Academy of Management, Research Methods Division

Research Methods Forum, Vol. 4 (Summer 1999).

Introduction:
Eclecticism in Methods

DAVID A. HARRISON
RM Division Chair-Elect and Editor, Research Methods Forum
Department of Management
University of Texas at Arlington
harrison@uta.edu

Welcome to Volume 4 of the Research Methods Forum!  The Forum is a vehicle for advice and ideas from experts in various methodological areas, point-counterpoint discussions, information on research methods resources, and other topics and issues of interest to members of the Research Methods Division and the Academy of Management at large.  The Forum also provides an arena for presenting and generating reactions to new methodological developments from any of the many perspectives on the process of doing research.

In this issue of the Forum, we are again fortunate to have contributions from a variety of scholars with established expertise in a wide range of research methods, an eclecticism that serves as a cornerstone of our division and as a marker for the intellectual health of management scholarship.   Some of the articles were suggested by RMD division members.  One is particularly relevant to the theme of our next Academy Conference:  "A New Time."  Others address current methodological issues that should be of interest to anyone engaged in management research.  And, I'm delighted to say, all the articles follow the guidelines that have made the Forum an award-winning e-publication.  These Forum papers are brief, current, clear, and chock-full of useful thoughts and tips that will improve the quality of one's scholarship.  They will most certainly find their way into my own papers, as well as into my own classroom materials.

• The first article, by Mary McLaughlin (U. of Texas, Arlington), deals with one of the most vexing and disparaging problems in organizational research: (common) method effects.   She specifically addresses this issue in self-report instruments, recounting how cognitive studies have shown that a variety of contextual features in such an instrument can generate more or less method variance.  She also provides a wealth of advice on ways to develop and administer self-report scales so that method effects might be minimized.
  
  
• Philip Roth and Fred Switzer (both at Clemson U.) take a light-hearted 'expotition' into how researchers should handle missing data.  Everybody has some, but the most effective ways to deal with those pesky holes in the data set have only recently been coming to light, largely from the work of these authors and their colleagues.  There can be few arguments with their recommendations, even from Tigger . . .
  
  
• I've been waiting a long time to read the kind of article written by Robert Gephart (U. of Alberta).  He clearly conveys the BIG PICTURE on methods in his paper on research paradigms.  Table 1 alone is worth the price of admission, as it deftly structures and compares various epistemological, ontological, and methodological traditions in organizational scholarship.
  
  
• Herman Aguinis (U. of Colorado, Denver) and Chuck Pierce (Montana State U.) review recent evidence on what it takes to estimate moderating effects in regression analyses.   Much of this evidence has stemmed from mathematical and simulation work of the authors themselves, which they summarize with aplomb.  Although the bottom line is that moderators are devilishly difficult to detect in data from the field, these authors show there are several things we can do to improve our odds.
  
  
• Donald Bergh (Penn State U.) closes this volume looking forward, literally, into time.   He starts by recounting the fairly unsophisticated ways our field has dealt with temporal issues, if they've been deal with at all.  Consistent with the Year 2000 theme in Academy of Management activities, he then exhorts authors to explicitly incorporate time into their theories and hypotheses, and match their data collection and analyses to that predicted temporal structure, so that we will no longer be 'losing time.'

On behalf of the Research Methods Division, I'd like to acknowledge these contributors and thank them for their time, effort, and insights.  If you have comments, questions, or suggestions on any paper, just click on one of the e-mail address listed under the authors' affiliation.  Also, ideas for and drafts of submissions to Vol. 5 will be given serious and appreciative consideration.  Please send them to next year's editor, Robert Vandenberg (U. of Georgia). In the meantime, I hope you enjoy and make use of this issue of the Forum!

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