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/