Detecting careless responding in self-report questionnaires has gained considerable attention. Different detection methods have been proposed, with implicit methods offering clear advantages over explicit ones. Mahalanobis distance (MD) and person-total correlation ( r pbis ) are among the most promising implicit detection methods. However, previous research has suggested that MD and r pbis are less accurate indicators of careless responding when the percentage of careless respondents in the sample is high and that norm group-based (NGB) MD and r pbis might be more accurate alternatives under that condition. In two simulation studies and a reanalysis of real data, we examined whether NGB MD and NGB r pbis indeed outperform their sample-based (SB) counterparts in a variety of careless responding patterns. The three main findings were as follows: (1) NGB MD outperformed SB MD in most conditions in three studies, (2) both MD indices (but not r pbis indices) were ineffective when simulated scale-midpoint invariant and full straightlining careless responding had to be detected, and (3) NGB r pbis almost never outperformed SB r pbis . We therefore recommend using NGB MD instead of SB MD, and using SB r pbis instead of NGB r pbis when screening data for careless responding.
Aiming to inform organizational research practice, we scrutinize how scholars in management and business studies report triangulation: the systematic integration of multiple data sources, methodologies, measures, investigators, and/or theories, usually with the objective of enhancing the robustness, validity, richness, and/or complexity of research findings. We analyze 1,209 articles from the UTD24 journal list, using thematic analysis to assess scholars’ use and justification of triangulation as a term of art that spans disciplinary boundaries and qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, and nonempirical methodological approaches. Our findings elucidate triangulation types (method, data, investigator, theory, and measures triangulation); convergence (validity and corroboration) and divergence (richness and complexity) perspectives; and reporting practices at the manuscript level. From this analysis and our examination of exemplars, we abstract triangulation's dual nature: as a root methodology—a foundational tool that transcends methodological boundaries and is deployable across the research process—and a research mindset—an epistemological orientation that engages reflexivity and multiplicity to achieve rigor. Based on our findings, we provide recommendations for how to plan for, conduct, report, and evaluate triangulation and discuss our contributions to organizational research methods.
Organizational research methods have increasingly been concerned with the relation between scholarship and practice, as part of an impact-oriented, responsible management literature. These concerns find an unexpected ally in recent developments within the field of philosophy, in which a distant and abstract relation to the field is replaced by a practice-oriented, collaboratively intense form of engagement referred to as "field philosophy." Considered as an organizational research method, field philosophy emphasizes exchange, knowledge from below, and insider-outsider collaboration. The current article develops field philosophy for the study of organizational phenomena, illustrating this method with an empirical illustration from a field study of a carbon credit project in the Brazilian Amazon, and drawing out implications for the design and application of field philosophical methods for studying organizations.
Organizational Research Methods ( ORM ) is a research methods journal that aims to publish articles making a methodological contribution to management and organization science. In this editorial, we provide guidance for what constitutes a methodological contribution for this journal. Our goal is to facilitate understanding of how methodological contributions differ from theoretical or empirical contributions. We also seek to illustrate how a paper aspiring to make a methodological contribution needs to be crafted differently, including different needs for conceptual argumentation and empirical evidence. We offer specific examples of various kinds of methodological contributions that are more typical in qualitative and quantitative traditions, those of an ontological and epistemological nature, or those related to the method of theorizing more generally. We further highlight published ORM papers that offer concrete examples for each kind of contribution.
The organizational sciences have recently seen an uptake in the use of both person-centered analyses, most typically implemented via latent profile analyses (LPA), and multilevel analyses. Yet their combination remains conceptually underdeveloped and forms the focus of the current article. On the one hand, LPA is perfectly suited to the identification of subpopulations, or profiles, of participants characterized by distinct configurations on a set of variables. On the other hand, multilevel models are aptly suited to uncover, or control for, phenomena unfolding across individual, group, and organizational levels. In combination, multilevel-LPA provides the best of both worlds, enabling researchers to identify subpopulations of individuals and/or groups corresponding to distinct prototypical states, while modeling within-group and between-group variability. In the current article, we provide a comprehensive guide for multilevel-LPA implementation to monitor group contexts, climates, and cultures. We present six types of multilevel-LPA specifications—additive, dispersion, additive-dispersion, dispersion-heterogeneity, restrictive cross-level, and full cross-level—that ought to be carefully selected based on the nature of the constructs being measured and the research questions being asked. In doing so, we aim provide researchers with the analytical and conceptual tools to select and apply the appropriate multilevel person-centered model to achieve their research objectives.
