This paper reports four case studies using semi-structured interviews of master’s degree students following management programmes who undertook a Structured Literature Review (SLR) based dissertation and the issues and problems they had to encounter during their journey. The findings from the case studies suggest that Tranfield et al’s (2003) approach to SLR’s, whilst suited to doctoral level and policy based research is not appropriate when dealing with undergraduate and masters dissertations and projects. The case study findings identified that these students conducting a SLR had to deal with a new set of conceptual, methodological and data collection problems relating to this ‘unorthodox’ approach to conducting a postgraduate research dissertation. The findings show that students had to confront new paradigms of enquiry that are not normally taught or found in ‘traditional’ research texts and research methods courses that are taught on degree programmes. However, the findings do reveal that students gained a greater depth and insight into the subject they were researching through a more rigorous and structured approach.

The paper then presents alternative remedies by way of the Rapid Structured Literature Review (RSLR) research strategy which is argued as an appropriate approach in conducting small scale literature based research projects when used with undergraduate and master’s degree students rather than the SLR espoused by Tranfield et al (2003) which is better suited for other types of research such as doctoral and policy based activities.