Speaker 1: Hi everyone, and welcome. One thing that I promise you today is that this presentation is going to last less than 30 minutes. But I also promise you that if you've already done good research, you've read all of your sources that you need to on this topic, you have extracted information from them and otherwise summarized the sources and written them up, and your summaries and those source citations are now on a nice alphabetical list. If you've done that, what is called annotated bibliography, and you're ready to start on this literature review, I guarantee you that if you follow these steps I'm about to give you, you can write the rough draft of this literature review in 30 minutes or less. But first, a couple of questions. Question number one, what the heck is a literature review, or what the bleep is a literature review? The second question, why the bleep should I care what a literature review is? You know, it seems like we've got these stodgy professors out there who kind of revel in the fact that they like to give these academic sounding assignments that really have no validity in the real world. And the literature review seems to be one of those examples, but you know what, nothing could be further from the truth, and let me show you why. Let's say that you just graduated with a BS degree in human resources management, congratulations on that GPA by the way, 3.83, and also congratulations on having landed your first job as an administrative manager at Caliber Systems, a firm with over 1,800 employees. You've definitely got room for advancement there. So everything's looking great, right? Now one day your supervisor comes back from a meeting in the C-suite and has a little assignment for you. Here's the assignment. Should Caliber Systems institute a cultural diversity training program? And if so, what should that program consist of? Your report, which is due in the form of a presentation in two weeks, is going to determine the future of your job and your career at Caliber Systems. Okay, hotshot, what's your next move? Your next move is to go find some answers to some very real questions, those questions being, what is cultural diversity training? Is it something that's gaining acceptance in this human resources world, or is it considered a waste of money? Another question, what are the various types of cultural diversity training offered today, especially in companies of my size, Caliber Systems, and in my sector, IT consultancy? Third question, what have been the impacts, both positive and negative, of cultural diversity training on companies? In other words, before you make a recommendation, you've got to have answers to those questions. Guess what? I've got some good news for you. The experts have already answered all those questions before you. There are people who get paid to answer questions like those and publish their results. All you need to do is go find those answers. The answers that you find in the published results are called the literature, and whenever you go and look for them, that's called a review or looking for them. OMG, a literature review. You've got to write one for your job as a human resources manager in an IT company. That's right. And more good news, you can do that literature review in five easy steps. So here's the takeaway. A literature review is not something that stodgy professors assign just because they like to torture you. Literature reviews, whatever you want to call them, are important ways to gather background information before you make a decision, before you write up your report. Now, let's take a look at those five easy steps, and once you know them and you've seen them illustrated, I guarantee you that you're going to be able to write this literature review in 30 minutes or less. When you do background research, you record the source of the information to allow others to validate what you say, along with the details of what you found. So after completing your research, you'll have a list that looks something like this. For the purposes of demonstration, we're showing only the first three items from a much longer list. In step one, you're going to strip this list into two parts. One, the citations by themselves. Two, the paragraphs containing information from the sources. The list of citations will look like this. The list of paragraphs will look like this. Save the list of references and use it as the last page of your literature review. We'll use the paragraphs as the body of your literature review. Let's note three important things about these summary paragraphs. First, each paragraph at its beginning contains an in-text citation to its source. Because we're using APA style, the in-text citation consists of the author's last name plus the year of publication in parentheses. The author's last name is outside of the parentheses because the name is being used as a noun in the sentence. Second, note that the sentences in the paragraph find a way to refer back to the source so that the reader knows the information is from the source and not your own thoughts. Some examples are the author's present and the article. Then there's repetition of the author's name. In the second paragraph, Frasoli is repeated four times. Finally, notice that the year of publication only has to be repeated once per paragraph. Okay, congratulations on completing step one. You've taken your basic research and produced two lists, a list of citations and a list of paragraphs. Now, your task in step two is to reorder the paragraphs. To do this, carefully reread them. As you do, find similarities and differences that will allow you to reorganize the paragraphs in a logical order based on the connections you find among them. During this step, keep in mind, there will be no one universally correct sequence. The best sequence is the one that you find and apply effectively. For example, in our first paragraph, the annotation says the author's studied storytelling as a way to increase communication in a culturally diverse workplace. So, this source is presenting a strategy or a solution for a problem. Let's label it solution. Next is a 1996 article by Fine that calls cultural diversity in the U.S. workplace, quote, perhaps the most pressing challenge of our times. Obviously, we'll label this paragraph a description of the problem. Next, Frasoli describes interviews with a West African man that were hindered because the two men had different attitudes toward technology and communication. Frasoli underscores the need for flexibility and understanding and accepting how someone can be culturally different. So, let's label this one problem plus need for understanding. So, a clear pattern is starting to emerge. Sources that we're finding on this topic describe either the problem or solutions to the problem. Thus, to complete step two, we will rearrange the summaries according to this problem-solution pattern that we're seeing. Here are seven of the summaries rearranged. Now, a real lit review would have far more sources in order to be thorough. But in any case, we've imposed a clear organizational pattern on our summaries. Our next step, step three, you decide which summaries should stand alone as a body paragraph and which could be combined. Your decision will be based on two factors. Factor one, how closely related the summaries are. The closer their relationship, the more reason you have to combine them. Factor two is their length. Try to limit your body paragraphs to 10 to 14 lines. The fine article can stand alone as a body paragraph because it offers an overview of the problem that dates back to the previous century. The next three sources each studied a different group of culturally diverse workers and concluded the same thing. But, the three summaries together are too long for a single paragraph. So, the first two can be grouped on the basis of geography. A man in West Africa and non-native workers in Australia, thus presenting a worldwide problem. The Sweeney and Zhu study brings us back to the U.S. and is long enough and important enough to merit its own paragraph. All three studies, now combined into two paragraphs, are tied together by one theme. Mastery of language by itself is not enough. Preparedness to deal with cultural differences is also necessary. This need to be prepared provides a natural transition to the last three summaries that all discuss solutions. So the body of this literature review will have five paragraphs. One, the first body paragraph will set the stage by defining the problem. The second body paragraph will show that the problem is worldwide and requires preparing workers to deal with cultural differences in communication. The third body paragraph brings the problem home to the U.S. and reinforces the need for workers to be sensitive to cultural differences. The fourth body paragraph presents two minor solutions to the problem. And the fifth body paragraph presents an overarching solution, diversity training. They can apply to virtually any organization. The order and combination of the paragraphs are set. And now we're ready for step four, which is all about turning the summary paragraphs into real paragraphs by adding topic sentences and transitions. Here's an example of a plain summary paragraph as we wrote it down after research. Now, here is the same paragraph with a topic sentence and transition added. Let's compare them. The topic sentence, cultural diversity has long been recognized as a potential problem in the workplace. It introduces the topic that will be discussed by the source that comes next. But a transition phrase, as far back as 1996, Fein stated, links the topic sentence and the source together with the concept of time. When there's more than one source in a paragraph, a new sentence or thought bridge must sometimes be added between them. For example, here are two summary paragraphs that we want to combine into one. We first add a topic sentence for the two summaries. Both study geographically dispersed cultures. Next, Forsoli's findings are presented, then a thought bridge sentence is added to lead to the second summary and blend them both into a smooth flowing narrative. As you see, at the end of step four, you should have a series of body paragraphs that consist of strong topic sentences, followed by source summaries, and then transitions from one summary to the next. This review is looking really excellent. Now it's ready for step five. In step five, the body of the literature review gets an introduction paragraph with thesis and a conclusion paragraph. Because a literature review summarizes the published works of others, the thesis statement should bring together the major points discussed by the sources. And a phrase such as, the following review of literature, signals to the readers that they will be reading a literature review, not your, the author's, individual claims, arguments, or opinions. Note that the thesis statement for the lit review also reflects the problem-solution organizational pattern of the paragraphs to follow. One common strategy for the conclusion paragraph is to open with a restatement of the thesis, which brings the reader back to the overall point. Another common strategy for the conclusion is to comment on any gaps or flaws in the research reviewed. Of course, no literature review would be complete without a title. And now is the perfect time to write it, because we now know everything that is in our lit review. Cultural diversity in the workplace, overcoming barriers to communication, definitely does the job. As a further aid to organization, don't forget to add subtitles between the major sections of your lit review. After the introduction of our sample lit review, come the paragraphs that discuss the problem. So, our first body section subtitle is, Defining the Problem. The next major section presents solutions, so its subtitle is, Searching for Solutions. When it comes to the conclusion, don't waste an opportunity to provide a specific subtitle that helps to reinforce your thesis, instead of just using the neutral word, conclusion. Note how descriptive this subtitle for the conclusion paragraph is, Preparing for Tomorrow Today. That takes care of step five, and now you have a solid, well-organized lit review. Okay, there they are, the five easy steps. It probably takes about as long to explain them and illustrate them, than it would be to actually do them. Let's review them quickly. Step number one, separate those paragraph summaries from the citations. Save the citations for your reference page, and then you're going to turn those paragraph summaries into your literature review. And in doing that, the first thing you're going to do is to rearrange those paragraph summaries in a logical order that presents itself to you as you re-read them. The third step is then to combine whatever summaries need to be combined. And then the fourth step is to add in those really important topic sentences and transitions, so that they read together smoothly. And then, add your introduction and conclusion paragraphs. And you've got yourself a literature review. One last thing I want you to keep in mind about a literature review, is that the literature review is only a preliminary step. In other words, it's something that you do to gather background knowledge, to kind of bring yourself up to date, to the state of the art, so that you know exactly what has gone on before, and what's taking place right now. You're the expert. So you use the literature review to make yourself the expert on that topic, and once you've got all that background knowledge, then you can write about it. Then you can write your thesis. Then you can write your argumentative report. Then you can do your presentation, because you have made yourself an expert via the literature review. Okay, thanks very much for watching the presentation, and I wish you the very best of luck on your literature review.