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Webster & Watson/Guest Editorial

outline of the review will enable the senior editor to advise whether another author is currently working on
the topic and to give broad guidance on the direction of the work.

Writing a Review Article
To assist you in crafting your paper, we indicate the broad structure of a review paper and provide several
suggestions on executing your review. We reflect on some pragmatic issues (e.g., what should be included
in the introduction to your paper?) and some more ambiguous issues (e.g., how can you justify a
proposition?). Throughout, we provide examples from past articles in a variety of fields to give you
exemplars of how others have addressed these issues.

Beginning Your Article
In some papers we have received, the topic does not “emerge” until well into the article. Moreover, the
contributions are not clear. In contrast, to hook your reader early, the introduction to your paper needs to
motivate your topic, provide a working definition of your key variable(s), and clearly articulate the paper’s
contributions. Ways of demonstrating contributions include providing a new theoretical understanding that
helps to explain previously confusing results, noting that little research has addressed this topic, providing
calls from well-respected academics to examine this topic, bringing together previously-disparate streams
of work to help shed light on a phenomenon, and suggesting important implications for practice.
The next section of your paper should provide more elaborate definitions of your key variables and set the
boundaries on your work. Boundaries include issues like level(s) of analysis, temporal and contextual
limitations, the scope of your review, and your implicit values (Bacharach 1989; Whetten 1989). For
example, you should clearly state the unit or units of analysis undertaken in the review; however, be wary
of trying to go beyond a single unit unless you can provide a strong rationale for a multilevel perspective.
Further, if your theory applies only to certain contexts (e.g., types of occupations, organizations, or
countries) or to certain time periods, this should be identified for the reader. You also need to support the
scope of your review: state what literature and fields you will draw upon and why these define an
appropriate boundary for the chosen topic and level of analysis. Finally, identify the values bounding your
theory—that is, your implicit assumptions concerning whose interests are served (such as top management, IS professionals, users, or other stakeholders: Bacharach 1989; Iivari et al. 1998).
To show how these suggestions might be implemented, consider Griffith’s (1999) paper on “technology
features.” She motivates her topic by providing examples of practice ranging from aboriginals’ use of the
steel axe to users’ concerns with Pentium chip errors (p. 472). She then articulates the contributions by
(1) outlining past research and highlighting its gaps, (2) suggesting that she will address these shortcomings by proposing new theory, (3) listing academics who have called for this research, and
(4) indicating that this research has important implications for practice (pp. 473-474). Her subsequent sections provide definitions of her key concepts and delineate the boundaries on her research (pp. 474-478).

Identifying the Relevant Literature
A high-quality review is complete and focuses on concepts. A complete review covers relevant literature
on the topic and is not confined to one research methodology, one set of journals, or one geographic

MIS Quarterly Vol. 26 No. 2/June 2002

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