New Publication in Organizational Research Methods
12.12.2019
We are happy to announce that the paper "Using Outliers for Theory Building" by Prof. Michael Gibbert, Dr. Lakshmi Balachandran Nair, Prof. Dr. Matthias Weiß and Prof. Dr. Martin Högl has been accepted for publication at Organizational Research Methods.
Abstract
Outliers are promising candidates for theory building because they defy expected cause-and-effect relationships. Nonetheless, we often treat them as a nuisance and exclude them from further study. In fact, our analysis finds only two papers using outliers for theory development in all quantitative articles published from 1993–2012 in six major management journals; and less than five percent care to even mention them (relaying reasons for deleting them, mostly). To rectify this, we provide a roadmap for empirical researchers interested in theory building.