Literature Review

Hi! I’m a PhD student in accounting, and I was told that you should only keep the literature that directly serves your hypothesis and that there should be a clear line of story running through the literature. But I’m still struggling with how to actually implement this.

Basically, I have two difficulties:

1. How do you connect the dots across different papers in a way that builds a coherent story and motivates your research question?

2. How do you quickly identify the “skeleton” or core structure of a literature?

If you have any great books, courses, or other resources that helped you develop these skills, especially for accounting research, I’d really appreciate your recommendations!