A Call for Openness in Research Reporting: How to Turn Covert Practices Into Helpful Tools
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The Department of Management and Entrepreneurship seeks to provide students with the knowledge of organizations and management functions within organizations. Graduates will be able to understand work-related behavior, competitive strategy and advantage, strategies of international business, and human-resource management practices.
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The Department of Management was formed in 1984 in the College of Business Administration (later College of Business).
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1984 - present
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- College of Business (parent college)
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Abstract
Research articles often give inaccurate information about how researchers developed hypotheses, analyzed data, and drew conclusions. Published articles sometimes report only some hypotheses that researchers tested, or some statistical analyses that researchers made. Articles often imply that researchers formulated all hypotheses before they examined their data, when in fact they added or deleted hypotheses after they made some data analyses. Indeed, such covert practices are so common that new entrants into management research may think they are correct behavior. Yet, these practices create false impressions about the validity of research and they undermine the openness that ought to create trust among researchers.
Researchers have tried to halt these practices by labeling them “unethical,” but their continued prevalence questions the effectiveness of wholly critical approaches. We propose a constructive path toward reform: advocating honesty about actual research processes by adding discussions of inferences drawn after data analyses. Post hoc data analyses can stimulate important theoretical ideas; running alternative statistical models can deepen understanding of empirical patterns; lack of support for hypotheses can identify incorrect or incomplete theories. The management research culture should encourage these practices. Their negative effects result from the lack of explicit reporting about them.
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This is a manuscript of an article from Academy of Management Learning & Education, 16(1) 2016, 125-141. Doi: 10.5465/amle.2016.0039. Posted with permission.