Best-Practice Recommendations for Producers, Evaluators, and Users of Methodological Literature Reviews

We categorized and content-analyzed 168 methodological literature reviews published in 42 management and applied psychology journals. First, our categorization uncovered that the majority of published reviews (i.e., 85.10%) belong in three categories (i.e., critical, narrative, and descriptive reviews), which points to opportunities and promising directions for additional types of methodological literature reviews in the future (e.g., meta-analytic and umbrella reviews). Second, our content analysis uncovered implicit features of published methodological literature reviews. Based on the results of our content analysis, we created a checklist of actionable recommendations regarding 10 components to include to enhance a methodological literature review's thoroughness, clarity, and ultimately, usefulness. Third, we describe choices and judgment calls in published reviews and provide detailed explications of exemplars that illustrate how those choices and judgment calls can be made explicit. Overall, our article offers recommendations that are useful for three methodological literature review stakeholder groups: producers (i.e., potential authors), evaluators (i.e., journal editors and reviewers), and users (i.e., substantive researchers interested in learning about a particular methodological issue and individuals tasked with training the next generation of scholars).

Automated summary

This research categorized and content-analyzed 168 methodological literature reviews published in 42 management and applied psychology journals. It revealed that the majority of the reviews belonged to critical, narrative, and descriptive categories, suggesting potential for additional types of reviews in the future. The study also provided actionable recommendations based on the implicit features found in the reviewed literature, and discussed the choices and judgment calls made in published reviews. Overall, this article offers valuable insights for authors, editors, reviewers, and researchers interested in methodological issues.