1. Comments on The Power of Richness II: Exploring Qualitative Research Methods J. Peter Murmann AGSM Academy of Management 2006 @ Atlanta

2. Organization of Comments 1.Summary of the Presentations 2.Some Additional Comments 3.Points for Discussion

3. Common Message Across All Presentations Management scholarship needs more qualitative research. Qualitative research is not a synonym for poetry or imaginative interpretation. – The goal is still objective, inter-subjective verifiable knowledge – But objective does not a large sample regression analysis Know what you are talking about – Know the phenomenon like you know your “bathroom” – Know the empirical and theoretical literature and make sure that you can frame you research as an interesting contribution (READ, READ, READ) – Operate like detective solving a causal mystery

4. Some Specific Messages Rynes: AMJ is serious about publishing more qualitative pieces.

5. Guillen: Comparing & Knowing “Those who know only one country, know no country.” —Seymour Martin Lipset, “Those who know only one industry, know no Industry.” “Those who know only one firms, know no firm.” “Those who know only one person, know no person.”

6. Comparing & Knowing “But you can also compare one and the same entity (a country, an industry, a firm, a person) at different points on time. – In this way Siggelkow’s methodology is comparative too.

7. Comparing & Knowing You can also compare your mental model with the actual world and thereby enrich your understanding (Weick)

8. 2. Some Additional Comments To breath life (Dutton) back into management scholarship, I. e. to create richness (Weick) in your explanations, you to have the get the representation of phenomena right. Murmann: Representational validity is key and only qualitative methods can achieve it.

9. Internal Validity (establish cause-effect relationships) External validity (generalizability) Representational validity Do I have the connections between variables in the external world right Do I have all relevant variables in my account (model) Different Kinds of Validity

10. 3. Points for Discussion

11. Wagner: ASQ ideal manuscript will: Advance understanding—demonstrable conceptual addition to published knowledge Address administration—organizational and/or administrative research question Present (qualitative) empirical analysis as a means to ground and advance conceptualization—theory development the ultimate focus of investigation Question for Wagner: Is there a place for theory testing at ASQ with comparative case studies. Guillen: Comparative Case Studies are not only good for theory building, also testing theory.

12. Mauro’s Guillen’s Good News Comparative case studies are not harder to get published. Compared to what: Single case studies or large n-studies.

13. Nicolaj Siggelkov’s Bad news “Ah, but that’s just one pig. Show me a few more and then I might believe you.” Or “That’s a nice observation. But what is the theoretical contribution?”