Reference no: EM131747977

Critical Article Review

We know that most, if not all of you, will never have critiqued an article before. The ability to summarise and develop an argument based on a research source is a crucial skill in business and public policy roles, as well as in academic work. It is about identifying what is important in the article, what is useful, what is different or unique and how that might be informative.

So, how do you do the article critique?

a) You need to read the article.

This means read closely. We would suggest read once, generally. Then, read again, with a highlighter - but highlight selectively - what is interesting/new/challenging for you. I would then read a third time, this time, taking notes based on the key ideas that you have highlighted. This will be the beginnings of your overview.

PART ONE: Briefly overview the article

b) Develop a sentence to respond to this question: What is the main argument in the article? What is the author/s trying to tell you about ethics? This is likely to be the lead sentence in your assignment.

a. Eg. in relation to Brown & Fraser (2006) in "Approaches and Perspectives in Socialand Environmental Accounting", I would argue:
Brown & Fraser(2006) argue that the central issue in corporate social responsibility [CSR] is about power and whether business is in control of society or society is in control of business.

This is a subjective process - there is no right answer per se, as each understanding of the article is personal.

However, there are wrong interpretations - eg. Brown & Fraser (2006) suggests there is only one correct way of understanding CSR or Carter et al. (2014) recognise that there is no role of power and politics in the media's construction of discourses.

Given the word count for this overview section, you will need to work hard on each sentence here. So, you need to display good editing skills: write, rewrite, read, edit, rewrite (it is an iterative process).

c) Develop an overview of the article (at no more than 150 words). Begin with your lead sentence and then write 3 or 4 more sentences to provide support for how your article develops this position.

You should reference where necessary (so ideas should be given a page number).

However, we do not want you to quote from the article - this is your words to understand someone else's words. Thus, the abstract of the article is the author's idea of contribution to the academic world, and thus, is not representative of what you found interesting or useful or different about the article.
 
PART TWO: Critically reflect on what is positive or negative about the article from an academic perspective

To critically reflect on something means to develop a way, with support, of telling us whether you agree with the article that you selected.
You may use ‘I' in this section because you are expressing your personal viewpoints about the article, but you should provide as much support from other sources (preferably published: journal articles, books (Carey) - not just from the Internet and not from Wikipedia or other online sources) in the development of your opinion.

We suggest that that there are two ways to do this:

A: The Comparative Technique

You need to compare the article to other material on the topic. Thus, we would suggest you compare the article to a relevant chapter in a textbook.

In you two paragraphs, you are answering the following questions:

i) How is your article similar or different from what the corresponding chapter in the textbook is saying?

ii) Do you agree or disagree with what your article is saying and why? You need to give support (references) for this position (so either, from your article or from the chapter from the textbook, or a combination of both).

We do not expect you to use any other resources, although you may choose to if you wish.

B: The Analytical Technique

Identify TWO statements or ideas from your article that you find interesting or significant. These could for example, be statements that you strongly agree or disagree with. You will need to quote the statement or ideas, but this does not count towards your word count.

Thus, your 250 words should follow this pattern:

i) Present Example 1 (this is not part of the word count)

ii) Evaluate why you find this example interesting. You should use support (from other published sources) in why it is interesting.

iii) Present Example 2 (this is not part of the word count) and evaluate this example.

PART THREE: Identify whether, how and why this article will or will not be useful for your essay topic due in Week 13

This is asking you to focus on how Morgan does or does not help you to answer the essay topic. The ‘how' needs reflection. This part requires you to do three things:

a) Why are you interested in your topic?

b) What you have learnt from evaluating your article in relation to your chosen topic?

c) How does this inform your essay?