How to Write an Article Review in Leadership Studies

Writing an article review in leadership studies is a great opportunity for you to develop and improve your skill set of a scientist. If you’re terrified when assigned with an article review writing in leadership studies because your knowledge is poor and your writing is even worse, this guide will help you to move from the dead point. Do not dread at this type of writing! Instead, consider it as your chance to improve your reading, evaluating, analyzing and summarizing skills.

Leadership is one of the classes that you may take in your college education. The discipline deals with many theoretical questions that are crucial for proper understanding of the concept of leadership. In particular, the articles written in leadership studies reflect on the following questions:\

• Are leaders made or born?
• Why are leadership skills important?
• What kind of motivation do the leaders have?
• Are followers important?

Without a doubt, you can’t provide an exact answer to the questions that we have just mentioned. However, when you review the articles based on any of those, you get a chance to think critically, evaluate and analyze these issues though exploring the texts written by the professionals in the field. In the leadership studies, you will most likely be dealing with the articles written on the tropics like ‘The Leaders of the Future’, ‘The Traits of Fake Leaders’, ‘Understanding the Factors that Influence Leaders’ Effectiveness’, ‘Mistakes that Global Leaders Make’ and so on.

Start reading!

There is no better way to begin your work on an article review in leadership studies than by reading. It doesn’t matter if you are an expert in leadership studies or if you know just a little bit of it – you have to read the article under review in order to understand a sense of it and the arguments that the article’s author used to support his or her claims. At this point, your reading can be quick and superficial – just to get a general picture of the article.

• If you happen to see any terms or words that you don’t really understand or actually see them for the first time, we seriously recommend you to makes notes of each.
• Don’t get laze and search for all the terms that you don’t have definition for. This way, you will save your time later.

Now, make sure to read the article attentively. It is important to read it more than thrice. Whether you’re reading the article from the book in your hand or from the screen, ensure to have a highlighter at hand to point out the most important parts or unknown concepts. The ‘most important parts’ mean the central points and the arguments that the author uses as evidence. Do not highlight every next paragraph, but make short notes to yourself to be able to link them later.

Add details you learned during the reading in the article to what you already know about leadership. It may be some topic that you have previously researched for your term paper or an interesting subject matter that you discussed in class with your professor. Does the knowledge that exists at the moment support the author’s points of view or oppose them? What previous research does the author of the article refer to? List the differences and similarities that the written work has with what you’ve read about your leadership topic before.
If there’s anything that you don’t understand in the author’s work, do not just skip it. You can only create a full and complete project if you understand every other sentence, phrase and term.

Know Your Format

The format of the article review in leadership skills will depend on the academic style that your professor wants you to use. He or she will give you all the details about the overall number of pages, style and the sources that you will have to refer to. If not, consult your professor to get all important guidelines.

As soon as you receive all the recommendations, you have to acquaint yourself with each to have a chance clear all sorts of uncertainties. The most common styles that are used in academic world are Harvard, APA, MLA, Chicago, etc. As a rule, college students work with MLA and APA style in case with the article reviews. However, there are some exceptions, which means you will have to get to know all the details about in-text citations and references from your professor.

Retell the Article Using Your Own Words

It is recommended to rewrite the article using freewriting or outlining method. In other words, you just have to take information from the article and present it in a logical order and your own words. In the text that you make this way, you will have to include the claim that the author makes, the direction of his or her work, and the key arguments. Be attentive and include all important details. Don’t mind the mistakes now because nobody is going to use this text except for you. However, make sure your text is clear and flows logically just like the ideas in the original work.
If you decide to create an outline, don’t include your points of view here. It is better that you focus on the central claims that the author makes.

Once you’re done with the retelling part, allow some time to decide what part is the best to be discussed in your work. While most students decide to focus on the main points, we recommend you to also concentrate on the things like the style of storytelling, the way the author interprets the text and so on. Sometimes your professor may tell you what exactly he or she would like to see in your review.

If there’s anything that can be crossed out from your summary, get rid of it. This can be some blurred facts or repeated information.

Think of the Title

The title that you select for your article review should reflect your focus and be either declarative, interrogative or descriptive.

Cite the Article

Right below the title, you have to provide the citing of your article. Do not forget to find out which citations style your professor wants to see in your work – Turabian, ASA, Chicago, APA, MLA. Right after this part starts the body of the article review. For instance, this is how one can cite the article in Turabian formatting style: Johansen, Smith and Anny Manor. ‘Studies in leadership activities in small businesses in the UK.’ Leadership Science 11 (2018).

Give General Details about the Project

At the beginning of your review you write the title of the article once again, the name of the author (or authors) and the journal title together with the publication year. For instance: The article, ‘Research on leadership activities in small businesses in the UK’ was written by sociologists Anny Manor and Jorgen Johansen.

Create an Introduction

The introduction of the article review is the utmost essence of the work that you write your review for. In the opening part, you have to state the thesis of the author. In case the author fails to state it in the article, you will have to puzzle it out and provide it in your review. What is more, the introductory part should specify the main theme of the article and the main claim that the author makes in his or her work.

As a rule, the introduction of the article review takes up to fifteen percent of your review. Your own thesis should reflect the essence of your intro and specify the strongest ideas of the article and the key drawback. For instance: ‘The authors demonstrate a clear connection between leadership skills and motivation of the employees to excel in whatever task they’re assigned, but the evidence presented on the claim is absolutely misinterpreted.’

Create the Main Body of the Article Review

The ‘heart’ of your article review lies in the body of it. Refer to your notes and talk about how well the author covered the chosen subject matter. In this part you will tell your readers how insightful and clear the work that you review is. As a rule, your professor will ask you to describe the main points that the author makes and how accurately he or she uses the evidence to support all the ideas. Have you detected any bias? Mention it in your review. Besides, give your own judgement on how the article’s author adds to the leadership studies and the topic of the article in particular. Finally, let the readers know if you support or do not support the author’s arguments. At the end of the body, tell your readers what exactly they can learn from this written work.
Always keep your main idea in mind and ensure your review contains no blurred information or anything that may confuse your reader, even if he or she is as experienced and professional as your college professor. The latter must be strictly about the strong points and drawbacks of the article, as well as include your own thesis.

We would like to repeat once again that writing a review is not about repeating what you just read, but rather sharing your personal point of view about it. What is more, it is about how significant and relevant the article is. Keep in mind that every point of view that you include in the review of an article in leadership studies must be supported by confirmed facts and strong evidence.

Conclude Your Article Review

The conclusion of an article review usually comprises one paragraph. Don’t make it too long. Instead, you have to make it short, logical, plain and simple. This is where you have to give a brief restatement of the article’s main points and also provide your personal judgement on how accurately the work is written and how important it is. If possible, make some suggestions to potential research ways for the future.

Proofread Your Review for the Final Time

If you have (you need this time!) time, make sure to put your article review aside for a couple of days. After that, you will be able to check your writing again and see the errors you missed before. Check your text for spelling mistakes, typos and punctuation issues. Besides, it is important to make sure that the data that you used in your paper is factual. Finally, reread your review to make sure you do not go off the topic and focus on leadership studies only. Chances are you will be tempted to touch upon the issues that are also mentioned in the original article, but are also of lesser importance. We don’t recommend you to talk too much here. Just a brief mentioning of the side topics will be enough for your professor to see that you did a good job in your article review.

Final Recommendations

We would like to add some last words as the final pep talk for you. We strongly recommend you to stay away from the generalizations of any kind. Without a doubt, writing an article review in leadership studies gives you an opportunity to generalize the issues like ‘followers’, ‘leaders’, ‘society’ and the rest, you have to carefully use the terms and then modify them in order to remain as specific as you can when writing your review. The point is that generalizations make your arguments sound weak and make your readers believe you made just a little effort to research the topic or understand the article. For that reason, it is better to eliminate all broad statements from your text in order to make it precise and clear.