Advanced Business Research – Week 5 Assignment

Critique of a Scholarly Article

For this week’s assignment, use EBSCOhost search engine via Grantham online library, and find a scholarly article about a business issue that interests you (find an article that discusses an issue that you might study for your research project). The article MUST NOT be more than 5 years old, MUST use a qualitative methodology, and MUST be a peer-reviewed article from one of the following journals: Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Perspective, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Strategic Management Journal, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Process Journal. There are other journals, but these are the most widely used journals in business research. Copy the link to the article and turn it with your critique. Your critique paper should answer the following questions:

1.Full citation of the article at the top of the page (Title of the article, author(s), name of the journal, volume, year and pages).

2.Identify the research questions. Are the research questions clear?

3.What is the nature of the study? (Here you need to specify whether the study is a case study, ethnography, a narrative research, historical research, a grounded theory, or a phenomenological approach).

4.Is the design or nature of the study appropriate for the research questions? Why or why not?

5.What are some of the major theories that the author(s) examine? (Here, you need to briefly explain the meaning of each theory, and why it is appropriate for this particular study).

6.Identify the research methodology used in this research study (make sure to include the sample size, and the measurement of the data).

7.Was research method appropriate for the research questions? (Why or why not?

8.What are the major findings of the research article? Summarize the results.

9.What do the author(s) say about the contribution of this study? Is it of any significance to the business problem that they studied?

10.Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the study, in particular of the methodology used in the study. Should the author(s) have used a different method of study?

11.Do you think you are more knowledgeable about the business issue that the author(s) studies? Why or why not?

The paper must have a minimum of 1000 words, excluding the title and a reference page. APA formatting required.

Caution: It is very important to understand that critiquing an article is very different from summarizing it. When you are asked to critique an article, you are expected to analyze and evaluate the main points of the article, not simply restate what the author(s) said. A critique includes analysis, evaluation, and answering the questions of how the author(s) did it? Why? And how well did they do? Additionally, don’t assume that because you are critiquing an article, you have to negatively criticize it. More often than not, a good critique has glowing reviews about an article. Of course, there is a chance that the critique might be negative or a combination of both; negative and positive.

To better help you with the critique, the following analytical and evaluation questions might come handy for you.

What are authors’ main points in the study?

What is the purpose of this study?

Who is the author writing this article for (audience)?

What are some of the main arguments that authors use to support their position?

Do authors provide any evidence for their claims and what are they?

Is the evidence enough to support the argument?

Are the facts that authors present accurate and credible?

Do authors’ argument support the main point of the article?

Does the article help you to better understand the topic or subject of the study?

After analyzing and evaluating the article, then you can answer the required questions for the assignment.

The requirements below must be met for your paper to be accepted and graded:

Use Microsoft Word in APA style, see example below.

Use font size 12 and 1” margins.

Include cover page and reference page.

At least 80% of your paper must be original content/writing.

No more than 20% of your content/information may come from references.

Cite all reference material (data, dates, graphs, quotes, paraphrased words, values, etc.) in the paper and list on a reference page in APA style.

References must come from sources such as, scholarly journals found in EBSCOhost, CNN, online newspapers such as, The Wall Street Journal, government websites, etc. Sources such as, Wikis, Yahoo Answers, eHow, blogs, etc. are not acceptable for academic writing.

A detailed explanation of how to cite a source using APA can be found in Supplemental Material.