DBAX 8101 Week 5 Literature Source Check Example

Would This Claim Survive a Reader Holding the Source? A Source Check of Twelve Load-Bearing Claims in a Literature Review on Remote-Work Intensity and Innovative Behavior Among Software Engineers

Student Name

Walden University

DBAX 8101: Business Research Project Mentoring

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Would This Claim Survive a Reader Holding the Source? A Source Check of Twelve Load-Bearing Claims in a Literature Review on Remote-Work Intensity and Innovative Behavior Among Software Engineers

Why Check the Sources

My mentor's note on chapter two said: "Several claims need support." My first response was to add citations. That response addressed the note's wording while missing the question behind it, which is whether each claim is actually supported by the source cited. This source check reopens the twelve claims that carry the most weight in my literature review on remote-work intensity and innovative behavior among software engineers at mid-sized firms, and asks of each whether it would survive a reader holding the source open beside it.

The Check

Table 1

Twelve Load-Bearing Claims Checked Against Their Sources

Six of twelve rows shown; the remaining six survived as drafted. Composite study.

What the Check Found

Of twelve claims, six survived as drafted, four survived after being narrowed and two fell. The two that fell share a problem: they used a source to support a claim about an outcome the source did not measure. Claim two used Yang et al. (2022), which reported that when Microsoft moved its whole workforce to remote work, collaboration networks grew more siloed and less dynamic, to support a claim that remote work lowers innovation. The study measured communication, not innovation. The rewritten sentence now says what the study found, and the link to innovation is stated as the gap my study addresses. Claim five used a study of call-center agents to support a claim about engineers' productivity. It was removed.

The narrowed claims share a different problem: they generalized from a specific setting or outcome. Brucks and Levav (2022) found that pairs generated fewer creative ideas when they worked by video than in person, but they found no such disadvantage for selecting among ideas. My draft had said that "creativity requires face-to-face interaction," which went past their finding. The revised sentence limits the claim to idea generation.

Rewritten Sentences

Claim two now reads: "Firm-wide remote work was associated with more siloed and less dynamic communication networks among employees (Yang et al., 2022); whether such changes reduce innovative behavior has not been tested directly." Claim four now reads: "Pairs working by video generated fewer creative ideas than pairs working in person, though they selected among ideas equally well (Brucks & Levav, 2022)."

What the Check Changes in the Argument

The literature review now makes a smaller and more accurate claim. Evidence shows that remote work changes communication patterns and may reduce idea generation in pairs, but no study in the review measures innovative behavior among software engineers under different levels of remote work. That gap is the justification for my study, and the source check made it clearer than the original draft did.

Why Adding Citations Was Not Enough

When a note asks for support, the quickest response is to add a citation. Two of my first additions would have made the problem worse: one cited a call-center study for a claim about engineers, and another cited a network study for a claim about innovation. Each citation made the sentence look better supported while leaving it just as unsupported as before. Checking what each source measured was slower, but it was the only way to answer the question my mentor was actually asking.

A Rule for the Rest of the Draft

For every remaining claim, I will note beside the citation what the source measured and in whom. Where that note does not match the claim, the claim changes. Booth et al. (2016) describe evidence as data a reader will accept as supporting a reason; a source cited for something it did not measure is not evidence in that sense.

References

Allen, T. J. (1977). Managing the flow of technology: Technology transfer and the dissemination of technological information within the R&D organization. MIT Press.

Bloom, N., Han, R., & Liang, J. (2024). Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance. Nature, 630(8018), 920-925. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07500-2

Bloom, N., Liang, J., Roberts, J., & Ying, Z. J. (2015). Does working from home work? Evidence from a Chinese experiment. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130(1), 165-218. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qju032

Booth, W. C., Colomb, G. G., Williams, J. M., Bizup, J., & FitzGerald, W. T. (2016). The craft of research (4th ed.). University of Chicago Press.

Brucks, M. S., & Levav, J. (2022). Virtual communication curbs creative idea generation. Nature, 605(7908), 108-112. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04643-y

Yang, L., Holtz, D., Jaffe, S., Suri, S., Sinha, S., Weston, J., Joyce, C., Shah, N., Sherman, K., Hecht, B., & Teevan, J. (2022). The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers. Nature Human Behaviour, 6(1), 43-54. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01196-4