Building cumulative knowledge through literature reviews

• Main Authors: Leseure, Michel, Shaw, Duncan, Atif, Hassan
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2006
• Subjects: L Education (General)
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/11498/1/347.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/11498/; http://www.kmice.cms.net.my/
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

Sometimes a literature review returns a wealth of conflicting results that succeed only in clouding our knowledge rather than clarifying it.This is partly because literature is often not cumulative, making it the responsibility of the reader to synthesise knowledge across articles. This synthesis involves a difficult cognitive process, but one that can be supported with modeling techniques.Through a case study the paper reports an unusual application of influence diagrams, and proposes a framework for building cumulative knowledge through literature reviews.The impact of the models on the case study organisation’s knowledge and decision making is presented.