Preparation
Before starting this individual assignment, you should have thoroughly understood the unit material covered in all the relevant modules.
Assignment Instructions
This is an individual activity, not a group assignment, and requires individual submissions from each student. The Literature Review is based on the Proposal that you submitted in Assignment 1. For this assignment, you are required to write a detailed literature review on the contemporary theme, approach or issue in project management discussed in your project proposal. The literature reviews will each be submitted individually. After that, for Assignment 3, you will then use the information from the literature review to compile the Final Research Paper which will again be submitted individually.
The literature review structure, like a standard academic essay, is made up of three key sections an introduction, a body and a conclusion. Most literature reviews can follow the following format:
• Introduction:
Briefly introduce the topic/problem and the context within which it is found.
• Body:
Examine past research in the area highlighting methodological and/ or theoretical developments, areas of agreement, contentious areas, important studies and so forth. Keep the focus on your area of interest and identify gaps in the research that your investigation will attempt to fill. State clearly how your work builds on or responds to earlier work.
• Conclusion:
Short summary of what has emerged from the review of literature and recap conclusions
Key components:
• Your review should first give an overview of the types of research published in the field that you are exploring, and then summarise key findings representing the current field of knowledge on your topic.
• Your research should include recent journal articles, and at least ten different, relevant scholarly articles are expected. Scholarly articles (otherwise called ‘peer-reviewed’ or ‘academic’) can be sourced from the or other electronic databases.
• If your topic is very recent, scholarly articles may not yet be available, and you will have to rely on other sources such as trusted news sites, The Conversation, etc. In this case, to ensure that you are getting sound data, you will need to triangulate your data using a number of different sources, to confirm that your information is reliable. (see Ch.2 in textbook for details on triangulation).
• All reference sources must be acknowledged within the body of the text (in-text references) and listed at the end under References. Standard APA 7th edition referencing style should be used.
