Lecture: How to Argue the Moderating Mechanism in Management and Organization Research? Patterns and Evidence

Speaker: Prof. JIA Liangding from Nanjing University

Time: 8:30 am, November 2nd 2015

Venue: Room 201, Tongji Building A

Abstract:

The past decades bear witness to a gradual acquaintance with the moderators by management and organization scholars. Existing literature discussed the methods of testing and interpreting moderation, but neglected discussing the logic of arguing the moderating mechanism. The two questions are complementary and indispensable. To establish a moderating relation, we must have solid logics to argue why under certain context the direction and/or strength of the relation between an independent variable and a dependent variable does change. In this study, we answer the later question in three steps. First, we develop a general framework including three patterns of arguing logic about a moderating mechanism. Second, we analyze 483 moderating hypotheses from 156 articles published in Academy of Management Journal during 2008 to 2013 according to the three patterns in the above framework. Third, we choose several hypotheses as the cases in each pattern, and present the argument logics of developing the moderating hypotheses. We also present some example hypotheses to show how the authors jointly use the patters to develop their arguments in each hypothesis. We hope this paper will give our readers some specific and practical directions for arguing moderation effects.