A quest for the literature. Stage 1 of 4. Planning the review

 

This method is based on Erkko Autio's (Imperial College London Business School) materials of the Research Capacity Development Seminar at ISM (November 2013).

1.1. Articulating general ideas of the review

What is business succession in management research? Has it been researched in connection with firms' a) growth strategies and/or b) industrial specifics? What evidence is out there?

1.2. Scoping the study

This is about designing the search.

Search phase 1

Topic: business succession

Keywords: succession, business succession, succession management, founder succession, business turnover, ownership turnover, succession planning, leadership development, talent development, CEO replacement

Subject areas: management, business, economics, human resource management, leadership, strategic management, finance, organizational design

Operators: OR for all keywords

Locations: everywhere.

Search phase 2 (in the results of cycle 1)

Topic: growth strategy

Keywords: growth, growth strategy, strategic management, explorative strategy, exploitative strategy, ambidexterity, development strategy, business expansion, strategic directions, corporate strategy, generic strategy, competitive strategy

Operators: OR for all keywords

Locations: everywhere.

The findings will constitute the body of the debate on business succession from the perspective of growth strategies.

Search phase 3 (in the results of cycle 1)

Topic: industry

Keywords: industry, sector, value chain, success factors, industry competitiveness, industry attractiveness, industry specifics

Operators: OR for all keywords

Locations: everywhere.

The findings will constitute the body of the debate on business succession from the industrial perspective.

Search phase 4 (in the results of cycles 2 and 3)

Keywords: all from cycles 2 and 3

Operators: AND for all combinations of keywords

Locations: everywhere.

The findings will be papers central to the review ideas.

1.3. Pulling together a review question

The draft of the review question currently looks like this:

Has business succession been researched from the industrial and growth strategy perspectives?

1.4. Documenting the review protocol

This is about questions to ask and steps to take in the literature review.

At this moment the questions are as follows:

1. What papers link business succession and growth strategy (located in the left inner circle in Figure 1)?
2. What papers link business succession and industry (located in the right inner circle in Figure 1)?
3. What papers are central to the review ideas (located in the triple overlay area in Figure 1)? 
4. What are the authors' propositions?
5. What are their research strategies, designs and methods?
6. What terminology and definitions do they use?
7. What terminology and definitions should I borrow from them to use in my work? 
8. What research strategy, design and methodology should I implement in my work?

And the steps to be taken:

1. Download papers, organize storage and statistics (with EndNote 8).
2. Read to expand the lists of keywords as per paragraph 1.2, refine search results.
3. Read to find additional papers through references, refine search results.
4. Build the reference map (what for, BTW? To be graphically compelling?)

Figure 1. The three topical domains arranged in accordance with the search design.