Yes. There is no way around it. As Boote and Beile (2005) point out in their article Scholars before Researchers: On the Centrality of the Dissertation Literature Review in Research Preparation, the literature review can sometimes get short shrift in comparison to other elements of research that can seem more exciting or more significant, such as the findings. But without the literature review, your research can't really stand as a contribution to knowledge in your field. If you haven't established why your research question needs to be asked, then what you did to answer it and the answers you ultimately got will come across as shallow and uninformed, little more than I wanted to know about A, so I did B, and found C. That will do if you are researching what phone to buy, but it won't be good enough for academic research. Without a literature review to establish why your question is necessary, your answer will lose much of its potential power. And if you have no deep and comprehensive sense of why your question is important to your field, you will have a difficult time articulating why the answer you got matters. So yes, you do have to have a literature review, and it does have to be taken seriously. Your findings might crackle with originality, but you won't be able to see that, let alone say why, if you haven't done your literature review. Do your excellent ideas justice -- invest time in your literature review.
