536705

editorial2014
HRDXXX10.1177/1534484314536705Human Resource Development ReviewCallahan

Editorial
Human Resource Development Review
2014, Vol. 13(3) 271­–275
Writing Literature © The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1534484314536705
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Human Resource Development Review (HRDR) is dedicated to publishing high-quality,

non-empirical manuscripts, with a particular focus on “review” articles. Thus, the pur-
pose of this editorial is to refocus authors (and readers) on what constitutes a good lit-
erature review article by building on and extending the earlier HRDR works of Torraco
(2005) and Callahan (2010). The editorial describes the characteristics of rigorous lit-
erature reviews (such as the integrative literature review and alternative forms of litera-
ture reviews) to help authors clearly frame their work, apply the appropriate methods
for documenting their work, and execute the depth of argumentation necessary to
support their work.
In 2005, Torraco offered a description of writing integrative literature reviews;
5 years later, I followed up with an article that identified the distinguishing character-
istics between integrative literature reviews and conceptual frameworks (Callahan,
2010). While integrative literature reviews and conceptual frameworks are the two
most common forms of manuscripts published in HRDR, other forms of review works
are also published here. These can be categorized as alternative forms of literature
reviews, and they share some, but not all, of the characteristics of integrative reviews.
This editorial seeks to clarify these differences and offer suggestions for authors writ-
ing any type of literature review. While the term integrative literature review has
become ubiquitous in the field of human resource development, there are many other
types of literature reviews and HRDR accepts a wide variety of manuscripts that are
non-empirical in nature—such as methodological reviews, historical reviews, concep-
tual reviews. For a detailed description of the types of works the journal publishes,
see the journal Aims & Scope at http://www.sagepub.com/journals/Journal201506/
title#tabview=aimsAndScope.
Historically, formal syntheses of research can be traced to the 17th and 18th centu-
ries (Booth, Papaioannou, & Sutton, 2012). However, discussions of such syntheses
today typically refer to contemporary reviews of the literature through the late-20th
century. These more recent reviews tended to be narrative in nature, and were often
written to support an argument proposed by the author (Kennedy, 2007; Tranfield,
Denyer, & Smart, 2003). In other words, they could be very much like a conceptual
framework manuscript (Callahan, 2010; Rocco & Plakhotnik, 2009). However,
researchers and funding agencies in the medical sciences, particularly in the United
States and the United Kingdom, sought what they considered to be more credible
reviews that were driven by evidence-based results and that clearly and explicitly
identified and appraised existing research (Booth et al., 2012). Their efforts gave rise
272 Human Resource Development Review 13(3)

to the Cochrane and Campbell Collaboratives which pioneered the methodology of the
systematic literature review. Thus, the systematic literature review became one of the
first explicitly recognized forms of literature review in the late-20th century. Typically,
although not always, systematic literature reviews are based on primary empirical
studies (Whittemore & Knafl, 2005).
Other unique forms of literature review include the integrative literature review
(Callahan, 2010; Torraco, 2005), the historic literature review (Callahan, 2010), and the
rapid structured literature review (RSLR; Armitage & Keeble-Allen, 2008), among
many other types of literature reviews (see Booth et al., 2012, for more descriptions).
The integrative literature review is a particularly broad form of studying the field of
existing literature because it can encompass a broad array of scholarly literature—
empirical, non-empirical, conceptual, theoretical—to address a particular phenomenon
(Kennedy, 2007). The historic literature review reconstructs, constructs, or deconstructs
(Munslow, 1997) the understanding of some past phenomenon (or the development of
a contemporary phenomenon) through the lens of literature that captures historic forces
(Callahan, 2010; http://www.huidziekten.nl/diversen/opleiding/CATDatabase/guideto
writingreviews.pdf). The RSLR (Armitage & Keeble-Allen, 2008) is much like an inte-
grative literature review, but it is distinct in that it specifies the inclusion of practical
and policy-related literature along with the more traditional scholarly literature.

The Importance of Literature Reviews

Literature reviews are important to this field because they have “made substantive con-
tributions to the knowledge base of human resource development” (Torraco, 2005,
p. 356). Syntheses of existing literature on any given phenomenon are important because
they improve evidence-based decision making (Tranfield et al., 2003; Whittemore &
Knafl, 2005), they identify gaps in knowledge about particular phenomena (Booth et al.,
2012), they identify synergies within existing literature (Booth et al., 2012), and they
narrow the gap between knowledge and “lore” in the field (Kennedy, 2007). Furthermore,
literature reviews are important in the publishing process for at least two reasons—sev-
eral high-impact journals exclusively publish review articles and the high citations often
attributed to review articles are useful for enhancing the reputation and readership of
both the author and the publishing journal (Denyer & Pilbeam, 2013).

Characteristics of Literature Reviews

A wide variety of works have been made available that highlight the characteristics of
different types of literature reviews (e.g., Denyer & Pilbeam, 2013; Rocco &
Plakhotnik, 2009; Torraco, 2005; Tranfield et al., 2003; Whittemore & Knafl, 2005).
From those works, I identified at least five distinct characteristics that are representa-
tive of rigorous literature reviews. Literature reviews should be concise, clear, critical,
convincing, and contributive.
These “Five C” characteristics of rigorous literature reviews can be described as
follows:
Callahan 273

Table 1.  The Six W’s: Components of a Literature Review Method Section.

Who Who conducted the search for “data?” One or all of the authors? Assistants? A
research team?
When When were the data collected? Were all the data produced during a particular
time frame? Or was the time frame for data production not specified, but the
data search itself was conducted during a particular time frame?
Where Where were the data collected? Did you use only scholarly journals? Or did you
expand your search to books, or even trade publications and websites?
hoW How were the data found? Did you conduct database searches (if so, which ones
and what keywords were used)? Did you use personal networks to find obscure
publications? Did you use snowball selection? Did you browse through potentially
relevant journals to see if there were serendipitous findings? What other means
did you use to exhaust the literature on your topic?
What What did you find? How many artifacts formed your raw data (the final count of
works that formed your data set)? What did you keep, and what did you discard?
Why Why did you select the works that were included in your final data set? Articulate
your selection criteria.

Concise: Literature reviews should be concise syntheses of a broad array of litera-

ture on a given topic. Perhaps most importantly, there must be a specific guiding ques-
tion or premise for the review (Torraco, 2005). Not surprisingly, the question is best
derived by addressing an area in which there is an identifiable need for an answer; this
is typically referred to as “the gap” in the literature that calls for exploration. This gap,
however, is not about whether or not studies have explored the phenomenon of inter-
est, but rather that the existing literature is lacking in some way with respect to the
specific question that guides the review (Denyer & Pilbeam, 2013).
Clear: Clarity of the processes for collecting the “data” that form the foundation of
the literature review is vital for a rigorous review; and, frequently, submitted manu-
scripts fail to clearly articulate the methods used in conducting the literature review.
As Torraco (2005) and Denyer and Pilbeam (2013) recommended, creating a struc-
tured system (such as a matrix) for each “artifact” identified for the review during data
collection will improve the rigor, quality, and clarity of the final literature review. The
steps (Callahan, 2010) in Table 1 highlight the components that authors should con-
sider and capture as they collect and organize their data. When crafting the method
section for the literature review itself, it is important that each of these issues be
addressed (see Table 1).
Most, if not all, of the literature reviews submitted to this journal confine the “how”
question identified in Table 1 to databases and keywords used. For a truly rigorous
review, this is not adequate. Greenhalgh and Peacock (2005) found that literature
reviews that are limited to formal, pre-defined search strategies of databases and key-
words “may fail to identify important evidence” (p. 2). In fact, they found that the most
successful methods of identifying relevant literature were through “snowballing”—
tracking references in articles that were found by other means and using reverse cita-
tion tracking to find articles that cited articles already deemed relevant to the review.
274 Human Resource Development Review 13(3)

Critical: Rigorous literature reviews include both critical reflection (Denyer &
Pilbeam, 2013) and critical analysis (Denyer & Pilbeam, 2013; Torraco, 2005).
Reflection refers to the positionality that authors should consider when reviewing and
analyzing the literature of the data set—their assumptions, beliefs, and values that
influence the ways in which they interpret the literature and subsequently craft insights
(Denyer & Pilbeam, 2013). Analysis refers to the assessment, or critique, of the litera-
ture itself (Torraco, 2005). Such analysis “often exposes knowledge that may be taken
for granted or hidden by years of intervening research” (p. 362).
Convincing: After critically analyzing the data, a convincing argument must be
developed. This represents the findings of the literature review, or the synthesis that
follows the analysis. Given the analysis of the data collected, articulate a unique way
of interpreting the synthesis presented and provide supporting rationale (Denyer &
Pilbeam, 2013). The review can be structured in many different ways to most clearly
depict the justification for the argument (e.g., guiding theories or competing models)
(Torraco, 2005); mechanistic organization (such as chronological or alphabetical list-
ings) of the literature, however, generally do not lend the support necessary to create a
convincing rationale for the uniqueness of review. The keys to this characteristic of
literature reviews are what “new model, conceptual framework, or other unique con-
ception” (Torraco, 2005, p. 362) emerges from the analysis, and how can the data be
used convincingly to justify this emergent finding?
Contributive: Like other forms of research, literature reviews must also contribute
to the body of knowledge (Torraco, 2005). Rigorous literature reviews offer signifi-
cant contributions to extend or create new theory (Torraco, 2005), improve practice
(Torraco, 2005; Whittemore & Knafl, 2005), or influence policy (Whittemore & Knafl,
2005). In addition to providing recommendations for theory and practice, literature
reviews should reveal areas in which more research is needed (Denyer & Pilbeam,
2013; Torraco, 2005).

Conclusion
Exemplary literature reviews—be they systematic, integrative, historical, rapid struc-
tured, or some other type of review—are challenging to produce. There is a growing
body of literature on the methods of producing rigorous literature reviews, some of
which have been referenced here. The purpose of this editorial was to consolidate
some of the key characteristics of literature reviews to provide an accessible source of
information for those seeking to write literature reviews. The mnemonics provided
here, five C’s of literature review characteristics and six W’s of literature review meth-
ods, are meant to guide authors as they prepare literature reviews, in particular for
Human Resource Development Review.

Jamie L. Callahan
Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Callahan 275

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