701 RESEARCH METHODS IN ACCOUNTING & FINANCE

Assignment: Pitch & Literature Review (40% of total grade)

Required:

1) Complete Figure 2 in the Pitch.pdf file and

2) Write a literature review to support your pitching document.

The purpose of this assignment is to focus on the initial steps of the research process involving the formulation of a research question and a rigorous literature review. A literature review is a descriptive summary of research on a topic that has previously been studied. The purpose of a literature review is to inform. readers of the significant knowledge and ideas that have been established on a topic. Its purpose is to compare, contrast and/or connect findings that were identified when reviewing researchers' work. Oftentimes, literature reviews are written to ground a study in a particular context of what is known about a subject in order to establish a foundation for the question being researched. This is the purpose of the Pitch: it states the research question that guides you in your review and discussion of the literature.

For guidance on how to find a research question, please refer to the first set of lecture notes, and the Pitch article by Robert Faff. For this assignment you research question can be fairly broad and does not need to be highly original (it is fine if it is). Do not hesitate to contact me for quick feedback when you’re working on this assignment (zoom, skype, email).

The pitch document is 1 page. The literature review should not exceed 10 pages (excluding abstract and references), and ideally is less than 10 pages. Focus your literature review on articles in the top academic journals and on working papers from top experts in the relevant area. I expect you to include articles from the top 3 journals in Accounting or Finance (see lecture notes: JF, JFE and RFS for finance and TAR, JAR and JAE for accounting), and articles in A* journals in Accounting or Finance as listed on the ABDC list (see https://abdc.edu.au/research/abdc-journal-quality-list/ Remember this is a literature review and not an annotated bibliography, so: cite, compare, contrast, critique, and connect. I would expect you to refer to between 20 – 40 articles in your literature review.

How to start

Spend time thinking about a good research question in a research area that you find interesting (possibly an RQ that you think might end up to be at the centre of your thesis). Your research question should be ‘pitchable’ and should provide the basis for you to organize previous research in the area and shed light on the strengths, weaknesses, and possibly gaps in the literature.

Note:

· The main purpose of the Pitch is to come up with a research question that guides you in your discussion of the literature. You do not have to worry about the research design and method related to your research question, but you are asked to discuss research design issues related to validity and reliability of the relevant literature.

· This assignment might result in the research topic that you will work on for your thesis, but you are always free to change topics.

Framework for your pitch – see Figure 2 in Pitch.pdf

Possible framework for your literature review

1. Abstract of no more than 100 words that provides a concise summary of your review.

2. Introduction:

The introduction is used to establish the context of your review to the reader. To establish the context, it is important to do the following in the introduction:

a.       Define the topic of your study and provide any background information that helps your reader to understand the topic.

b.       Explain your reason (perspective) for reviewing the literature on this topic.

c.       State your inquiry question for this review.

3. Body of the Literature Review

This section of your paper begins with an explanation of how you have organized your literature review and describes findings from articles that provide answers to your inquiry question.

Before you begin this section, try to organize your articles into different themes based on the articles' findings. After you organize/sort your articles, it is important to give your sorted groups a descriptive name. The names of the sorted articles can then become your headings for each of the paragraphs that you write in the body of your review. So the body might look like this:

i Write an introduction paragraph for the body of your review. This

paragraph tells the reader how you organized the articles into common themes.  

ii This will be a paragraph that describes the first theme that you identified and compare, contrast and/or connect the articles you've selected.

iii This will be a paragraph that describes the second theme that you identified and compare, contrast and/or connect the articles you've selected.

iv etc etc

A possible way to organize the literature is the following:

a. Theoretical framework(s) that underlie the research area (e.g., agency theory, contracting theory, contingency theory, resource-based theory, etc.)

b. Empirical studies in the research area

i. Your selected research papers could be reviewed using the:

ii. Historical format (i.e., in chronological order) that highlights how the research has progressed over time;  

iii. Conceptual format based on, say, the different theoretical explanations of the phenomena or different empirical approaches; or

iv. Methodological format that provides a taxonomy (classification scheme) of the empirical research in the area. For example, see section 4 of Holthausen and Leftwich (1983) who explain the accounting choices according to the phenomena explained: companies’ choice, lobbying and voting studies, and impact of choices on stock prices.

c. Evaluation or Discusson. In this section you reflect on the literature. This is also a good place to discuss research design issues, and reliability and validity issues. 

4. Conclusion

In this paragraph, it is important to summarize the main findings from the articles that you reviewed and to point out the information that you found particularly important to know that answered the inquiry question that you established in the first paragraph of your review. Try to conclude your paper by connecting your inquiry question back to the context of the general topic of study.

5. References

Manuscript. preparation and style

Please use the APA Style, 7^th edition, which you can find in the Library:

https://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/subject-guides/bus/topicguides/apa_for_business.htm#apa 

Please use double-spaced, 12 font Times Roman, and pages are to have at least one-inch margins (top, bottom, left, and right).

Due date and submission

Please send your assignment by email no later than 1pm Monday 9 September

Your Pitch document is 10% of final mark. One of the criteria for the Pitch is the use of current literature to motivate the RQ. The pitch document will also be judged on clarity, ‘do-ability’, originality and potential contributions.

Your literature review is 30% of final mark. Criteria are on next page.

Marking: More detail

The base mark is 7.5, which is what you would score on each of the components (pitch, synthesis, methodology, presentation and references) if you performed up to the standard I expect for someone in A&F701.

To get a higher mark, you had to meet the standard above and add something special such as (these are only examples!):

· In the Pitch you propose to use a relevant database that has not yet been used before, or you propose a highly original research question.

· In Synthesis you show good ability to step back and critically examine the history of the topic area. In Methodology and Research Design you accurately evaluate reliability and validity issues in published research. Presentation is coherent and reader obtains a good understanding of the main issues in the literature. References: Includes all main studies in the relevant literature.

Based on my experience, the main problem areas for this assignment are the following:

· Reliance on low quality publications (instead of top journals). This is the most common problem.

· Even more serious: Pitch and LR have no relation to topics in Accounting or Finance.

· The LR is presented as an annotated bibliography (ie. like a set of abstracts). No attempt is made to “cite, compare, contrast, critique, and connect.”

· No summary, conclusions or takeaways

· Difficult or impossible to understand the logic of an argument, or the meaning of whole paragraphs.

· Clear lack of ‘care’ to make sure there is a readable, professionally presented piece of work. Use sections and subsections. Structure helps to see the story line.

· Personal opinions without any backing from authoritative source.

· Missing references, reference list not alphabetical, inclusion of first names, inconsistency in format.

· I tend to be lenient re. spelling and grammar, but will look at logical connectors such as ‘however’, ‘consistent with this’, ‘in contrast’, etc.. make sure they are truly ‘logical’.