Students are required to write a review based on a minimum of eight journal articles from the scholarly peer-review literature on a single topic within recruitment and selection, choosing one one out of following three topics:
1. Global staffing for multinational corporations: involves strategically managing and deploying employees across international borders to optimize organizational performance, meet local market demands, and ensure cultural alignment.
2. Flexible work practices, including remote work and working from home: offer employees the ability to adjust their work schedules and locations to better balance personal and professional responsibilities, enhance productivity, and accommodate diverse needs.
3. HR analytics: involves the systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of workforce data to improve decision-making, optimize human resource processes, and enhance overall organizational performance.
Length: Maximum report length is 1,200 words, excluding references. Include word count at the end of the review. Use 1.5 line spacing, 2.5 cm margins on top, bottom and each side, Arial font size 12.
Writing and presentation style: Your review should be written in formal academic narrative style. It will be evaluated for clarity of expression, discriminatory language and overall presentation including grammar, spelling and punctuation. Do NOT include an executive summary, abstract, footnotes or endnotes, and do NOT use bullet points, casual language, (or bracketed comments). Use headings sparingly.
Citations and referencing: Reports must be fully and appropriately cited and referenced using a formal academic style. Use APA 6th or 7th style. Substantial marks will be deducted for inadequate or incorrect referencing or violation of these presentation rules.
TIPS AND FAQs :
1. Topic selection. You need to research the topic. This means searching the library databases for relevant peer reviewed literature, perhaps across a few databases and certainly across a variety of journals. You need to review the literature broadly. Look at which researchers have conducted what studies, on what populations or samples, under what conditions, using what methods, in what contexts and so on. Then work out what topic within that broad literature to write about and select the most relevant literature for that topic.
2. References used. A minimum of eight peer-reviews references are required. A better literature review will probably NOT include all papers a student has looked at. Be prepared to not use some papers that are not appropriate for your paper.
There is no room for textbooks, newspapers, industry or popular press (e.g., Business Review Weekly, HR Monthly), web-based or other external (non-refereed) material in this scholarly literature review. Research books may be used but are rarely available online at this time.
There may be many journal papers on your chosen topic and you will need to make judgements on what is relevant to your topic. You will need to narrow the scope of your chosen topic. Given the word limit, students will need to use their problem solving skills to determine which papers to include.
Your review will probably be improved by older studies that provide definitions and a foundation for later studies as well as more recent studies. Authors cited most often are usually the most important scholars in this area.
3. Writing up. Better submissions will be critical in their analysis.
Be ready to be impressed with the level of detail reported but also be prepared to be critical – in a scientific way – of some studies you read. Most student submissions tend to be descriptive, like you’re a journalist writing for a newspaper or industry magazine. For a High Distinction level, we are looking for critical insights of the body of literature, beyond mere description.
Do not be concerned by any statistics you do not follow – they are not at issue in this assessment. You are not expected to be able to comment on the statistics or analyses.
Remember, almost every journal article you read for this assignment will serve as a guide or model for this assignment. Almost every journal article (on the planet!) starts with a literature review. Notice what you are reading – and how it is written – to help you with your own writing.
Determine to what level of detail which papers will be included in your final submission. Your communication skills will be tested as you try different ways of expressing important ideas within the word count. A sentence that took 25 words the first time may also be clearly articulated in 12 or 18 words if you allow time for revisions.
4. Getting started. Some students have trouble working out the “topic” for a literature review. Some obvious topics include attraction, training or professional development, retention, industry/sector destination choice, salaries and payroll issues, retirement and planning. But as other topics emerge from your broad search, see if you have enough peer-reviewed journal papers to support your literature review to focus around questions such as:
What is the current state of research on Topic X? What do we know about Topic X? What research has been done on Topic X? What are the main issues or themes in Topic X research?
What do we need to know about Topic X?
One aspect of Topic X that has been researched extensively is Sub-topic Z…
Three main research areas within Topic X are Y, Z and B…