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Methodological Challenges to Management Research
Several important challenges exist to conducting management research in accordance
with these three principles of good management research. With respect to internal
validity, since management research is often conducted in organizational settings,
it is often not technically possible or feasible to use experimental design with
randomization, which is the gold standard in scientific research. Many variables
that are of interest to management researchers simply cannot be incorporated into
an experimental research protocol as an intervention. For example, the senior
managers of an organization would be reluctant to agree to participate in a study
in which the variable of interest is decision-making centralization if participation
meant that the organization would have to adopt a particular structure based on
random assignment. Moreover, organizations cannot often be randomized to intervention
and control groups because of geographic and other logistical barriers. Consequently,
management research must often be conducted using non-experimental designs that are
more vulnerable to confounding factors.
Additionally, the concepts of interest in management research
can be difficult and complex to measure and operationalize. Measurement of many
management concepts, such as culture, organizational structure, and coordination,
typically requires primary data collection and the use of sophisticated psychometric
procedures. Moreover, surveys will need to be conducted, presenting challenges of
obtaining adequate response rates. Thus, in contrast to economic or clinical
research where many standard variables are available through secondary data sources
and can be measured in a fairly straightforward manner, management research is
complicated by the need to measure complex variables.
With respect to external validity, the fact that management
research is frequently conducted in organizational settings means that the
research setting will often have unique features or characteristics. No two
organizational settings will ever be exactly alike, and in most cases an
organizational setting will have many unique features pertaining to its clientele
or service market that may raise issues about whether the study results are to
some degree context specific.
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