UGBS PhD Programmes Unit Organises Capacity-Building Seminar on Literature Review and Research Gap Identification
The PhD Programmes Unit of the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS) organised a two-day capacity-building seminar for doctoral students aimed at strengthening their research and academic writing skills. The virtual sessions were held from 18th to 19th March 2026, and featured Dr. Micheal Appiah, Senior Research Fellow at the International Laboratory of Intangible-Driven Economy, HSE University, Perm, Russia, as the guest lecturer. The seminar focused on the theme, “Literature Review in Doctoral Research: Foundations, Structures, and Research Gap.”
The first day of the seminar focused on developing a strong literature review. Dr. Appiah explained the importance of critical engagement in doctoral research, noting that unlike master’s-level studies, PhD work requires critique and consistent reading of scholarly materials. He emphasised that reading research articles is a skill that must be intentionally developed. He explained that literature reviews can be organised in several ways depending on the research objective. These include thematic organisation, theoretical organisation, methodological organisation, chronological organisation, and organisation by debate or problem. He advised participants to adopt the structure that best addresses their research problem rather than the one that is easiest to write. The session also outlined what examiners typically expect from a literature review, including clear scope and boundaries, strong command of key literature, logical organisation, critical engagement beyond description, synthesis across studies, and clear linkage to the research problem.
Dr. Appiah also guided participants on how to read research articles effectively, encouraging them to pay particular attention to the introduction section and to follow general reading rules aimed at identifying relevant information for their studies. He further discussed theoretical reviews, the differences between theory and concepts, and the characteristics of weak and strong paragraphs in academic writing. Highlighting the core functions of a literature review, he noted that it should define the topic and key concepts, establish the theoretical foundation, review empirical evidence, outline methodological approaches used in prior studies, identify what is settled and unsettled in the field, and provide a clear rationale for the present study. He emphasised that any section that does not perform one of these functions may require revision. Dr. Appiah further distinguished between summary, synthesis, and critique, urging participants to move beyond descriptive writing to critical and integrative analysis.
The second day of the seminar focused on improving doctoral writing and identifying meaningful research gaps. Dr. Appiah emphasised the importance of publishing, noting that doctoral candidates must contribute to scholarly discourse to remain active in the research community. He encouraged participants to consistently engage with high-quality academic sources and stressed that novelty in research must be accompanied by clear justification of its relevance. According to him, a research gap is not simply an area with few studies but rather an unresolved issue, weakness, limitation, inconsistency, or omission that has theoretical, empirical, methodological, or practical significance. He stressed that a meaningful research gap must be important and credible, not merely an empty space in the literature. He ALSO highlighted weak gap claims and explained that it often fails to demonstrate why the absence matters, do not clearly show contribution, and do not connect to theory, evidence, or methodology. He emphasised that doctoral research must justify significance, not just novelty.
To help participants identify meaningful gaps, he presented a five-step approach: mapping major themes in the literature, identifying what is well established, locating recurring limitations and omissions, determining the most important unresolved issue, and demonstrating how the study addresses that issue. He advised that research gaps should emerge from synthesising multiple studies rather than relying solely on suggestions for future research from individual papers. He further explained how literature reviews should logically lead to the research problem, study objective, research question, theoretical lens, and methodological choice. He emphasised that literature synthesis should guide the progression from identifying unresolved issues to formulating a clear research problem and objectives. To illustrate practical application, Dr. Appiah used examples from his recent research paper titled “ESG Buffer: How Environmental, Social, and Governance Readiness Moderates the Impact of Climate Vulnerability on Financial Development in BRICS Economies,” to demonstrate how research gaps can be identified and translated into research questions and hypotheses.