Mike Wallace is a Professor of Public Management at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, where he teaches postgraduate courses on research methods. He was formerly an Associate Director of the Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM), responsible for research capacity building in the management field, and also the Economic and Social Research Council's Strategic Adviser for Researcher Development. His research on managing change in the public services is reported in many books and academic journals. Most recently, he is lead author of a major monograph Developing Public Service Leaders: Elite Orchestration, Change Agency, Leaderism and Neoliberalization (Oxford University Press 2023). He is co-author of Critical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates (4th edition 2021).

Part One: Becoming a Critical Reader and Self-Critical Writer
Chapter 1: What it Means to be Critical
Chapter 2: Making a Critical Choice
Chapter 3: A First Look: Interrogating Abstracts
Chapter 4: Getting Started on Critical Reading
Chapter 5: Getting Started on Self-Critical Writing
Chapter 6: Creating a Comparative Critical Summary
Chapter 7: Developing Your Writing Skills to Communicate Effectively
Part Two: Developing an In-Depth Analysis
Chapter 8: A Mental Map for Navigating the Literature
Chapter 9: Tools for Thinking and Ways of Thinking
Chapter 10: Reasons for Conducting the Research
Chapter 11: Knowledge Claims and Their Key Characteristics
Chapter 12: Developing a Critical Analysis of a Text
Chapter 13: A Worked Example of a Critical Analysis
Chapter 14: Developing Your Argument in Writing a Critical Review of a Text
Part Three: Putting Your Critical Reviews to Work
Chapter 15: Focusing and Building up your Critical Literature Review
Chapter 16: Integrating Critical Literature Reviews into your Dissertation
Chapter 17: Critical Literature Reviews in Alternative Dissertation Structures
Chapter 18: Tools for Structuring a Dissertation
Chapter 19: Using the Literature in Research Papers, Oral Presentations and Posters
Chapter 20: Developing Advanced Writing Skills