Bridging Scholarship in Management: Epistemological Reflections

If the relevance gap in management research is to be narrowed, management scholars must identify and adopt processes of inquiry that simultaneously achieve high rigour and high relevance. Research approaches that strive for relevance emphasize the particular at the expense of the general and approaches that strive for rigour emphasize the general over the particular. Inquiry that attains both rigour and relevance can be found in approaches to knowledge that involve a reasoned relationship between the particular and the general. Prominent among these are the works of Ikujiro Nonaka and John Dewey. Their epistemological foundations indicate the potential for a philosophy of science and a process of inquiry that crosses epistemological lines by synthesizing the particular and the general and by utilizing experience and theory, the implicit and the explicit, and induction and deduction. These epistemologies point to characteristics of a bridging scholarship that is problem-initiated and rests on expanded standards of validity. The present epistemological reflections are in search of new communities of knowing toward the production of relevant and rigorous management knowledge.     

One-dimensional optimal bounded-shape partitions for Schur convex sum objective functions

Consider the problem of partitioning n nonnegative numbers into p parts, where part i can be assigned n_i numbers with n_i lying in a given range. The goal is to maximize a Schur convex function F whose ith argument is the sum of numbers assigned to part i. The shape of a partition is the vector consisting of the sizes of its parts, further, a shape (without referring to a particular partition) is a vector of nonnegative integers (n₁,..., n_p) which sum to n. A partition is called size-consecutive if there is a ranking of the parts which is consistent with their sizes, and all elements in a higher-ranked part exceed all elements in the lower-ranked part. We demonstrate that one can restrict attention to size-consecutive partitions with shapes that are nonmajorized, we study these shapes, bound their numbers and develop algorithms to enumerate them. Our study extends the analysis of a previous paper by Hwang and Rothblum which discussed the above problem assuming the existence of a majorizing shape. This research is partially supported by ROC National Science grant NSC 92-2115-M-009-014.     

Differentiated leader–member exchange,justice climate,and performance: Main and interactive effects

Leaders form different quality leader–member exchange (LMX) relationships with their subordinates. This variable treatment termed LMX differentiation can have negative effects on individuals' behavior and attitudes. In this study, we examined the cross-level main effect of justice climate on task performance and the moderating role of justice climate on the relationship between LMX differentiation and task performance. We tested these two hypotheses using a field study of 90 subordinates nested under 27 supervisors. Procedural justice climate, not distributive justice climate, was found to positively influence subordinate task performance. Further, distributive justice climate, not procedural justice climate, was found to moderate the LMX differentiation–task performance relationship; such that the relationship was positive when distributive justice climate was high and negative when distributive justice climate was low. Findings and future directions are discussed.     

Can a Click be a Word?: Infants' Learning of Non‐Native Words

Forms that are nonlinguistic markers in one language (i.e., “tsk‐tsk” in English) may be part of the phoneme inventory—and hence part of words—in another language. In the current paper, we demonstrate that infants' ability to learn words containing unfamiliar language sounds is influenced by the age and vocabulary size of the infant learner, as well as by cues to the speaker's referential intent. When referential cues were available, infants at 14 months learned words with non‐native speech sounds, but at 20 months only those infants with smaller vocabularies succeeded. When no referential cues were present, infants at both 14 and 20 months failed to learn the same words. The implications of the relation between linguistic sophistication and non‐native word learning are discussed.     

Physiological Responses to Near-Miss Outcomes and Personal Control During Simulated Gambling

Near-miss outcomes during gambling are non-win outcomes that fall close to a pay-out. While objectively equivalent to an outright miss, near-misses motivate ongoing play and may therefore be implicated in the development of disordered gambling. Given naturalistic data showing increases in heart rate (HR) and electrodermal activity (EDA) during periods of real gambling play, we sought to explore the phasic impact of win, near-miss and full-miss outcomes on physiological arousal in a controlled laboratory environment. EDA and HR were monitored as healthy, student participants (n = 33) played a simulated slot-machine task involving unpredictable monetary wins. A second gambling distortion, perceived personal control, was manipulated within the same task by allowing the participant to select the play icon on some trials, and having the computer automatically select the play icon on other trials. Near-misses were rated as less pleasant than full-misses. However, on trials that involved personal choice, near-misses produced higher ratings of ‘continue to play’ than full-misses. Winning outcomes were associated with phasic EDA responses that did not vary with personal choice. Compared to full-misses, near-miss outcomes also elicited an EDA increase, which was greater on personal choice trials. Near-misses were also associated with greater HR acceleration than other outcomes. Near-miss outcomes are capable of eliciting phasic changes in physiological arousal consistent with a state of subjective excitement, despite their objective non-win status.     

Treatment Choice With Trial Data: Statistical Decision Theory Should Supplant Hypothesis Testing

Abstract

A central objective of empirical research on treatment response is to inform treatment choice. Unfortunately, researchers commonly use concepts of statistical inference whose foundations are distant from the problem of treatment choice. It has been particularly common to use hypothesis tests to compare treatments. Wald’s development of statistical decision theory provides a coherent frequentist framework for use of sample data on treatment response to make treatment decisions. A body of recent research applies statistical decision theory to characterize uniformly satisfactory treatment choices, in the sense of maximum loss relative to optimal decisions (also known as maximum regret). This article describes the basic ideas and findings, which provide an appealing practical alternative to use of hypothesis tests. For simplicity, the article focuses on medical treatment with evidence from classical randomized clinical trials. The ideas apply generally, encompassing use of observational data and treatment choice in nonmedical contexts.