Newsletter September 2024
Welcome to the second edition of the Credible Management Research Newsletter. Each month, we will bring you interesting new thoughts, papers, and something for the eyes and ears (video/podcast) to help you get on track with the newest developments in improving science. This month, it is Jost’s term. So, if you have any questions or comments, please contact him.
What to think about? 🧠
How much time do you normally spend thinking about your standard errors? Exactly, that’s what I have expected. Yet, there are some very “interesting” questions you should think about, such as heteroskedasticity robust or non-robust standard errors (is that even a question)? To cluster or not to cluster? And, if yes, at what level? Getting the answers to all these questions right is very difficult but important, given that getting your standard errors wrong means getting your p-value wrong. Fortunately, there are some good papers available for everyone interested in standard errors (I assume that the population is rather small but hopefully growing). Cameron and Miller (2015) provide an excellent introduction to cluster-robust inference, and Abadie, Athey, Imbens, and Wooldridge (2023) answer the question of when we should adjust standard errors for clustering. Do you want to know what a standard error is? Then read Wooldridge (2023). Overall, I think improving the credibility of our research requires not just thinking about a nice story and identifying a relevant gap in the literature, but also paying more attention to our standard errors.
What to read? 📚
I have recently read more about replications. Replications are important for the credibility of a discipline as our colleagues from psychology can assure you (Korbmacher et al., 2023). At the same time, have you ever thought about replicating a paper? And, if yes, did you do it? Probably not, because most management journals are not encouraging (or regularly publishing) replications, at least not if these studies make no theoretical contributions (which is not that easy for a replication) … Fortunately, there are some ways how you may publish a replication. First, publishing replications is part of the mission of the Journal of Management Scientific Reports. Read the paper by Köhler and Cortina (2023) to learn more about the journal and its approach towards replications. Second, several journals now publish special issues focusing on replication. The Strategic Management Journal started in 2016, and The Leadership Quarterly recently (2023) published a special issue. Third, it is now possible to publish replications as regular articles. My colleagues Billy Obenauer, Nicolas Bastardoz, Paulo Arvate, Brooke Gazdag, Tanja Hentschel, and I received the acceptance note for a replication focusing on the “women leadership advantage during crisis” hypothesis in a “non-special-issue issue” (and without any questions about “theoretical contributions). Other replications have been published in management journals including Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice (Block et al., 2023) and Journal of Management (König et al., 2021). Additionally, journals such as the Journal of International Business Studies published editorials (Dau et al., 2022) in which they emphasize the importance of replications for their field. Referring to such an editorial may help to convince reviewers and editors of the value of replications.
Overall, these are encouraging developments that will (hopefully) contribute long-term to the institutionalization of replications in management research and, thus, the credibility of our science. But, of course, you wonder what you can do for your science. Well, in our roles as editors and reviewers, we can encourage scholars to work on replications. How? By setting different standards for replications than for “regular” articles, especially in terms of theoretical contributions. Or we may accept that rejecting a hypothesis (in a very well-designed study) supported by previous research is a theoretical contribution. To be continued …
What to hear? 🎧
I love the Quantitude podcast by Greg Hancock and Patrick Curran. They talk about all kinds of (quantitative) research-related topics. And the guys are quite funny (disclaimer: evaluated by a 41-year-old man who is a “master” of dad jokes). If you are thinking about taking a walk and learning something in the meantime, or if you are a frequent traveler who spends much time sitting in the car/train/plane, then check their syllabus to find an “interesting” quantitative topic.
Apropos podcast, the most fascinating thing I have heard in the last couple of months is Google’s notebooklm, which allows you to turn an (your) academic paper into a podcast within minutes. Try it with one of your papers. And thank Google whenever your parents, family, or friends ask you what you do in your job.
That’s it for September. I hope you found at least some piece of information interesting.