Eunice SQ Ng

Lessons and thoughts inspired by other academics.

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St.Gallen Institute of Management in Asia Annual Report 2020

One of my projects for 2020/2021 was to prepare the annual report for the institute. It has been a long time since I prepared any form of annual report but I sure remember all the effort needed to put together such a formal report. Here are some photographs of the process and outcome!

A group picture with Maria and Tobias at Far East Square made the cover page.

A special section “SGI Research Insights” to showcase our ongoing research projects was included in this year’s annual report. 

Being in charge of the annual report also meant that I had to arrange our photo taking locations around Amoy Street. Here are some nice photos from the pre-photoshoot scouting that our kind photographer took!

With our iconic entrance sign at 110 Amoy Street.

The Peranakan tiles outside Thian Hock Keng Temple are really pretty!

The pre-photoshoot scouting photo outside Miss G at Far East Square.

Another project done and dusted in 2021 - a big thank you to all for contributing to the annual report contents!

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University of St.Gallen’s Online International Management Module “Doing Business in Asia”

The University of St.Gallen held its International Management Module “Doing Business in Asia” virtually from 15 to 18 June 2021. This executive level course is well-attended by various executives from the aviation management industry, including pilots, engineers, and managers. 

The program has a day set aside to explore management in a cross-cultural environment and Malaysia was chosen as a new market for these executives who are based in Switzerland. Given my expertise in teaching Malaysia to students, I was invited as a guest lecturer to share about the country to the students. I covered a range of topics, including Malaysia’s geography, history, and socio-cultural context, the country’s current economic standing, and Malaysia’s economic development pathway and outlook. 

One of the hot discussion topics during this seminar was about Malaysia’s 1MDB scandal and how corruption can affect the country’s future outlook. A student shared that corruption runs deep in her home country and she has seen the devastating impact that it has on her country’s development. While Malaysia’s 1MDB scandal draws much attention given its global impact (don’t forget the Wolf of Wall Street production links!), indeed corruption is not unique to the Southeast Asian context. Many are still watching how the legal proceedings around 1MDB will continue to unfold in the days to come.

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St.Gallen Institute of Management in Asia’s Asia Compact Masters Courses

One of my portfolio of programs that I run at the St.Gallen Institute of Management in Asia is titled “Asia Compact”. Asia Compact courses are designed for students enrolled in the Master programmes of the University of St.Gallen and enable them to discover both Singapore and Southeast Asia. The Asia Compact courses aim to provide an overview of relevant theoretical concepts in the context of Asian cultures and business environments. 

We have a series of seven Asia Compact courses at the Institute, ranging from marketing, management, finance, and intercultural competence. While the students were not able to travel to Singapore this year due to the travel restrictions, they had a fruitful time with their lecturers and various guest speakers. Asia continues to be a region of interest for many St.Gallen students!

Presenting virtually to a group of masters students on sustainability in Singapore.

One of the courses - “Sustainability in Singapore and Southeast Asia” - invited me to give a guest lecture on the recent developments on sustainability in Singapore earlier in April 2021. I covered a range of topics, including the recent Singapore Green Plan 2030, unique government policies like our public housing and Central Provident Fund system, and the social challenges that Singapore faces even as a highly developed country. 

We had a frank discussion on what it means to be truly sustainable in a land- and natural resource-scarce country like Singapore. One of the students, who previously attended another Asia Compact course in 2020, appreciated the local perspective I brought to the course. Applying a sustainability lens to understanding development in Singapore highlights the tensions between economic, environmental, and social demands that a young country like ours faces. I am thankful for the opportunity to share about Singapore’s sustainability journey and progress to the students! 

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Undergraduate Course: Business Study Mission Malaysia

From January to May 2021, I taught the course Business Study Mission Malaysia to both University of St.Gallen and Singapore Management University students as part of the Asia Term Remote Student Exchange Programme. The course offered a comprehensive overview as well as deep and practical insights into Malaysia and its business context. Albeit held in an online format due to the ongoing COVID-19 travel restrictions, the students had opportunity to interact with guest lecturers joining in from Malaysia. This year, 17 St.Gallen and SMU students participated in the course.

During the online lectures, students learned more about Malaysia’s socio-cultural, political, and economic contexts. Students also acquired knowledge about several key industries in Malaysia, including manufacturing, energy, and agricultural industries, to examine the opportunities and challenges that Malaysia faces in moving up the value chain. As Malaysia and Singapore are close neighbours, students also had the opportunity to explore the many ties between the two countries such as their joint colonial history, geographical proximity, and strong trade and business relations.

Students had the unique opportunity to connect virtually with senior executives from various organizations such as InvestKL, Maybank Islamic, and Nestlé. The senior executives shared their insights about Malaysia’s competitive factors, the country’s role within the broader Association of Southeast Asian Nations community, as well as their organizations’ business model for future growth on the regional and global stage. Through these interactions with senior executives, students questioned their own assumptions of the business environment in Malaysia and developed a deeper appreciation of the complexities that Malaysia faces as it strives to grow into a high-income nation.

I was really glad that I captured the students’ first and closing impressions of Malaysia. This allowed me to see how the students’ understanding of the country developed through this course. Check it out for yourself what they said at the first and last class!

Students’ first impressions of Malaysia captured at the start of the first seminar we had.

Students’ closing impressions of Malaysia captured at the end of the last seminar we had.

My heart was so full when I saw one of the students’ notes to me at the end of their learning journal (i.e. end term paper). It always brings a smile to teachers when their students recognize their teachers’ efforts to enhance their learning process - a form of feedback for teachers on how to improve the course going forward as well :) 

A personal note of appreciation from a student of the Business Study Mission Malaysia course I taught.

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Presentation at the 81st Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management

Another year in with the ongoing pandemic, I am glad that the 81st Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management was held online once again. I must say they have improved the virtual experience this year with the recording of most sessions. This meant that I did not have to stay up past midnight to join in workshops and paper presentations, plus I could review some sessions that were scheduled in parallel. 

My research paper co-authored with Riyang and Eugene on CEO moral foundations and corporate ESG performance was accepted for presentation at the Organization and the Natural Environment division. We had a total of 27 participants in our paper session and we received useful suggestions on how we can take this paper forward. A big thank you to all who attended and expressed your interest in our paper!

While I do miss the traveling and having fun meeting with colleagues around the world, I am hoping that the 2022 AOM conference will be held in a hybrid version with the option of joining in virtually or in-person. The carbon emissions from flying people around the world is very costly given the climate crisis we are in - plus all the benefits of reduced financial costs, ability to review parallel sessions, and the improved access to the academic community for non-US scholars.

Fingers crossed till then!

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Where I am now!

I have taken up a post-doctoral position at St.Gallen Institute of Management in Asia based in Singapore.

The past year has not been easy with the job search - it was stressful, tiring, and nerve-wrecking. Initially, I was looking for a tenure-track position and did a couple of job talks. Eventually, this post-doctoral position opened and it worked really well for me in terms of my family needs and my career stage. So I am extremely grateful and thankful for this position!

With the pandemic starting in March, I did not have a lot of opportunities to take photos with the team and our office. So here is just one photo of my first post-Ph.D job and it is very representative of our current work arrangement haha.

Our weekly team meetings and social meetings to catch up with work and life.

Hopefully, we all get to meet again and take better pictures in real life!

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Completion of my Ph.D. student life.

Since I am actively blogging this week, I would like to share that I have finished my Ph.D. in Strategy woooooooohoooooooo! 

I completed my final thesis defense during Singapore’s “lock-down” in April over Zoom. I am still wondering how I did it, seriously. It took me 2 weeks just to put my slides together and practice presenting, simply because I never got a block of time to do my work with my child and house demands. 

While our in-person convocation has been postponed to next year, our university organized a virtual celebration for us. It was funny how my family and I waited for 30 minutes just to capture the 3-second moment of my name scrolling by on the screen. 

Online convocation event held by Nanyang Technological University.

I also took a morning to pack my desk in school since I will not return to work there anymore (as a student). It felt very sad/nostalgic/weird to say goodbye to this place where I spent almost 8.5 years of my life in (3 years undergrad, 5.5 years post-grad) and have no one around me to say goodbye to since it was “lock-down” period. 

Some pictures to commemorate the day I said goodbye.

Our “lovely” dim-sum building, which in my opinion does not fit into our landscape. A good building to tell where grab/taxi drivers can pick you up from haha.

The common space I see when I head to office.

Our lonely and long walkway. When I was an undergrad, I always felt these halls look like hospital walkways.

Goodbye to my desk where I was never at.

The building where I spent long hours in studying for our comprehensive exams and attending seminars/workshops. 

Since I will still be in Singapore, this is definitely not the last I will see of NTU. I am grateful for all the memories I have made in this place. Thank you to all the faculty for having and teaching me, and to the friends I made during my time here. <3

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Reflections from AOM2020: Part 2

This year, I consciously searched and joined women-themed sessions at the conference. This is in part because the “lock-down” in Singapore has made the tensions between work and family life even more salient to me. I wanted to learn how women navigated this crazy world of academia and how does an academic career looked like for them - especially for women who do not have a lot of resources at home. 

I did not blog about any of the sessions specifically because the stories shared are personal and private. And I have to say that I have very mixed feelings walking away from these sessions collectively. I will write the remaining reflections with a focus on women since that is the topic on my mind.

First, the reality for women in general does not look good. There are biases against women - and I’m not even talking about women with dependents - that hinder their advancement. Stories of being told to shut it and follow (older) male faculty’s instructions are not uncommon. Women faculty shared experiences of being given more service loads without commensurate resources to fulfill these roles simply because.

Second, motherhood penalty (or ceiling) is real. One panelist shared a study that showed how 1 year delay in motherhood results in 9% increase in earnings for women in corporate jobs. My guess is that this is the same - if not worse - in academia. I think there are many women who would love to have kids yet decided to delay such plans because of finding an academic job or working towards tenure. Sometimes, when women have achieved their desired career stages, they find that having a child is no longer as easy in part due to their age and biological clocks. This makes me feel that women have to choose between their careers or having kids - and this is very depressing because the men do not have to. 

Third, and this is my personal feelings, women are giving advice that perpetuates the motherhood penalty. Women faculty shared that job seekers should not talk about their families/children during campus visits. This is well-intended and from their own personal experiences or research findings. I can see where they are coming from, because most schools do not like to hire women with family demands. In order to get the job, we “should” focus on presenting ourselves as good fit with the school rather than our personal lives. 

Another woman shared how her senior woman faculty member explicitly told her that while family comes first, there are times when work comes first. I have heard stories of other people being told this before, so it is not new to me. Women in senior positions telling women in junior positions how to behave - without trusting that these women are fully-grown adults who know how to manage their lives.

The above three points are not exhaustive of the challenges women face in building an academic career. For example, there are other situations when faculty (of all genders) from top schools perpetuate the notion of having to work 16 to 20 hours a day, churn out A publications, and getting to a level of success (as defined by them and most of the academic world). 

While the above points are depressing (to me), I have found some glimmer of hope from a different set of voices. Women shared how they took a longer time (but eventually they did) to reach where they wanted to be in their careers while prioritizing their family needs. Other women created safe spaces for candid sharing of failures, fears, and challenges. Also, some shared alternative realities and perspectives on what success looks like in academia. Some women shared how they voice out against the biases, the oppression, and the mistreatment head-on.

What I really appreciated was the safe space I experienced during one of the sessions. I think in academia, we have to look like we have got it altogether - both life and career - in order to advance and make it. We mask our realities. Yet, in one of those sessions, there was psychological safety in sharing my fears and challenges and knowing that others also faced similar set of fears. We sought to think how we could solve or address challenging situations and to advance ourselves. There is collective strength in doing so. 

Again, I am not optimistic that reality will look better in the short-term. Given that I am not in a position of role power or (haha) publication power, I actually feel powerless at the moment. I myself am in a precarious position in terms of having a long-term academic job. Perhaps, when I have navigated a longer period of academia and motherhood, I may have some wise nuggets of my own to share...

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Reflections from AOM2020: Part 1

With AOM turning virtual this year, it has been a different - yet not so new - experience for me. Attending the sessions felt to me like I was sitting through online seminars and jotting notes, or virtually interacting with colleagues around the world. I think many of us would agree that turning an academic conference virtual has its pros and cons. 

While virtual conferencing has removed the opportunities to interact with others physically, it has been a great leveler for many. People who would not have been able to attend the physical conference were able to this year, such as those with family obligations or care-giving responsibilities, and those without financial support. 

Of course, the environmental impact and financial costs have been greatly reduced! I watched the ONE division’s business meeting and saw that the financial position improved due to reduced conference spending - makes me think about how we could use this sum of money to further environmental and social causes. 

Beyond these reasons, I was able to attend sessions that happened concurrently by watching the recordings. I was also able to slow the session down and match my learning pace by pausing and rewinding. All these would not have been possible if the conference were physical. Imagine running from one hotel to another 10 minutes away just to catch back-to-back sessions - much more exhausting - or having to choose between sessions that took place at the same time.

I do wish conferences could incorporate more of these virtual elements in the future. Also, since these typically occur in North America and Europe, I hope (more) sessions are recorded. I tried staying up till 4 am for the first day and was done with doing that for the rest of the conference. Plus, it can be quite disruptive when interacting with other attendees and having to attend to the wailing preschooler having nightmares. 

On a different note, I have a hunch that biases against people are reduced with virtual conference interactions. When we take away most of the physical interaction element, we are paying more attention to what is being said by the person. Plus, you can’t really escape from someone else when you are randomly assigned to a break out room - unlike physical networking. Perhaps after overcoming our initial biases through such forced interactions, we get to see beyond our mental stereotypes and be open to interact with one another.

As much as virtual conferencing has been a leveler for many, I think those for whom the system works to their benefit will likely be against this. My (albeit pessimistic) guess is that we will return to business-as-usual once the pandemic passes (i.e. a vaccine is found?).

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AOM2020: Publishing Rigorous and Impactful Literature Reviews in Business and Management Research

Symposium on 12 August 2020

Key learning points:

1. Miner vs prospector strategy in literature review.

Miners spot conceptual gaps, organize and categorize literatures, problematize the literature. While some advice doctoral students to do this as it is lower risk, another significant risk is not getting the paper published at all in high impact journals.

Prospectors set out new narratives and conceptualization, blend and merge literatures across domains, and develop analogies and metaphors across domains. This is higher risk as it is not easy to accomplish, yet when done well is likely to get published in a high impact journal.

2. Two types of reviews we can write: what do we know vs what should we know?

What do we know seeks to: find a definite answer to a verifiable question, more convergent, can be meta-analysis or systematic review, sense-giving in nature, broad conclusions and practical relevance, usually cited to support theoretical arguments.

What should we know seeks to: aim to redirect the field, more divergent, rely on narrative or integrative review, sense-making in nature, changes thinking about the topic, contextualized practical relevance, usually cited to support contribution of new research.

3. Be thorough in breadth, length, and depth. Position your paper to be thorough, honest, and accurate to contribute to the conversation in the literature. This clarifies the state of the literature  and set the stage for your work.

Key afterthoughts:

The point about miners versus prospectors resonates with me – do we encourage PhD students to take a low-yet-high risk approach of being a miner, or do we push them towards a high-risk strategy of being a prospector?

I guess there is no fixed way to do this. As what some panelists shared towards the end, having a senior scholar with experience in being a prospector guide a junior scholar or PhD student is probably the best way at publishing narrative-changing review papers (i.e. mitigating the high-risk that comes with it). Otherwise, taking a miner approach might be the go-to approach for most PhD students. 

Resources:

Short (2009). The art of writing a review article. Journal of Management, 35(6): 1312-1317

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AOM2020: Got 20 Minutes of Extra Class Time? Get Your Student Project Teams Off to a Great Start!

By Joan Shapiro Beigh Doctoral Candidate at DePaul University Symposium on 9 August 2020

Key learning points:

1. Instructions rarely provide training or resources for teamwork training. Conservation of resources theory suggest that people under stress seek out new resources to cope with the stress. A concise teamwork effectiveness guideline can be a useful coping resource for students.

2. Four team effectiveness guidelines:

Find common ground: (1) start with social interactions (e.g. share something personal, meet for coffee); (2) agree on ground rules based on values; (3) listen first and then talk; (4) seek consensus but encourage diverse points of view; (4) set expectations; (5) how will we handle conflict; (6) how can we help each other in this class?

Grab a strategy, begin with the end in mind: (1) what’s the vision, how will the project look like when it’s complete? (2) Break it down into logical sections; (3) time it out with deadlines; (4) assign sections out; (5) work interdependently (e.g. in pairs) and communicate often; (6) project team = study group  to build team spirit.

Assign & rotate roles: Examples of roles include point person to communicate with instructor, meeting leader, schedule coordinator, recorder and agenda setter, timekeeper, detail person, big picture person.

What to do when things go wrong with a team member: (1) express frustration and listen to what the person has to say, find solutions together, stay away from bullying or personal attacks and address the behavior, involve the instructor and document your concerns.

3. Team training is only effective when members experience the positive training experience together. Even if members previously went through this training, the training effects disappear when they join new teams.

4. Team charter exercises must be conducted early in the life span, as this will have a longer lasting impact on team wellbeing. Creates team norms, values, expectations, roles, while mitigating the chaos that arise subsequently. This is dependent on the condition that everyone participates in this.

5. Teamwork intervention steps:

Step 0: Gather materials – teamwork effectiveness guidelines, team discussion guide, coloured markets, flipchart pages, etc.

Step 1 (15 mins): In class facilitation by introducing the activity – ask the students to think back on a great or bad team experience. Remember to allow for thinking time. Write “best teams” on the board and distill what made these teams so successful. Record students’ actual words in bullet point. Write “what to avoid” next about a challenging team experience and suggest that this exercise establishes class’ norms around teamwork. Add a personal experience of your own.

Step 2 (5 mins): Pass out and review teamwork guidelines. Ask what strikes them as important in the list. You point out what points strikes out to you as the instructor.

Step 3 (15 mins – can be done out of class): Review facilitated discussion guide as a reference, jot notes, plan project and roles, everyone present signs one copy. This is to create a shared experience.

Step 4 (5 mins): Debrief the experience – what was important and useful to your team, what’s the plan moving forward, how are you going to handle conflict and frustration, how are you going to encourage creativity? Encouraging creativity needs a team culture of psychological safety where people are comfortable expressing their views and others are respectful and interested in hearing what they have to say.

6. Team-based learning and accountability structure encompass “a rhythm of moments in which students’ social and intellectual experiences of the classroom become interlocked and amplified.” (Sweet & Pelton-Sweet, 2008: 30)

Key afterthought:

This is so timely as I prepare for my undergraduate class held next semester. I have experienced and heard stories about bad student teams that I would like to take some action to pre-emptively address such issues in my class. This teamwork intervention guideline is clear and succinct, and I will explore how to customize this further to my class’ needs. 

Although academics are expected to teach well and effectively, having such resources to improve our own teaching skills are very much appreciated!

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AOM2020: What Is 'Systematic' About Systematic Literature Reviews?

Professional Development Workshop on 8 August 2020

Key learning points:

1. Systemic review of the literature makes explicit the values and assumptions underpinning a review.

2. Stage 1: Planning the review – It may be an iterative process of definition, clarification, and refinement. Must consider cross-disciplinary perspectives, as well as the theoretical, practical, and methodological history debates surrounding the field. Have a review protocol to describe the questions addressed by the study, the population/sample, search strategy, criteria for inclusion and exclusion of studies.

Define your research question. Use a question framework such as CIMO (Context, Intervention, Mechanisms, Outcomes)

3. Stage 2: Conducting the review – Identify keywords and search terms and report this in detail to allow replication. Decisions regarding inclusion and exclusion of works remain subjective and should include more than one reviewer. Disagreements can be resolved within the review panel.

4. Stage 3: Reporting & dissemination – Two stage report should be produced. First stage provides descriptive analysis of the field, achieved using simple set of categories (E.g. age profile of articles, partitioned by interpretivist versus positivistic studies, behavioral versus cognitive studies). Second stage provides detailed audit trail back to core contributions to justify and ground their conclusions. Linking themes across these contributions is important.

Resources:

1. Crossan & Apaydin (2010). A multi-dimensional framework of organizational innovation: A systematic review of the literature. Journal of Management Studies, 47(60): 1154-1191

2. Rousseau (Ed.) (2012). The Oxford Handbook of Evidence-based Management. New York: Oxford University Press.

3. Adams, Smart, & Huff (2017). Shades of grey: Guidelines for working with the grey literature in systematic reviews for management and organizational studies. International Journal of Management Reviews, 19(4): 432-454.

4. Gaur & Kumar (2018). A systematic approach to conducting review studies: An assessment of content analysis in 25 years of IB research. Journal of World Business, 53(2): 280-289.

5. Post, Sarala, Prescott, & Gatrel (2020). Editorial: Advancing theory with review articles. Journal of Management Studies. 57(2): 351-376.

6. Reporting standards for systematic reviews: PRISMA and JARS – Quant (quantitative meta-analysis article reporting standards)

7. Harari, Parola, Hartwell & Riegelman (2020). Literature searches in systematic reviews and meta-analyses: A review, evaluation, and recommendations. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 118, 103377

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AOM2020: Advancing Qualitative Research: Perspectives on Data Generation and Analysis

Professional Development Workshop on 8 August 2020

Key learning points:

Below are some tips for coding qualitative data in a computer system. 

1. Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis system (CAQDAS): Pattern based automated insights in NVivo allows you to get into your data and make sense of it. Use this to quickly go through the data and form initial codes.

First, key in a brief description of your idea/theme/hunch (e.g. outreach to community). The computer performs an initial search based on this, and you let the computer know if the 1st round of results are good or bad. The computer goes through a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc rounds of search after you train it on what you’re interested in till the search does not really yield anything new.

Next, tag the data to an initial coding quickly (e.g. “community” code).

You can also use this at the end of data analyses to build confidence in your data analyses, that the codes capture the key ideas.

2. Coding by attributes: Use the software to compare the codes across two groups of interviewees. This can be meaningful for identifying boundary conditions. You can delve into the data for the code that differs across the groups to see what is really happening there.

3. Text retrieval and word frequencies can be used to create a word cloud or tree diagram by pulling the words before and after the key word you are interested in. This presents a quick visual way to identify key themes in your data.

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AOM2020: Content and Text Analysis in Organizational Research: Techniques and Applications

Professional Development Workshop on 7 August 2020

Key learning points:

1. Preventing reviewer concerns when preparing manuscript. Justify the decision that you are making: 

The use of content analyses (e.g. non-intrusive way to capture executive’s psychological attributes; psychological attributes may operate outside of individuals’ awareness and control and hence implicit and indirect measures can be more effective than self-assessments)

The dictionary used by demonstrating content validity

Choice of content to analyze, and

The content analyses software used.

2. Demonstrate the robustness of your findings to alternative measures, other data specifications, or other ways of measuring and testing our analyses. Adding supplemental analyses can be important when reviewers have concerns about the empirical approach. You can include in the paper as a supplemental section or an appendix. 

Another alternative is to include the supplemental analyses only in the response letter to reviewers – this allows you to add extra tables for the reviewers but you must explain why you only include them in the response letter and not in the paper. Offer to include them in the paper if the reviewers and editor think they make your paper stronger.

3. Empirical issues with content analyses include measurement error, omitted variables, reverse causality, autocorrelation (McKenny, et al., 2016). Hence, there needs to be strong validation procedures, such as using expert raters, crafting unique dictionaries, ensuring convergent and discriminant validity.

4. Endogeneity in computer aided text analyses (CATA): Omitted variable causing IV and DV – using two instrumental variables (sample from Busenbark & Pfarrer (2019)). 

Good natural/logical instruments include: total number of words in document, total number of documents/articles, readability index (Lougran & McDonald, 2014), characteristics of subjects or authors of text, average length of words in document, count of long words (words over a certain character threshold), coverage of related organizations in an industry or social grouping).

Resources:

1. Gamache & McNamara (2019). Responding to bad press: How CEO temporal focus influences sensitivity to negative media coverage of acquisitions. Academy of Management Journal, 62(3): 918-943

2. Gamache, McNamara, Mannor, & Johnson (2015). Motivated to acquire? The impact of CEO regulatory focus on firm acquisitions. Academy of Management Journal, 58(4): 1261-1282

3. Gamache, Neville, Bundy, & Short (2020). Serving differently: CEO regulatory focus and firm stakeholder strategy. Strategic Management Journal, 41(7): 1305-1335

4. Colquitt & George (2011). Publishing in AMJ-Part 1: Topic choice. Academy of Management Journal, 54(3): 432-435

5. Grant & Pollock (2011). Publishing in AMJ-Part 3: Setting the hook. Academy of Management Journal, 54(5): 873-879

6. Lange & Pfarrer (2017). Editor’s comments: Sense and structure – The core building blocks of an AMR article. Academy of Management Review, 42(3): 407-416

7. Harrison, Thurgood, Boivie, & Pfarrer (2019). Measuring CEO personality: Developing, validating, and testing a linguistic tool. Strategic Management Journal, 40(8): 1316-1330.

8. Short, McKenny, & Reid (2018). More than words? Computer-aided text analysis in organizational behavior and psychology research. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 5: 415-435.

9. Short, Broberg, Cogliser, & Brigham (2010). Construct validation using computer-aided text analysis (CATA): An illustration using entrepreneurial orientation. Organizational Research Methods, 13(2): 320-347

10. Nadkarni & Chen (2014). Bridging yesterday, today, and tomorrow: CEO temporal focus, environmental dynamism, and rate of new product introduction. Academy of Management Journal,57(6): 1810-1833

11. Busenbark, Marshall, Miller, & Pfarrer (2019). How the severity gap influences the effect of top actor performance on outcomes following a violation. Strategic Management Journal, 40(12): 2078-2104

12. Krause (2017). Being the CEO 's boss: An examination of board chair orientations. Strategic Management Journal, 38(3): 697-713

13. Content analysis website: www.terry.uga.edu/_contentanalysis/

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AOM2020: AMR: Writing Theoretical Papers - A Workshop from the Editors

Professional Development Workshop on 8 August 2020

Key learning points:

1. Theory relates to statement of concepts and their relationships that shows how and why a phenomenon occurs, rather than what is happening (i.e. descriptive).

2. Hook reviewers and readers: Introduction is critical. It must address the following questions: What don’t we understand? What do we get wrong? What conversations need changing? What can scholars and practitioners do now that they couldn’t do before your paper existed?

3. Novelty: Have others addressed this using different labels? Being “First” or “Only” is not enough. There may be reasons why no one has looked at the topic. Hence, you must convince reviewers and readers that your work is novel and important.

4. Mind the scope. Tough to sell an incremental step. Find the right balance by focusing on 1-2 key issues/questions. Develop and present only what you can address in 40 pages. State your research question explicitly and clearly. Get to your key arguments as soon as possible.

5. Readers and reviewers want:

Clear: nearly effortless reading

Compelling: why is this important

Coherent and focused: 1-2 strong messages

Novel and exciting new ideas they can use. 

One tip to ensure consistency and coherency is to take a look at the title, the section headings, the propositions, and the figures – see if the wordings and ideas are consistent.

6. Key issues to look out for: (1) is the relevant literature used and accurately cited? (2) are the constructs defined clearly? Avoid same constructs labelled differently, different constructs used synonymously, questionable selection of certain constructs, new label for same old ideas. As much as you get a friendly review, get a non-academic friendly review – make it pass the grandmother test. Ask your friendly reviewers to give 3 reasons why they would reject your paper if they were your reviewer.

7.  Lange & Pfarrer (2017) – Control what you can. These five “C”s should be consistent within abstract and introduction.

(Para 1) Common ground: What we and the reader can agree on

(Para 2) Complication: Complication or twist to what we agree on in the literature

(Para 3) Concern: What is important, “In this paper…”

(Para 4) Course of action: “Specifically”

(Para 5) Contributions. 

8. The five paragraphs above will form the structure for the rest of the paper.

Section 2 literature review reflects introduction paragraphs 1 & 2 by discussing what we know, and should end with tensions (common/concern). 

Section 3 theory discusses what we do not know and elaborates on concerns. This section reflects introduction paragraphs 3 & 4. 

Discussion section reflects introduction paragraph 5 by having a summary, theoretical and practical contributions, future research directions, conclusions. 

General guideline for pages: Introduction (3-4), literature review (5), figure and theories from 10-30, discussion (5).

9. Ensure your writing is clear, direct, and precise. The focus is always to engage the reader and bring them with you on your journey.

Two afterthoughts:

1. One of the panelist shared that authors tend to tweak sections when an overhaul of the manuscript is needed. I think this happens when we cannot see how our manuscript falls short of the standards, may miss the main point we actually want to convey, or we cannot bear to cut away our writing. The panelist also talked about the difference between “academese language”, “plain English”, “clear writing”, and provided examples of each category. On hindsight, I think I can do more to move from “plain English” to “clear writing” by cutting away unnecessary explanatory or filler words and go straight to the bones of my idea.

2. The question I had before this PDW was how to take our preliminary ideas a step higher and move to a level of theoretical contribution. This is tied with my uncertainties around qualitative work as well. Integrating my learning from both sessions, theory papers need to have bold and fresh ideas yet at the same time limited within 40 pages. Ideas should be limited yet unbounded – what a paradox! One way is to focus the paper on 1 idea/contribution that will shape existing conversations around the focal topic.

Resources

1. Pollock & Bono (2013). Being Scheherazade: The Importance of Storytelling in Academic Writing. Academy of Management Journal, 56(3): 629-634

2. Lange & Pfarrer (2017). Editors’ Comments: Sense and Structure—The Core Building Blocks of an AMR Article. Academy of Management Review, 42(3): 407-416.

3. Ragins (2012). Reflections on the craft of clear writing. Academy of Management Review, 37(4): 493-501

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AOM 2020: Qualitative Analysis Boot Camp V: Theoretical Hunches and How to Theorize from Data

Professional Development Workshop on 7 August 2020

Key learning points:

1. While we write and read the paper in a linear fashion, the qualitative, inductive study does not typically occur like that. It is a constant iterative process between data and literature review/contribution. There is a back and forth movement between theory and data until you refine your contribution.

2. You may start the field work with certain questions in mind and expectations to these answers. In the field, you may find insights that conform to your expectations and some things that are interesting, which are out of your area of expected findings or an area you did not even think about when setting up this study. Follow your hunch that is theoretically informed and seem to suit the research question – play around this hunch and explore the data by comparing and contrasting the situations, etc.

3. You may find that your expected finding is not the core of the data. Rather, playing around “why this is weird”, “that surprises me”, “why does it happen?”. Your hunch may be a dud – for example, you expected to see this finding, but you did not find it in the field. Don’t give up on this and think about why this is so. The fact that you had this hunch that was theoretically informed and should have occurred but did not, is already interesting and valuable. It means there is a better answer and you just need to dig deeper.

4. This is how you know that you have not made a theoretical contribution – when you are writing the contributions section and you highlight that “My findings are consistent with / are the same as XX …”. When you are not consistent with everyone else, there is a possibility that you found something to contribute to (or perhaps you just have not read the literature enough). Possible terms that signal your contribution includes “contrary to”, “elaborating a point”, and “counterintuitive to others”. Further develop your findings and test your hunch – go back and forth between findings and theory until you work out a compelling story and how does that address some problem in the literature.

5. Qualitative research provides that opportunity to discover inconsistent findings with theory or existing studies. Usually in reality, some part of your findings is consistent and linking with existing literature – which is good as it means your analyses is developing – and your hunch is not wrong. However, you need to go deeper in the analyses and go beyond the surface that is consistent with others. Go deeper into your analyses to see what you are different from existing literature, what is the nuance in your study. Ask yourself, what explains what I see, why did the shift happen? Do it empirically first, then go back to the literature to see if someone has already studied. One way to carve out a contribution is to go deeper into “why”, “when”, and “how” of what people have already found and how your data might explain it.

6. Work towards an explanation of the process, not just describing the pattern emerging from your data. Then think about what are the key constructs or concepts that explain the process, then go to the literature for each of the key constructs to better understand. Get specific with each constructs and mechanisms and study them in detail. Pick out which part of the literature for the key constructs that are valuable for your study. Then you can know what is said and what is different in your data.

7. A mistake that junior scholars make is to work on the data without first referring to the literature – you will never code your way to a contribution. First look at the literature and identify the gap, inform your coding, you have your hunch and ah-ha moment, then backtrack why is this gap important?

When you are empirically present, start writing little notes that makes you connect with theoretically what is important and interesting. Write in bullet point upon returning from the field to force yourself to think (1) this is what is happening in the field, and (2) why is this interesting. It forms a base on your working theory of the data – you may not have the theoretical language for it at the moment. At this point, work out why what you have appears novel.

8. Develop a findings (y-axis) – contributions (x-axis) table. Write down (1) the key findings of your study, and (2) what are we learning here and what literatures are you contributing to. This helps with developing coherence of your findings. Build your tables and write around them.

Two afterthoughts:

1. I have benefited from this PDW so much, as I am struggling with bridging between my empirical findings and developing a theoretical contribution. To me, this is a tacit knowledge and skill – it has to be caught rather than taught. Obviously, I think many of us know that we have to have a theoretical contribution, we have to dig deeper in the data, we have to reiterate between data and theory – but how does this look like, what do you look out for, what are some thought processes to have when you go through the data – all these usually are not spelt out. Experienced qualitative researchers will find this so intuitive but junior scholars are still trying to figure this process out. Having panelists with experience spell it out explicitly how they do it is so helpful – having guideposts (e.g. this is how you know you are NOT having a contribution, this is how you make a contribution) is valuable.

2. I really appreciate the panelists’ candid sharing of how they engage with the data-theory process. I realized this much later in my PhD journey that while the theory books say you need to look at the data first, it is inductive, not to be overly informed by the literature etc, we actually need to first read and be thoroughly informed of the literature before going into the field and doing our data analyses. Like what one panelist shared, we can never code our way to a contribution. Find out what is said and done, then analyze your data to find out what is different, what is a nuance, can you explain a process/mechanism of what people found.

Resources:

1. Carlsen & Dutton (2011) Research Alive: Exploring Generative Moments in Doing Qualitative Research, Advances in Organization Studies, Copenhagen Business School Press.

2. Le & Schmid (2020) The practice of innovative research methods. Organizational Research Methods (Advance online publication)

3. Kohler, Smith, Bhakoo (2018) Feature Topic for ORM: “Templates in Qualitative Research Methods” Organizational Research Methods, 22 (1), 3-5.

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AOM 2020: Perfect Review Responses Clarifying Editors' Visions and Requirements

Professional Development Workshop on 7 August 2020

Key learning points:

1. What is the single biggest challenge faced in the R&R process?

Authors have trouble recognizing and accepting the scale of revisions needed. Instead, many revise their manuscript on a piecemeal basis to address specific comments. Take a step back and assimilate the various comments to get at the core of what the editor and reviewers are highlighting.

Reviewers give different advice in a bid to push your paper forward, hence they may appear conflicting or inconsistent. The editor plays a key role in guiding you by highlighting what is critical to address in the revision process. While the editor should have already pointed the key direction to move towards, you may still be unsure on how to address these concerns. This is when reaching out to the editor is helpful, and they are there for the authors to talk to.

Reviewers may give broadly pitched or general comments, most likely due to them not being sure on how to help you exactly but they know that there is something to be worked on. This is when going back to the core contribution of your work is valuable – are you clear what your paper is about and what its contribution needs to be? This helps in siphoning out what needs to be in the manuscript, and what does not.

2. What is the most common advice given by editors to authors in the R&R process?

Define and explain key or core concepts in the manuscript. Do not assume readers will know the meaning of the core terms. Talk about your contribution regularly – what does it mean, what are you trying to do, have you defined your terms and theories, have you made it clear to your readers why this is what you need to do and not something else? Always answer the “why” question – why have you chosen this, why have you selected this definition, etc.

Explicitly state and explain research questions and contributions, and to address these issues in both the introduction and the conclusion. Present your paper as if you are joining a conversation – you want to join a research conversation in the journal that you are submitting to. Make it clear how your paper fits with what the journal is talking about and engage with the discipline and debates in the literature.

Two afterthoughts:

I particularly appreciate the advice to take a step back and figure out what is the overarching theme in revising your manuscript. Since I tend to work through reviewer comments on a point-by-point basis to make sure everything is addressed, there is a risk of missing what the core concern of the editor and reviewers and overlooking the scale of revisions needed.

A question was put forth, “My paper is better than this one that is published, why?” And the editor’s response was “It is not fair. Academic writing is both art and science, and luck matters a great deal.” Indeed. The presenter shared that perhaps the paper that was published was just clearer in conveying the ideas and contribution.

Useful resource: From the AMLE editorial team: Responding to reviewers (2019), AMLE, 8(3) 331-336.