CARMA

Strategic Data Collection for Qualitative Studies - Dr. Bess Rouse
2025-10-03 12:00 - 13:15 (America/New_York) | CARMA Virtual Classroom
An effective strategy for conducting high-quality qualitative research under academic publication pressures begins with deliberate choices about what data to collect and how to collect it. In this talk, we’ll explore strategic approaches to designing qualitative data collection that enhance analytical potential and methodological rigor. I’ll present practical strategies for context selection, sampling, and design choices that leverage variance and process. We’ll discuss how to design studies for meaningful contrasts and comparisons, and develop research protocols that generate rich, comprehensive data. This session emphasizes the critical front-end decisions that determine what data you have available and how they enable the development of compelling theoretical insights. Participants will gain practical tools for establishing a foundation for logical, persuasive methods sections that demonstrate scholarly rigor.

Use of Control Variables in Dissertation Research
2025-10-03 10:30 - 11:45
Management dissertation projects are primarily designed to test theory-related hypotheses between independent and dependent variables. It is well understood that “control” variables play an important role in these projects, as their use can eliminate alternative explanations for results and increase confidence in study findings. Although decisions to include control variables have historically seemed simple, recent research has shown their use can introduce less obvious complexities to study design and analysis. In this panel session, authors of recent research on control variables will share their views and provide guidance on when and how to best use control variables in dissertation studies.
Panelists:

Dr. Herman Aguinis
Dr. Paul Spector
Dr. Michael Sturman

Qualitative Meta Studies - Dr. Stefanie Habersang
2025-10-03 09:00 - 10:15
Qualitative meta-studies (QMS) are increasingly recognized as a fruitful qualitative methodology in management research. QMS serves as an umbrella term for scientific inquiries that reanalyze and synthesize rich, contextualized qualitative case studies or case material to generate novel theoretical insights and enhance the transferability of qualitative findings. In this lecture, we will explore different approaches to QMS and their epistemological foundations examine the kinds of theoretical and practical insights they can generate, and challenge some of the common myths surrounding this methodology. The session provides a hands-on introduction to QMS and illustrates, through empirical examples, the core methodological choices in QMS as well as the reflective, yet often implicit, meta-practices essential for deriving meaningful results from QMS.

Social Network Analysis in the Organizational Sciences - Jessica Methot
2025-09-29 14:00 - 15:30
A social network is a set of actors (e.g., person, team, firm) and the ties connecting them (e.g., relationship, exchange, or interaction). These ties serve as conduits through which resources such as information flow; they also serve as prisms through which to make inferences and shape perceptions. Social network analysis (SNA) is the use of graph-theoretic and matrix algebraic techniques to study the social structure and strategic positions of actors in social networks. As a methodological tool, SNA allows scholars to visualize and analyze webs of ties to identify their origins and dynamics and link these structures to actors’ attitudes and behaviors. In this session, we will discuss (1) how to define the boundaries of a social network, (2) approaches (and challenges) to collecting network data, (3) metrics that can be derived from network data, (4) linking network data and theory, and (5) research questions to which social network analysis can be applied. A major appeal of network analysis is the distinctive lens it offers to examine a range of organizational phenomena at different levels; so, this session may be of interest to scholars studying topics such as trust, leadership, human capital, mentoring, DE&I, groups and teams, communication, work-nonwork interface, newcomer socialization, emotions, and employee well-being.

The Past, Present, and Future of Methods Research
2025-09-26 10:30 - 12:00
In the past 30 years, journals devoted to research methods scholarship in management studies have been established, including Psychological Methods, Organizational Research Methods, and the Academy of Management Journal. In this panel session, editors from these outlets will share their perspectives on:

Trends in research methods topics in recent years
How AI is impacting the submission and review of papers
The importance of methods research for improving practice
How to advance theory development with methods research
Challenges of reconciling conflicting reviewer recommendations
How to facilitate the implementation of best practices from methods research

After brief presentations on these topics, our editors’ panel will engage in a Q&A discussion with attendees.

Dr. Paul Bliese, Deputy Editor for the Academy of Management Journal
Dr. Lisa Lambert, Co-Editor for Organizational Research Methods
Dr. Fred Oswald, Editor for Psychological Methods

For more information: https://carmattu.com/ask-the-editors/september2025/
