Systematic Review - Network for Business Sustainability

Study methodologies
Figure 9 shows that 60 per cent of included studies
adopted a cross-sectional approach; the remaining
40 per cent of studies were longitudinal (11 per cent),
historical (10 per cent) or did not have a discernible
perspective (19 per cent).
As Figure 10 shows, the single preferred methodology
was qualitative (46 studies, 46 per cent), and the next
most preferred method, quantitative (24 studies, 24 per
cent). A large proportion of studies (22 studies, 22 per
cent) did not make explicit their methodology — though
they mostly reported on single case histories.
Figure 9
STUDY TEMPORAL PERSPECTIVES
(NUMBER OF PAPERS)
QUALITY APPRAISAL
The role of quality appraisal of studies in systematic
reviews in MOS is contested. The role for quality
appraisal in systematic review was originally conceived
as a filtering mechanism to exclude possibly biased
studies or other factors that might affect the “truth”
of the conclusions. MOS consists of diverse types of
evidence, characterized by different epistemological
and ontological positions. As a result, the purpose that
quality appraisal serves and its position in systematic
review have been re-assessed. Quality appraisal has
not been widely reported in many of the systematic
reviews published in peer-reviewed MOS journals,
Figure 10
STUDY METHODOLOGIES (NUMBER
OF PAPERS)
Innovating for Sustainability 80