DB8850 presents the unique challenge of conducting a doctoral literature review in a domain — general management — defined not by a single theoretical tradition or disciplinary home but by the integrative, cross-functional nature of its subject matter. General management capstones draw from organizational theory, industrial and organizational psychology, economics, sociology, and multiple functional management disciplines depending on their specific topic. The literature review must achieve coherence from this diversity — producing a purposeful, synthetic review that directly supports the capstone argument despite drawing from multiple scholarly traditions.
Cross-disciplinary literature review in general management
Building coherent reviews across multiple scholarly traditions
- Mapping the relevant literature terrain: DB8850 develops a systematic approach to identifying the relevant literature for general management topics that span multiple disciplines. For an HR management capstone, the relevant literature terrain might include: the HR management scholarly literature (Strategic HRM journals including Human Resource Management, Human Resource Management Review, and the International Journal of Human Resource Management); the organizational behavior literature (Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes); the industrial-organizational psychology literature (Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Work Stress); and potentially the economics literature on labor markets and employment relations. Different topics weight these literatures differently — a capstone on performance management system design will weight the HR management and OB literatures heavily; a capstone on compensation and equity will weight the economics and organizational justice literatures. The first DB8850 task is developing a comprehensive map of the relevant literature terrain before beginning the systematic search and review process
- Achieving synthesis across traditions: The greatest technical challenge in the general management literature review is achieving genuine synthesis when the relevant scholarship comes from traditions with different epistemological assumptions, methodological conventions, and conceptual vocabularies. Organizational economists and organizational sociologists studying the same phenomenon (say, why organizations adopt particular management practices) may reach very different conclusions using very different evidence — not because one is right and one is wrong, but because they are asking subtly different questions about different aspects of the phenomenon. The doctoral literature review skill is not to choose between these traditions but to articulate what each contributes to understanding the phenomenon, where they converge (providing more robust conclusions), where they diverge (identifying theoretical tensions worth investigating), and how the differences in evidence and method explain the differences in findings. Reviews that conflate different scholarly traditions — treating organizational economics and organizational sociology findings as commensurable without acknowledging the epistemological differences — demonstrate insufficient doctoral-level engagement
Connecting the literature review to the capstone research design
DB8850 develops the crucial connection between the literature review and the capstone research design — ensuring that the methodology the student plans to use in data collection and analysis is grounded in and justified by the literature review. For general management topics, this connection is particularly important because the breadth of topic options means that the appropriate research designs vary widely: capstones examining organizational performance outcomes typically use quantitative approaches (survey data, archival performance data, secondary data analysis); capstones examining management processes, decision-making, and organizational practices typically use qualitative approaches (interviews, case studies, document analysis); and capstones examining intervention effectiveness typically use mixed-methods or action research designs. The literature review in DB8850 must demonstrate that the chosen methodology is consistent with established research practice in the relevant domain — by reviewing how researchers have previously studied similar phenomena and justifying methodological choices with reference to this precedent — and must also justify the specific operationalization of key constructs (how variables will be measured, how the phenomena of interest will be observed) by connecting measurement choices to the established literature on construct validity and measurement quality in the relevant domain.
APA 7th edition and doctoral writing standards
DB8850 emphasizes the APA 7th edition writing and citation standards that all Capella doctoral work requires — with particular attention to the common APA errors that doctoral students make when writing literature reviews. Proper citation formatting (author-date in-text citations; reference list formatting for journal articles, books, edited chapters, dissertations, and web sources); appropriate use of primary vs. secondary sources (doctoral reviews should cite original sources whenever possible, not cite secondary summaries of original sources); integration of citations into the narrative (citations should support claims rather than replace substantive discussion); appropriate use of quotation vs. paraphrase (doctoral writing should be predominantly paraphrase — direct quotation is appropriate only for distinctive phrasings that cannot be adequately paraphrased); heading level use and parallelism; and bias-free language (APA 7th edition's guidance on avoiding biased language related to age, disability, gender, racial and ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and intersectionality). The course also develops the iterative writing and revision habits that produce doctoral-quality writing — producing rough drafts that capture ideas quickly, then revising systematically for clarity, precision, logical organization, and APA compliance.
DB8850 produces a complete synthetic literature review that grounds the general management capstone's research design and theoretical framework
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Frequently asked questions
DB8850 addresses source count expectations directly — recognizing that students frequently fixate on a target number when the more important question is coverage completeness and source quality. Capella's DBA general management capstone literature reviews typically include between 75 and 150 peer-reviewed sources, depending on the breadth and maturity of the topic's scholarly literature. Topics in highly researched areas (employee engagement, performance management, organizational change) will typically require more sources because the relevant literature is large and reviewers will notice if key studies are missing. Topics in less-researched or more novel areas (AI adoption in specific management contexts, hybrid work management, ESG management practices) may have thinner scholarly literatures and will appropriately include fewer sources. The most important source quality criteria for the DBA general management literature review: recency (at least 60-70% of sources should be published within the last 10 years, with an effort to include the most recent work available); disciplinary quality (peer-reviewed journal articles should dominate, with books and book chapters acceptable for theoretical frameworks and foundational works; practitioner publications, magazine articles, and non-peer-reviewed reports are not appropriate as primary scholarly sources); and relevance (every source included should have a clear, direct connection to the capstone's specific research question, theoretical framework, or methodology — reviewers assess whether sources are genuinely relevant to the capstone argument, not just tangentially related to the general topic area). A literature review with 90 highly relevant, high-quality, recent peer-reviewed sources will receive a better evaluation than a review with 150 sources that includes many marginal, dated, or practitioner-only references — quality and relevance are more important than quantity.