the general organization’s maturity through the examination of maturity models (Ganzarain & Errasti, 2016 ; Mittal et al., 2018 ; Santos & Martinho, 2020 ; Schumacher et al., 2016a , b ).

The eight topics identified are not static and their development may change over time. To capture such changes, we analyzed the share of papers (research interest) and the share of citations (research impact) of papers in the last 10 years. We did not analyze the absolute numbers but their relative share primarily to avoid the risk of distortion caused by the exponential increase in the number of articles and citations. The results can be found in Fig.  5 .

Development of research interest (top) and research impact (bottom) in last 10 years

Several findings can be seen in Fig.  5 . The first of them is a marked decrease in topic-1 both from the point of view of research interest and the point of view of research impact. As mentioned earlier, this topic is currently one of the most important. However, trend analysis shows that its importance is declining relatively quickly. It is gradually being replaced by topics with higher research interest (e.g., topic-4) or research impact (e.g., topic-6).

The downward trend of topic-1 Social Media Connectivity can be explained with the growing maturity of this research field. In the early start of the new millennium, the rise of social networks and communication platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, and other social media services and applications changed the way of communication and collaboration. As of 2023, this field of research is established and many papers have been published and cited already. Based on our search query, there were 458 papers identified with over 5400 citations in total from 1997 to 2023.

The second finding is the gradual emergence of new topics. These are topics that almost or did not exist 10 years ago. The most significant representative of such topics is topic-4, which almost did not exist in 2013, but is currently one of the most important topics. The upward trend of topic-4 Digital Workforce Transformation is strongly connected with the emergence of new working modes and cultural shifts within the organizational landscape due to COVID-19 pandemic related effects. The rise of topic-4 with a strong focus on the employee-work relationship and employee well-being is relatively new. This was triggered with the start of the worldwide pandemic (COVID-19). The worldwide pandemic had a significant impact on how people worked and communicated. This remote work model has many implications on a number of different fields like organizational culture, collaboration, employee motivation, and productivity, among many others. Thus, the requirement for employees and the organizations to adapt to this new work reality open up many new research fields. The growing topic-6 Knowledge, Culture, and Innovation combines knowledge management, organizational culture, and innovation in regard to the transformative effects of digitalization across various sectors. This topic recently gained special attention because the world economy is facing challenges during the pandemic caused by less international business and trade and increased costs (Amirul et al., 2023 ). Competitive advantages through knowledge management, knowledge sharing, and innovation are the key to deal with the (project) uncertainty many companies face (Borodako et al., 2023 ).

The third finding is that increasing research interest does not necessarily increase research impact. For example, we can mention topic-5 Digital Competence and Cultural Transformation , which is gradually gaining research interest, but its research impact is the smallest of all. However, it should be noted here that research impact is based on processing the number of citations, which can generally have a time delay.

A more detailed characterization of topics is also possible by comparing them to the analyzed subject areas. Figure  6 shows the decomposition of individual topics into subject areas. The basis for this decomposition was the papers themselves.

Decomposition of topics to subject areas

Several findings can be seen in Fig.  6 . Topic-1, which currently dominates research impact and research interest, but has a negative trend, is most associated with papers from the SOCI subject area. If we compare these results with the analysis of subject areas (Fig.  2 ), we can conclude that there are two parallel phenomena — a decrease in interest in both SOCI and topic-1. This topic played a key role in the past, but its outlook, as well as the outlook of organizational culture research in relation to digital transformation in the SOCI subject area, is negative. On the other hand, we can see that the BUSI subject area is most prominently represented in topic-6. By comparing the development of BUSI and the development of topic-6, we can also notice parallel phenomena — in this case, however, with a positive trend. Both topic-6 and the BUSI subject area have been growing in recent years, and it is assumed that this could be the case in the following years as well. In the past the focus of research has been on identification and introduction as well as adaptation of new technologies that drive the trend of digital transformation. With this established foundation, nowadays, the research shifts more towards the application and impacts of these technologies in organizations and its consequences on innovation-orientation, knowledge generation and sharing as well as cultural effects (Kronblad et al., 2023 ). This can be seen with the strengthening of topic-6. Other topics appear more heterogeneous from the point of view of subject areas, and the papers that fall into them are from different subject areas.

This article begins with a brief review of organizational culture research in relation to digital transformation. Later, an overview of the research area was presented based on the 3065 publications listed and identified in the Scopus database. To answer research question 1, we have identified the key journals, papers and authors and have shown the development of publications over time. Research interest and research impact of the given topic have grown dramatically since 2018. According to research areas, from 2004 until 2023, the share of papers (research impact) as well as the share of citations (research interest) is mainly contributed to the subject area of BUSI (with a share of more than 25%). The dominance of BUSI has been visible mainly in the last 3 years.

The identification of the dominant research topics (research question 2) resulted in eight topics: Social Media Connectivity , Digital Innovation Ecosystems , Socio-economic Sustainability , Digital Workforce Transformation , Digital Competence and Cultural Transformation , Knowledge, Culture and Innovation , Data and Resource Management , and Digital Transformation Maturity . The topic with the most significant research interest (measured by the number of papers) and the highest research impact (measured by the number of citations) is Social Media Connectivity (topic-1). This is because of the strong role of this topic in the past. The outlook is declining for this topic as well as the related subject area SOCI. Two rising topics were identified. In recent years Digital Workforce Transformation (topic-4) and Knowledge, Culture, and Innovation (topic-6) gained strong interest. Both are from the area of BUSI.

To fulfil the aims of the article, following the completion of the literature review, we were able to identify a number of research topics that are distinct due to the methodology that we have utilized. As a result of their development over time, some of these topics are also relatively new; for instance, as of 2013, topic-4 ( Digital Workforce Transformation ) did not exist at all. In light of the fact that the topics have developed over time, it is clear that the most important areas influencing culture have been transformed under the conditions brought about by digital transformation.

Implications

Firstly, this study demonstrated a machine learning–supported method for identifying and segmenting the current state of this research field. This method, as used in this paper, can be applied to other fields to obtain a systematic overview of research topics.

Secondly, organizational culture has been a field of research for many years and research on digital transformation is constantly growing. The interrelation of these two research areas is relatively new, and their findings will have a lasting effect on the formation and effectiveness of organizational culture in the future.

With the increased interest in Digital Workforce Transformation and Knowledge, Culture, and Innovation , we could identify a shift in the research field on organizational culture in relation to digital transformation towards the subject area of BUSI. Those two rising topics show a need to focus on the impact of technology on work culture and employee well-being, as well as on knowledge management and innovation in relation to organizational culture.

The long-term trend of the share development of the BUSI subject area indicates that this area will also grow continuously in the future. From 2019 onwards, the constant increase of papers published per year implies that additional distinct new topics will be established in this field of research. These and other future trends will help researchers to focus on relevant topics and areas for their work.

A possible explanation for this shift in research could derive from the impact technological changes have on businesses today. The work-related requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst for many technological advancements due to the necessity to work instantly remote, changing many processes and all communication to digital. This growing importance of technology for every business could lead to an increased relevance and importance for management practice as well as for researchers. An additional cause for organizations to reevaluate matters related to knowledge and innovation is the pervasive integration and accessibility of AI technology in routine business operations. The alignment of current processes, particularly the innovation process within organizations, with this novel capability will be a subject of interest for managers and researchers as well.

Following the functionalist perspective on organizational culture, the management of organizations can attempt to control and change culture (Alvesson, 1993 ). The introduction of these two topics has significant implications for management practice. A strong organizational culture that is people-centered is essential for successful knowledge-driven organizational innovation. As a result, managers must pay special attention to the factors that influence work culture, address the challenges that arise during the transformation, and understand and improve their organization’s digital capabilities.

Managers can focus their efforts on a variety of areas to foster an adaptable, innovative, and supportive work culture while effectively leveraging technology for digital transformation. Enhanced emphasis is placed on the behavior and collaboration of the team and managers, while these recommendations also encompass measures pertaining to the structure and processes.

The delegation of decision-making authority and work ownership responsibility to employees by managers is a critical structural element. Utilizing data to facilitate well-informed decision-making can provide support for this. Establishing a work environment that offers adequate resources and support, including tools, training, and assistance in adjusting to digital transformations and fostering innovation, is an additional critical element (Veile et al., 2020 ). Furthermore, it is beneficial to measure and communicate progress by assessing the impact of digital transformation on work culture, employee well-being, knowledge management, and innovation on a regular basis. The manager should be willing to make the necessary cultural changes to align, adapt, and evolve organizational culture in the digital age (Cortellazzo et al., 2019 ).

During digital transformation, an open and productive organizational culture will be fostered through the promotion of a flexible and inclusive work environment that actively solicits employee feedback and input, with a focus on employee well-being (Coldwell, 2019 ). Managers who set a good example and encourage their employees’ continuous learning and skill development, as well as cross-functional collaboration, will be better able to promote an adaptive organizational culture in an increasingly digital and competitive landscape (Sá & Serpa, 2020 ). Creating a culture that values innovation and encourages employees to come up with new ideas and solutions, as well as celebrating successful innovations, can help managers create a people-oriented work culture that is essential for organizational innovation (Karimi & Walter, 2015 ). This can be seen in the increased interest in the area on Knowledge, Culture, and Innovation by organizations as well as by researchers.

Limitations and Future Research

This study has a number of limitations, which can be mainly attributed to the way the analysis was conducted. The focus of this study is on an automated bibliometric analysis of the literature. While the quantitative focus has many advantages, it also has some limitations. The main advantage includes the possibility to process and analyze a large number of papers via automation and machine learning techniques. A total of 3065 papers were analyzed. This approach — in comparison to a standard systematic literature review — does not analyze the papers manually. Therefore, some relevant documents could be missing, as well as some irrelevant ones might be included. The authors have selected a search query that yields highly relevant search results. Thus, it is assumed that the share of notable articles that are missing is very small and therefore neglectable and does not have a significant impact on the results.

The applied dataset covers most of the important publications, but all the data comes from just one database (Scopus). This is not comprehensive, and some relevant articles (or journals) could be excluded. In addition, some information may be missing because the source of analysis is not the full text of the articles. Another limitation comes from the fact that the primary focus in the topic modeling are the abstracts of the relevant papers and not the whole text. The analysis of the full text could potentially provide a more extensive understanding, but at the same time, it would take much longer.

We decided on the expert approach by determining the number of topics, as the statistical approach resulted in a large number of topics. This may be of a subjective nature, but it resulted in eight well interpretable and sufficiently distinguishable topics. The title, abstract, and keywords of each topic’s top-30 papers (based on citation count) were used to name each topic. This results in subjective topic names but helps to sum up each topic with a generalized distinct phrase.

This study suggests a number of possible future directions for additional research. It is recommended to extend the data sources to other databases than Scopus as well as the search query. This could result in capturing an increased number of relevant papers. In this research two developing, fast growing topics (topic-4 and topic-6) were identified. Further research should concentrate on examining this trend and focusing on those topics.

Future research could concentrate on finding various organizational culture types that reflect and favor those two emerging topics. Considering Quinn and Rohrbaugh’s CVF (Cameron & Quinn, 1999 ; Quinn & Rohrbaugh, 1983 ), the characteristics of the adhocracy culture type may align with the aspects connected to Digital Workforce Transformation and Knowledge, Culture and Innovation as this culture type values innovation and flexibility. This can be supported through the systematic research and cultural audits in organizations.

Data Availability

The data and code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Open access funding provided by The Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic in cooperation with Centre for Scientific and Technical Information of the Slovak Republic This paper was funded by Faculty of Management, Comenius University Bratislava, Slovakia, and supported by the project VEGA 1/0614/23 Preparedness of companies for the challenges associated with Industry 4.0 in terms of business processes and business process management.

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Tobias Reisberger, Philip Reisberger, Lukáš Copuš & Peter Madzík

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Reisberger, T., Reisberger, P., Copuš, L. et al. The Linkage Between Digital Transformation and Organizational Culture: Novel Machine Learning Literature Review Based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation. J Knowl Econ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-024-02027-3

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Received : 14 August 2023

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-024-02027-3

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