10Min Research - 20 - Literature Review and Hypotheses Development, What to Write and How to Search?

Building a literature review that leads to credible hypotheses starts with linking two concepts—then proving that linkage is supported, meaningful, and theoretically grounded. The core workflow centers on four “ingredients”: connect prior studies to the relationship, assess whether findings are unanimous or contradictory, justify why the relationship matters, and—when evidence is missing—build the argument by linking the dimensions and traits of each construct. Without that chain of reasoning, a hypothesis lacks an empirical base or a defensible theoretical rationale.

First, the literature review must establish whether previous research has already linked the two concepts in question. If studies connect, for example, servant leadership and environmental behavior, their findings should be summarized: were results consistent across studies, or mixed? Unanimous findings—such as multiple studies all reporting a positive relationship—support a clearer expectation. Contradictory findings—where some studies find a positive relationship while others find no relationship—signal a need for new research to clarify the relationship. Importantly, lack of empirical findings does not remove the obligation to argue linkage; it simply raises the burden to explain how the variables could be related.

When prior studies are missing or insufficient, the review still needs to connect the constructs by mapping their internal components. Servant leadership, for instance, includes dimensions such as relationship building, growth and development of employees, humility, and ethical behavior. The literature review can then search for evidence that specific servant-leadership dimensions—like ethical behavior—relate to environmental behavior (or to the other variable of interest). This approach turns an abstract “X relates to Y” claim into a structured argument grounded in measurable subdimensions.

Finally, the linkage should be anchored in theory. Theory provides the mechanism that explains why the relationship should exist, not just that it has been observed. The transcript emphasizes that developing hypotheses requires using theory to justify the connections, and it points to separate material on how to use theory and how to search for relevant theories.

To operationalize all of this, the session gives practical Google Scholar search-string strategies. For checking whether prior studies link two concepts, the method uses title-based constraints such as requiring both terms to appear in the title (e.g., “servant leadership” and “environmental behavior,” using variations like with/without certain characters). For contradictions, it recommends searching for papers where contradiction-related terms appear in the title. For importance, it shifts to all-text searches using significance/value/importance keywords alongside the constructs. For dimension-based linkage when no direct studies exist, it suggests searching for a specific dimension (e.g., ethical behavior) paired with the other construct, optionally removing the broader construct term to widen results.

Overall, the message is straightforward: a strong literature review doesn’t just summarize studies—it builds a defensible pathway from prior evidence (or its absence) to a theoretically justified hypothesis, using targeted Scholar searches to gather the needed support.