Abstract
Systematic Literature Reviews (SLRs) are making their inroads into the IS discipline. By responding to the commentaries this rejoinder contributes to a debate about potential merits, limitations and wider ramifications of SLR for the IS discipline. More specifically we engage with the questions: What is an SLR and can it be conducted partially? How can literature reviews and SLR be improved? What is the view of ‘evidence’ in SLRs and the evidence-based practice movement and what are potential implications for ‘research informing IS practice’? How can the efficiency and effectiveness of literature reviews be improved? Overall we argue for a practice of critique that scrutinizes methodologies such as SLR in the light of values and ends we seek to achieve in the IS discipline.
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Notes
While there is no a widely accepted classification of literature reviews, in their recent publication Paré et al. (2015) distinguished seven types of reviews currently used in IS. Among those theoretical (37%) and narrative reviews (27%) are the most common types of review articles published in IS. Both of these as well as what the authors called ‘descriptive review’ (9%) and ‘critical review’ (5%) fall under what we named ‘traditional narrative literature reviews’, following other literature on literature reviews (e.g. Baumeister and Leary, 1997).
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our colleagues Robert Johnston and Dirk Hovorka for their feedback on an earlier version of this rejoinder.
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Boell, S., Cecez-Kecmanovic, D. Debating systematic literature reviews (SLR) and their ramifications for IS: a rejoinder to Mike Chiasson, Briony Oates, Ulrike Schultze, and Richard Watson. J Inf Technol 30, 188–193 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2015.15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2015.15