Research Skills : Finding Articles for Assignments and Dissertations, Part 2

Last blog, we discussed how to find specific articles at the University of Leicester Library. In this blog, we will look at how to find further articles on any given subject for your assignments or other work. If you go here:
http://rooms1.library.le.ac.uk/rooms/portal/media-type/html/user/anon/page/Leic_BusinessManagement

You will find the Subject Room for Business Management and a reference to Andrew Dunn, the subject librarian.

Clicking the blue bar at the top of page will take you to subjects such as "Finance" or "Management". These are pre-prepared resources that the subject librarian has listed for your help through the library.

One of the most important resources you can use is the Digital Library where you will be offered an A-Z list of databases at:

http://www.le.ac.uk/library/digital/j.html

As a graduate student at the Leicester Business School, you should know about how to use databases such as "Business Source Premier", "Emerald Fulltext " and "JSTOR". Let's say that we are looking for an article on deconstructing theory by Michele Bowring. When we go into Business Source Premier, we will find a number of articles by Bowring including "De/constructing theory" in the Journal of Management Inquiry. Below you will find the subject terms and the abstract.

Subject Terms:

SOCIAL sciences -- Philosophy
LOGICAL positivism

Abstract:

The purpose of this article is to understand and illustrate how the development of theories is influenced in part through dominant paradigms, in part through citation patterns, and in part through the norms of scientific writing. An example that is developed is the use of deconstruction to illustrate how institutional theory, with its interpretive beginnings, has become a structuralist positivist vehicle. This is examined in the context of the flourishing recent debate in the field of organizational studies with regard to the relevance of this field and the consensus, or lack thereof, that exists within it. After developing the deconstructive reading of a classic article in institutional theory, the author discusses the implications for the field of organizational studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject terms, as I suggested, will greatly narrow down any search for relevant research materials on any paper. M. Bowring's paper is subject indexed under "Logical positivism" and looking there will assist you greatly if you are looking for other papers like this one. Notice as well that "Institutional theory" has not been indexed but if you were to use it as a wider term, you would find other articles using this theoretical approach.

However, when you actually click on the article in Business Source Premier, the database allows you to use Leicester e-link to find more information. At this point, you can get this article full text. You can also look at the reference sources in the bibliography of the article. It looks like this:

References

• Agger, B. (1991). Critical theory, poststructuralism, postmodernism: Their sociological relevance. Annual Review of Sociology, 17, 105-132.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Find it on University of Leicester E-Link]
• Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1967). The social construction of reality. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday Anchor.
• Burrell, G., & Morgan, G. (1979). Sociological paradigms and organisational analysis. London: Heinemann.
• Calás, M. B., & Smircich, L. (1991). Voicing seduction to silence leadership. Organization Studies12(4), 567-602.
• D'Aunno, T., Sutton, R. I., & Price, R. H. (1991). Isomorphism and external support in conflicting institutional environments: A study of drug abuse treatment units. Academy of Management Journal34(3), 636-661.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] [Order article via Infotrieve][Find it on University of Leicester E-Link]
• Daft, R., & Lewin, A. (1990). Editorial. Organization Science, 1(1), 1-9.
• Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Derrida, J. (1988). Limited Inc.Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
• DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48, 147-160.
• Evered, R., & Louis, M. R. (1981). Alternative perspectives in the organizational sciences: Inquiry from the inside and inquiry from the outside, Academy of Management Review, 6(3), 385-395.[CrossRef][Find it on University of Leicester E-Link]
• Gephart, R. P., Jr. (1986). Deconstructing the defense for quantification in social science: A content analysis of journal articles on parametric strategy. Qualitative Sociology, 9(2), 126-144.[CrossRef][Find it on University of Leicester E-Link]
• Gioia, D. A., & Pitre, E. (1990). Multiparadigm perspectives on theory building. Academy of Management Review, 15(4), 584-602.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Find it on University of Leicester E-Link]
• Hamilton, D. P. (1990). Publishing by- and for?-the numbers. Science, 250, 1331-1332.[Free Full Text]
• Hamilton, D. P. (1991). Research papers: Who's uncited now?Science, 251, 25.[Free Full Text]
• Kilduff, M. (1993). Deconstructing organizations. Academy of Management Review, 18(1),13-31.
• Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Lee, A. S. (1991). Integrating positivist and interpretive approaches to organizational research. Organization Science, 2(4), 342-365.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
• Luthans, F., & Davis, T.R.V. (1982). An idiographic approach to organizational behaviour research: The use of single-case experimental designs and direct measures. Academy of Management Review, 7(3), 380-391.[CrossRef][Find it on University of Leicester E-Link]
• Martin, J. (1990). Deconstructing organizational taboos: The suppression of gender conflict in organizations. Organization Science, 1(4), 339-359.
• Meyer, J. W., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83(2), 340-363.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Find it on University of Leicester E-Link]
• Meyer, J. W., Scott, R. W., & Deal, T. E. (1981). Institutional and technical sources of organizational structure: Explaining the structure of educational organizations. In J. W. Meyer & W. R. Scott (Eds.), Organizational environments: Ritual and rationality (pp. 45-70). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
• Meyer, J. W., Scott, W. R., & Strang, D. (1987). Centralization, fragmentation, and school district complexity. Administrative Science Quarterly, 32, 186-201.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Find it on University of Leicester E-Link]
• Morgan, G., & Smircich, L. (1980). The case for qualitative research. Academy of Management Review, 5(4), 491-500.[CrossRef][Find it on University of Leicester E-Link]
• Mumby, D. K., & Putnam, L. L. (1992). The politics of emotion: A feminist reading of bounded rationality. Academy of Management Review, 17(3), 465-486.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Find it on University of Leicester E-Link]
• Oliver, C. (1991). Strategic responses to institutional processes. Academy of Management Review, 16(1), 145-179.
• Pfeffer, J. (1993). Barriers to the advance of organizational science: Paradigm development as a dependent variable. Academy of Management Review, 18(4), 599-620.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Find it on University of Leicester E-Link]
• Ritzer, G. (1975). Sociology: A multiple paradigm science. American Sociologist, 10.
• Schutz, A. (1962). Common-sense and scientific interpretation of human action; and Concept and theory formation in the social sciences. In M. Natanson (Ed.), Collected papers I: The problem of social reality (pp. 1-65). The Hague: M. Nijhoff.
• Scott, W. R. (1987). The adolescence of institutional theory. Administrative Science Quarterly, 32, 493-511.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Find it on University of Leicester E-Link]
• Selznick, P. (1949). TVA and the grass roots. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Social Sciences Citation Index. (1976-1993). Philadelphia: Institute for Scientific Information.
• Tolbert, P. S., & Zucker, L. G. (1983). Institutional sources of change in the formal structure of organizations: The diffusion of civil service reforms, 1880-1935. Administrative Science Quarterly, 23, 22-39.[CrossRef][Find it on University of Leicester E-Link]
• Zucker, L. G. (1977). The role of institutionalization in cultural persistence. American Sociological Review, 42, 726-743.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Find it on University of Leicester E-Link]
• Zucker, L. G. (1983). Organizations as institutions. Research in the Sociology of Organizations2, 1-47.
• Zucker, L. G. (1987). Institutional theories of organizations. Annual Review of Sociology, 13, 443-464.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Find it on University of Leicester E-Link]

The trail of references provided by the author, Michele Bowring, leads the researcher to more valuable sources for further research such as Berger & Luckmann's "The Social Construction of Reality" or Burrell & Morgan's "Sociological paradigms and organisational analysis". This is a way that you, the new and blossoming researcher, can find important texts in a particular field such as Institutional Theory, the Philosophy of Social Sciences or Logical Positivism.

The sources provided by the author of this paper provide a 'brick wall' of ideas with which she constructed her ideas. The ideas of new researchers, such as Bowring, rely on the ideas of older and important work by people such as Burrell & Morgan or Berger & Luckmann. In fact, business research is really a tributary of a larger river from which the subject of Sociology flows. It is part of the study of people, society and its institutions such as business institutions.

The works of Derrida, Foucault in the twentieth century - and the works of Marx and Durkheim in the nineteenth century, are all part of this larger river. Skilled researchers, such as Burrell and Morgan, have navigated this river for their entire academic careers. Newer researchers, such as Brewis (last week) and Bowring (above), are following this same river today. You too will follow the river to its smaller streams and larger branches in footsteps of those who came before, and can use bibliographies such as the one above to help you find your way.

This river, as I explained to a group of students earlier this week, is part of the larger history of intellectual thought in Western Society. In a metaphoric sense, the river is both part of us and surrounds us - we cannot be independent of it. Like Huck Finn, we can drift along with the river, look at the night stars and see our position in relation to the world but we cannot leave. We can rebel in small and meaningful ways. Huck Finn in Twain's book did not know this. He went the wrong way on the huge Mississippi - a river that Twain knew was very tricky to navigate from his own time as a riverboat captain. On our intellectual voyage, we will have to use the moon, stars and the river current on our small raft to make sure we do go the right way in our intellectual voyage. For the diligent student, checking your reference sources will make your intellectual destination certain and your path clear.

Research Skills; Find Articles for Assignments & Dissertations

Looking at the above list, there are similarities between the needs of all these students. Let's talk about the first group of students, the ones who need a very specific article that they don't have with their module package and that is part of a specific assignment. Why has the tutor done this and not provided all the articles that you need with your module materials? Is this some kind of test? The obvious answer is 'yes'. However, the less obvious realization is that the tutor wants you to begin using the resources available through U of Leicester Library as part of your educational experience at U of Leicester.

Today, I'd like to go a little deeper. I've received emails on my email address at U of Leicester from students who need:

1. A specific article for their module assignment and can't find them
   
2. To get more information on a given subject to help them while doing their assignments
3. To do 'wide reading' before booking an appointment with a dissertation tutor to discuss their dissertation topic

Looking at the above list, there are similarities between the needs of all these students. Let's talk about the first group of students, the ones who need a very specific article that they don't have with their module package and that is part of a specific assignment. Why has the tutor done this and not provided all the articles that you need with your module materials? Is this some kind of test? The obvious answer is 'yes'. However, the less obvious realization is that the tutor wants you to begin using the resources available through U of Leicester Library as part of your educational experience at U of Leicester.


A quick perusal of the Internet reveals why this is the case.Wikipedia, a common source of material, is not vetted by experts in their field and is often inaccurate. Newspapers, which are now often available online, do not usually have the kind of critical readings that you need for good scholarly work. Please note - that there may be exceptions to this rule in The Sunday Times, The New York Sunday Times, The Guardian or The Washington Post. This comment, of course, has implications for group 3 above, the students doing 'wide readings' on their subject of choice. Obviously, you won't want to present a dissertation project with a bibliography that consists of newspaper articles that are not scholarly. If you are doing this, you need to go back to the drawing board and build a better bibliography.

However, getting back to the student who is searching for an article, what do they do? They can go onto Google Scholar to look for their article. This is a good choice to begin. Let's say, for argument's sake, that you are asked to find the article: "Re-Eroticizing the organization: An Exegesis and Critique" from the journal "Gender, Work and Organization" by Joanna Brewis & Christopher Grey, Volume 1, Issue 2, 1994.

You will write a critical summary of this article. This will include an examination of the main thesis or argument in Brewis & Grey's article, a summary of their arguments and an examination of their use of evidence for their arguments and findings, an examination of their conclusion and how it is linked to the main thesis and finally an examination of the bibliography and what other research you might use should you care to conduct further research.

Google Scholar at:
http://scholar.google.com/

will enable you to find Joanna Brewis's publications. I would suggest that the most direct route to finding this article is to use the 'Advanced Search' option, and enter the author's name and the first part of the title. You will then be offered several publications by Brewis and Grey. When you pick the appropriate article, you will automatically go a page for publications from Wiley-Interscience. They publish "Gender, Work and Organization". They will take you here:

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119282867/abstract

They will show you sample articles, if you wish to examine them, and a short abstract of the article. If you wish to purchase the article, you can choose to do so at this point. Indeed, given limited time and resources you may do this at this point but you should be aware of another other option.

Let's go to U of Leicester library after having examined option 1: buy the article from Wiley-Interscience. If you go to the Leicester Library at:
http://www.le.ac.uk/library/

At the top of the page, a gray bank includes a link to E-link. Clicking on this takes you here:
http://resolver1.sirsi.co.uk/

When you enter, the title "Gender, Work and Organizations", you then are given several options. Using 'Brewis, Joanna' and making sure you enter 'author' to limit your search to only those publications with Joanna Brewis as the author, you will be given three options. Only the first under 'Blackwell', indicates that you can find articles from as far back as 1994. When you try to get this article, you find that you are given only the abstract even when you click on the PDF file. If we look down the list of other publications in "Gender, Work and Organizations" under Joanna Brewis's name, you will also find the journal article "Foucault, Politics and Organizations: (Re)-Constructing Sexual Harassment, 2001, Volume 8: Issue 1. When you click on PDF, you can get a complete copy of this other article free of charge (you still need your Athens name & password). It is likely that the earlier copies are simply not available online at this time. You will need another option.

Unfortunately, the article we want will need to be interlibrary loaned. Go to:
http://www.le.ac.uk/li/services/interlibrary.html
Under the policies regarding interlibrary loans, you will find that a distance learner at U of Leicester can obtain 15 interlibrary loans free-of-charge. This clearly is what you would have to do if you wanted this article. In some cases, which we will discuss in next week's blog on Research Skills: Finding Articles for Assignments and Dissertations, Pt. 2, you might find a good source of articles one of the databases online at U of Leicester. We will discuss how to use these databases in more length in this posting.

In the meantime, I'd like to leave you with several ideas:

1. Spend time getting to know how to use E-link through the University of Leicester.
2. Take the time to interlibrary loan articles if you need to do so.
3. Make sure you know your Athens ID & password.
   
4. Use Google scholar when necessary but do not make it your only resource.
5. Find out what University of Leicester has available free before buying articles online.

Finally, I would like all those working on assignments or gathering material for a dissertation to use the descriptors or subjects to help locate more articles/books on similar topics. The bibliography will also helpful here. I will talk about this in next week's blog posting.

KB