Quick answer: To write the review of related literature for a thesis on remote work, group the studies by theme rather than by author, summarize each one with the same formula (who, how, what they found, what limits it), say how each connects to your question, and end each theme with what remains unknown. Use recent studies with strong designs as your anchors, show where findings disagree, and finish with the gap your study fills.

This guide is for students writing “related literature and studies” or “antecedent studies” chapters in business, management, psychology or economics, and it works through a real example: three published studies on remote work, opened and summarized with the formula. The structure also applies to other topics. If you want a general walk-through of the chapter first, the guide to the literature review of an MBA dissertation covers journals and synthesis.

Step 1: Decide what “related” means for your question

Related literature is not everything written about remote work. It is the body of work that bears on your specific question. Suppose your thesis asks whether hybrid schedules change employee retention in a mid-sized firm. Related literature then includes studies of retention and turnover, studies of hybrid and fully remote schedules, studies of productivity and performance (because managers worry about them), and theory on autonomy and job satisfaction. It does not need a history of the pandemic. Write your question at the top of a page and list four to six themes that a reader would need to understand it. Those themes become your headings.

Step 2: Search, screen and keep a log

Search at least two databases with concept terms such as “remote work”, “working from home”, “hybrid work” and “telework”, plus your outcome terms. Record the date, source, string and number of results, then screen by title, abstract and full text against criteria you write down: peer-reviewed or working paper, empirical, a stated sample, a stated measure, and published in a window you can defend. The guide to Boolean search strings for academic databases shows how to build strings you can log and repeat; remember that quality and fit beat raw counts.

Step 3: Summarize every study with the same formula

A consistent formula keeps your chapter from turning into a list of vague abstracts. Use five parts for each anchor study:

1. Citation and design: author, year, journal, and the type of study (randomized trial, natural experiment, survey, meta-analysis).
2. Sample and setting: who and where, and how many.
3. Measures: what the outcome and exposure were.
4. Finding: the main result, stated with the numbers the authors report.
5. Limit and link: what the study cannot tell you, and how it relates to your question.

You do not need to write all five parts out in every paragraph of the final chapter. Take the notes in this format, then compress them: a strong anchor study may earn four or five sentences, while a supporting study may earn only a clause inside a synthesis sentence. The point of the formula is that you never cite a study whose design and limit you could not state.

How to read a study quickly but carefully

Reading every article start to finish is not realistic when you have dozens to cover. Read the abstract to decide relevance, then go straight to the methods section for the design, sample and measures, then to the main results table or figure, and finally to the limitations paragraph. Only then read the introduction and discussion for how the authors frame it. Write your five-part notes while the article is open, in your own words, and mark any number you copy so you can re-check it against the table. This order protects you from the most common error, repeating a headline claim from an abstract that the results do not fully support.

Three real studies, summarized with the formula

The three summaries below are built from the published abstracts. Open and read the full articles before you cite them in your own chapter, and report numbers exactly as the authors do.

Example 1: a randomized experiment on working from home

Bloom, Liang, Roberts and Ying (2015), The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130(1), 165-218. The authors report a nine-month experiment at Ctrip, a large Chinese travel agency, in which call-center employees who volunteered to work from home were randomly assigned to work from home or in the office. Home working led to a 13% performance increase, of which 9% came from more minutes worked per shift and 4% from more calls per minute. Home workers reported higher work satisfaction and their attrition rate halved, but promotion rates conditional on performance fell. When the firm rolled out the option and let employees choose again, more than half switched, and the gains from working from home almost doubled to 22%. Limit and link: the participants were volunteers in a call center, so the result may not transfer to roles that need collaboration, and the reported promotion penalty is a reminder to measure career outcomes in your own study.

Example 2: a randomized trial of hybrid working

Bloom, Han and Liang (2024), Nature, 630(8018), 920-925. The authors ran a six-month randomized controlled trial of hybrid working from home with 1,612 employees at a Chinese technology company in 2021 and 2022. Hybrid working improved job satisfaction and reduced quit rates by one-third, with a significant reduction for non-managers, female employees and those with long commutes. Null equivalence tests showed no effect on performance grades over the next two years of reviews, no difference in promotions, and no effect on lines of code written by computer engineers. The managers in the experiment also revised their views of hybrid working’s effect on productivity. Limit and link: one company in one country, and a hybrid arrangement of a few days at home, so it speaks to retention in hybrid settings but not to fully remote work.

Example 3: a natural experiment on working from anywhere

Choudhury, Foroughi and Larson (2021), Strategic Management Journal, 42(4), 655-683. The authors study a program at the United States Patent and Trademark Office that moved patent examiners from working from home to working from anywhere, exploiting variation in timing created by negotiations with the examiners’ union. The transition resulted in a 4.4% increase in output without affecting the incidence of rework. They also report evidence of increased observable effort. Limit and link: patent examiners do largely independent, measurable work, so the result suits output-based roles and says less about team-based work.

Step 4: Write by theme and synthesize, do not just list

After you summarize the studies, compare them. A synthesis paragraph answers: where do the studies agree, where do they differ, and why? An illustrative paragraph for a retention theme could read: “Randomized evidence from two Chinese companies suggests that remote and hybrid arrangements are associated with lower attrition and higher satisfaction (Bloom et al., 2015; Bloom et al., 2024), while natural-experiment evidence from a US government agency indicates that greater location flexibility can raise output without increased rework (Choudhury et al., 2021). Each study, however, examines large organizations with measurable output, and evidence from small firms and from team-based knowledge work remains limited.” Notice how the paragraph names designs, reports direction, and ends on a limit.

Add counter-evidence where you find it. A review that cites only studies favoring remote work looks one-sided to a committee, and a theme that ends with a real disagreement gives your study something to resolve. The guide to annotated literature review examples shows paragraph-level synthesis in several disciplines.

Step 5: How many studies, and how old?

There is no universal number. A master’s literature review may cite from several dozen to well over a hundred sources, a doctoral review more, and your program’s expectations decide. What matters is that each theme has a few strong anchors and that you can justify your window. For remote work, the evidence before and after 2020 differs because the pandemic changed who works remotely and why, so name the period you cover and explain pre-2020 studies you include for theory or measurement. If your plan is a formal systematic review, follow the procedure in the guide to a systematic literature review step by step.

Step 6: End with the gap, not a summary

Your last section should state what the literature leaves open and how your study responds. A gap statement for the retention example could be: “Existing trials examine large firms in a single country; no study in the reviewed literature examines retention under a hybrid schedule in a mid-sized firm in this sector.” Make sure the claim is true: say “in the reviewed literature” and describe your search, rather than “no one has studied”.

Adapting the method to your own topic

Nothing in the method is specific to remote work. Replace the topic words in your search, rewrite the five to six themes for your question, and use the same summary formula for whatever anchor studies you find. What changes is the type of evidence: a thesis in education may lean on quasi-experiments and surveys, while one in psychology may lean on meta-analyses and validation studies. In every case, state the design of each study you cite, because a randomized trial, a natural experiment and a cross-sectional survey support different kinds of claims, and examiners read your wording for whether you understand the difference.

Mistakes that weaken a related-literature chapter

• Listing studies one after another without comparing them.
• Reporting a study’s findings from its abstract alone and getting numbers or scope wrong.
• Treating a single-company experiment as proof for all workplaces.
• Ignoring studies that disagree with your hypothesis.
• Mixing different meanings of “remote” (fully remote, hybrid, work from anywhere) without saying so.
• Padding with background on the pandemic that does not bear on your question.

Where Tesify fits

When your themes and studies are chosen, Tesify’s thesis workspace helps you structure the review around them; 9,000+ students have written 15,000+ chapters with Tesify. Every word stays 100% written by you, and Tesify cannot read the articles for you or verify that a source says what you cite.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between related literature and related studies?

Some programs use “related literature” for theory, concepts and reports, and “related studies” for earlier empirical research. Others combine them in one chapter, so follow your program’s template.

How should I organize the review?

By theme, with each theme ending in a short synthesis and a note on what remains unknown, rather than study by study.

How many studies should I summarize in detail?

Summarize the strongest few studies per theme in detail and cite the rest in synthesis sentences; the number depends on your program and topic.

Can I rely on working papers?

Working papers can be informative, but prefer peer-reviewed versions where they exist, and say when you cite a preprint.

How do I avoid copying an abstract?

Read the full article, take notes in your own words using the five-part formula, and paraphrase while citing the source for every finding.

Should I include studies published before 2020?

Yes where they bear on theory or measurement, but explain the difference between the pre-pandemic and later evidence.

What if my topic has little published research?

Broaden to neighboring literatures, such as telework, flexible work or job autonomy, and state clearly that direct evidence is limited.

Do I need to critique each study?

Yes, briefly. A one-sentence limitation for each anchor study shows examiners you read critically.