Day 25 — Synthesis memo — A new form of writing

A new course (Doctoral Course in Strategy and Venturing), a new assignment and, as it turns out, a new type of writing challenge. It is called a synthesis memo.

The setting

I was given four articles, all on a related topic — in this case this is strategy and its development. My task is to read all of them and develop a personal view on the following questions:

• What are the common themes within the articles, contradictions among the articles, and insights? (This entails your developing an understanding of the assigned articles, their relationship to one another, and their collective synthesis).
• What are the 2–3 most important conclusions from the readings viewed collectively?
• Suggest an appropriate follow-on research question(s) for a deductive study based on a research gap that is suggested by these articles collectively?
• What is the best of the assigned articles (and why)?

The observations and learnings

First of all, I wasn’t sure if I’m allowed to go beyond the given articles or whether I should constrain my analysis to those that were given. For now I decided to keep it tightly packed and stick to the four articles. I thought that I could reference some other work, if it will fill necessary, but I ended up writing the whole memo without other references.

When trying to conceptualize the approach to the assignment, it crossed my mind that I can look at it as an exercise in building intertextual coherence (see Locke, K. & Golden-Biddle, K. 1997. Constructing Opportunities for Contribution: Structuring Intertextual Coherence and Problematizing in Organizational Studies. Academy of Management Journal 40(5): 1023–1062.) Thus, it doesn’t matter if the given articles make explicit connections or not. My job is to build the coherence, whether synthesize it, recognize that it is progressive or spot incoherence.

After reading the articles it’s helped me to think about the building blocks of each article’s theory (see Makadok, R., Burton, R., & Barney, J. 2018. A Practical Guide for Making Theory Contributions in Strategic Management. Strategic Management Journal 39(6): 1530–1545.). In this case, the articles were rather practical and involved little formal academic theorizing, therefore the key differentiator was level of analysis. Three articles were on a firm/manager level, while one on an industry/firms level. Clearly, the last one gave the broader context, while the three on the same level somewhat contested with each other (or one actually mediating between the two others).

It’s helped me to graphically represent the idea (although I wrote the first draft without completing the full diagram), starting with the main (stronger, in my view) article.

This was just the first out of roughly 10 assignments like this. I’m eagerly looking forward to hear feedback and learn how others viewed the four articles.