Systematic Review and Evidence Synthesis as a Practice and Scholarship Tool

Abstract Reviews of existing research evidence have the potential to inform both practice and scholarship. This opportunity is currently not being fully realized in management and organization studies due to the limitations of traditional methods of review, which fail to identify clearly what is known and not known about a given topic. For practitioners, systematic review can help address managerial problems by producing a reliable knowledge base through accumulating findings from a range of studies. For scholars, systematic review can enhance methodological rigor as well as highlight opportunities for further research. Systematic reviews are guided by a set of principles rather than a specific, inflexible,…