Questions:

1. How do you think Petro’s understanding of the literature review changed?

2. What particular skills did Petro develop in the preparation of the review?

3. Do you think Petro would have benefited from the use of mind-maps in researching his topic? Give reasons for your answer.

（A mind map is a diagram used to visually organize information. A mind map is hierarchical and shows relationships among pieces of the whole. It is often created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words, and parts of words are added. Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other ideas branch out from those. Mind maps can be drawn by hand, either as "rough notes" during a lecture, meeting, or planning session, for example, or as higher quality pictures when more time is available. Mind maps are considered to be a type of spider diagram. A similar concept in the 1970s was the "idea of sun bursting".

4. What problems do you think he would have anticipated in conducting research into national cultures that his literature review may not have highlighted?

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Petro decided to research cross-cultural management. He was interested particularly in national cultures and wished to compare and contrast differences between Britain, France and Nigeria in terms of their management theory and practices. He spent several days in the university library searching the online catalogue for information on national cultures in order to make comparisons between the countries selected for his project. He also used the internet search engine Google and was taken by surprise to find over 50 million hits on 'national cultures'. He was aware of the research of Hofstede and Trompenaars from his third-year studies. Google highlighted 159,000 hits on Hofstede and 77,000 on Trompennars. Given the numbers involved he quickly realized how time consuming this would be. Discussing this with a fellow student alerted him to the problems of such date. Apart from the fact that commercial and academic information was not easily differentiated, much of the information was not referenced in the way expected for his academic project. Nevertheless, given the problems he had in selecting the appropriate data on cross-cultural differences in management, he arrived at his first tutorial with a range of material for his literature review. This included photocopied extracts from textbooks on management theories and practices and copies of the articles from a variety of journals. He realized that there was a lot more data on Britain and France compared to Nigeria. However, he perceived that his managerial experience in Britain and France as well as his three years working in Nigeria for a large multinational company would give him insights that were valuable for his project. Petro emailed his project tutor his written work so far on his literature review. He was careful to make what he thought were interesting and meaningful comparisons between the three countries and assemble them in chronological order of publication. He felt pleased that he had already written 3000 words towards the 10,000 words he needed for his project report. Petro decided to research cross-cultural management. He was interested particularly in national cultures and wished to compare and contrast differences between Britain, France and Nigeria in terms of their management theory and practices. He spent several days in the university library searching the online catalogue for information on national cultures in order to make comparisons between the countries selected for his project. He also used the internet search engine Google and was taken by surprise to find over 50 million hits on 'national cultures'. He was aware of the research of Hofstede and Trompenaars from his third-year studies. Google highlighted 159,000 hits on Hofstede and 77,000 on Trompennars. Given the numbers involved he quickly realized how time consuming this would be. Discussing this with a fellow student alerted him to the problems of such date. Apart from the fact that commercial and academic information was not easily differentiated, much of the information was not referenced in the way expected for his academic project. Nevertheless, given the problems he had in selecting the appropriate data on cross-cultural differences in management, he arrived at his first tutorial with a range of material for his literature review. This included photocopied extracts from textbooks on management theories and practices and copies of the articles from a variety of journals. He realized that there was a lot more data on Britain and France compared to Nigeria. However, he perceived that his managerial experience in Britain and France as well as his three years working in Nigeria for a large multinational company would give him insights that were valuable for his project. Petro emailed his project tutor his written work so far on his literature review. He was careful to make what he thought were interesting and meaningful comparisons between the three countries and assemble them in chronological order of publication. He felt pleased that he had already written 3000 words towards the 10,000 words he needed for his project report.

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