Methods Review Watch Series
What is the Methods Review Watch Series?
The Methods Review Watch Series concept originated in June 2021 as the Summer Watch Series at the University of Minnesota and was proposed to CARMA by Elizabeth Campbell, Betty Zhou, and Chris Winchester. Their goal was to informally convene groups of those interested in research methods to learn more about topics of interest and build connections.
Building on its continued success, CARMA will continue the Watch Series in 2026, further refining the format to provide participants with updated and high-quality research methods content. It will be open to participants from CARMA’s Institutional Membership and Affiliate Programs, as well as non-members who register for CARMA’s Limited Access Pass. The Methods Review Watch Series will take place on multiple dates during 2026, with both morning and afternoon sessions, offering live viewing of selected CARMA Webcast Lectures. Scheduled dates are June 16, July 7, and July 21, selected to provide a balanced distribution of sessions across the summer period and to avoid conflicts with other CARMA programs and major academic conferences.
The Watch Series features six live-streamed sessions, carefully selected from CARMA’s most recent year (2025–2026) of video library recordings, to deliver the most current methods insight. Each session includes a recorded lecture from a leading scholar in the field, access to recommended background readings, and a live Q&A session with a discussant, offering participants the opportunity to go deeper into the material and ask questions in real time.
2025 Methods Review Watch Series Schedule
Tuesday, June 16th: 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM ET
Topic: The Practicalities of Mixing Methods: From Design to Publication
Chair: Dr. Matthew Grimes
Multimethod research promises substantial benefits — the ability to generate and test theory within a single manuscript, triangulation across methodological traditions, and more complete understanding of complex organizational phenomena. Yet these benefits accrue only when the research is deliberately designed and genuinely integrated. Drawing on a review of 238 articles published in the Academy of Management Journal (Wellman et al., 2023), this session examines the practicalities of mixing methods in management research. I first introduce five empirically derived archetypes of multimethod research — methodological triangulation for hypothesis testing, methodological triangulation for theory development, test-and-explore, explore-and-test, and full research cycle — and show that the field overwhelmingly defaults to a single archetype (triangulation for hypothesis testing, 75%), leaving considerable theoretical potential untapped. I then identify three common pitfalls observed in editorial review: poor justification for mixing methods, poor methodological fit with the state of existing theory, and poor theoretical complementarity across studies. To address the integration challenge, I draw on Tunarosa and Glynn’s (2017) relational algorithms framework, demonstrating how different conceptual connectors between methods (beyond the default “and”) open up richer integration possibilities — including simultaneous, full-cycle, and mono-logic strategies. The session concludes with four practical recommendations: employ less common archetypes, explain the rationale for mixing methods explicitly and early, ensure theoretical and operational alignment across studies, and use supplementary materials thoughtfully. Throughout, I emphasize that more methods are not inherently better — the value of multimethod research lies not in the combination itself, but in the theoretical coherence and integration it enables.
Discussant: Dr. Sabrina Volpone
Tuesday, June 16th: 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM ET
Topic: How to Critically Write, Read, and Review the Methods Section
Chair: Dr. Patrick Downes, Dr. Scott Johnson, Dr. Jeremy Schoen
Learning to handle the methods section well is one of the most useful skills you can develop as a researcher. When you write your own methods, you want to give readers a clear picture of what you did and why those choices make sense for your questions. When you read someone else’s methods, you want to understand how the design supports the claims they make and where the limitations might sit. And when you review, you want to assess whether the evidence is strong enough, whether key details are missing, and whether the authors have matched their methods to their theoretical goals. Approaching the methods section with this mix of clarity, curiosity, and healthy skepticism will make you a stronger writer, a sharper reader, and a more constructive reviewer.
Discussant: To be determined
Tuesday, July 7th: 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM ET
Topic: Data Technology: Using LLMs to Generate Materials, Individualize Participant Experiences, and Role-Play in Studies
Chair: Dr. Richard Landers
This will focus on five ways to use large language models (LLMs) in research. It will cover using LLMs as a research assistant, an adaptive content creator, an external resource, a conversation partner, and as a research confederate. Open source software will be introduce, while emphasizing ethics and appropriate research design.
Discussant: Dr. Aaron McKenny
Tuesday, July 7th: 1:00 AM – 12:30 PM ET
Topic: Qualitative Meta Studies
Chair: Dr. Stefanie Habersang
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.
Discussant: To be determined
Tuesday, July 21st 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM ET
Topic: Internet Scraping
Chair: Dr. Richard Haans
Websites represent a crucial avenue for organizations to reach customers, attract talent, and disseminate information to stakeholders. Despite their importance, strikingly little work in the domain of organization and management research has tapped into this source of longitudinal big data. In this paper, we highlight the unique nature and profound potential of longitudinal website data and present novel open-source code- and databases that make these data accessible. Specifically, our codebase offers a general-purpose setup, building on four central steps to scrape historical websites using the Wayback Machine. Our open-access CompuCrawl database was built using this four-step approach. It contains websites of North American firms in the Compustat database between 1996 and 2020—covering 11,277 firms with 86,303 firm/year observations and 1,617,675 webpages. We describe the coverage of our database and illustrate its use by applying word-embedding models to reveal the evolving meaning of the concept of “sustainability” over time. Finally, we outline several avenues for future research enabled by our step-by-step longitudinal web scraping approach and our CompuCrawldatabase.
Discussant: Dr. Ivan Hernandez
Tuesday, July 21st 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM ET
Topic: Use of control variables in dissertation research
Chair: Dr. Herman Aguinis, Dr. Paul Spector, Dr. Michael Sturman
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.