A Special, Experimental, November-December Issue of Organization Science
A Very Special Issue on Experiments in Organizational Theory
Hello Friends,
Welcome to the December issue of So Here's the Idea, the official Substack of Organization Science!
It has been a few months since our last issue, so we have much to update you on. The team at OS has been diligently working on the journal's regular operations, but we also have some updates to share about special issues (the special issue on Experiments in Organization Theory has just been released), as well as our new policy regarding special issue proposals (see below). The Organization Science Winter Conference promises to be spectacular. Thank you all for submitting your work! Since this is a big issue, we’ll send another Substack next week with the most recent articles published in OS.
The special issue of Experiments in Organization Theory is special in more than one way. It’s a substantial one, with 24 papers and an introduction by the superstar editors: Olenka Kacperczyk, Sheen Levine, Oliver Schilke, and Lynne Zucker. They've shepherded many papers through multiple rounds to bring us here, and now we can see articles from a mix of fields that address important organizational challenges through experimentation and complementary methods. There's even a super-collider in one paper (Di Stefano and Micheli, 2023), although the general counsel warns us that we cannot yet refer to OS as an “organizational physics” journal. Finally, remember to check out the editors' comprehensive introductory article (Levine et al., 2023), a valuable resource for novice and seasoned experimentalists alike!
Org theorists are hard at work on a field experiment
Winter Conference Invitations Are Out
The organizing committee, consisting of Stefano Brusoni, Vibha Gaba, John Joseph, and Violina Rindova, received well over 300 submissions for the 2024 Organization Science Winter Conference, and the pool was rich in quality. The conference has always been a small one, and this year we expanded to the maximum capacity of our Zurich conference facilities (120). This is our first conference since before the pandemic and the first ever outside North America. We’re excited about the program and the financial and geographic accessibility it offers to scholars who would otherwise be unable to attend.
Congruence with this year’s conference theme was a major deciding factor (note: the 2025 conference will have a new theme, committee, location, and at least 50% new participants). I’d like to thank the committee for the dozens of hours on Zoom and the attention to detail with which they evaluated all the submissions. A special shout-out goes to Axel Zeijen at ETH Zurich for his extensive technical support. —Lamar
New Formal Special Issue Guidance and Process
For transparency, we've formalized a process for special issue proposals moving forward. Organization Science only has the capacity to publish a maximum of one per year, so we will need to be highly selective in our choices. A top priority will be special issues that tackle important organizational and societal challenges and can represent a variety of perspectives in our journal. The Experiments SI is a great example. Next year, we will be able to publish a special issue on migration. We have a new SI announcement just this week! Henrik Bresman, Amy Edmondson, Jean-François Harvey, and Anita Williams Woolley will edit an SI on “Psychologically-(Un)Safe Climates in the Age of Digital and Social Tensions.” I’ll serve as consulting editor. Submissions will be accepted between June 1 and September 30, 2024. I’m excited about all the big organizational and social challenges this SI could address, and we are hoping for a wide array of submissions from across theories, fields, and disciplines. The call is posted on the OS website (Special Issue) and will follow the process, rules, and guidelines in the document below—Lamar.
Please share our newsletter with colleagues, students, and friends!
Best wishes,
The OS Substack Team
Introduction to the Special Issue on Experiments
by Olenka Kacperczyk, Sheen Levine, Oliver Schilke, and Lynn Zucker
Across the sciences, experiments are the primary tool for establishing causality. It is as fundamental in physics and biology as in engineering or medicine. In the social sciences, psychology was an early adopter in the late 19th century. Economics embraced experiments in the mid-20th century, challenging established theories by testing behaviors previously only theorized and examined in archival data.
When the field of organization theory was born, experiments were in the delivery room. In 1952, Herbert Simon and Harold Guetzkow sought funding for “research into behavior in organizations”, a program involving interviews and observations to generate ideas for laboratory experiments. Their successful proposal built a laboratory for experimental research, complementing purely theoretical work and research based on archival data alone.
In this special issue, we sought to accomplish two lofty goals: Link macro-phenomena — whether organizational, network, market, or societal — with micro-processes. Too often, such processes are a crucial part of a theory yet are never tested. Instead, they are relegated to plausible-sounding presumptions or suggestive but inconclusive evidence. By identifying and testing causal mechanisms, our theories can become more precise and generalizable. In this task, experiments excel thanks to their power to detect processes and determine causality.
We also aimed to boost robustness and reproducibility. Experiments are easy to replicate, especially as norms evolve and researchers collegially share data, instruments, and statistical code. Experimentalists are not strangers to preregistering their hypotheses (or simply avoiding the questionable habits of presenting unexpected findings as if hypothesized or failing to report empirically unsupported hypotheses).
The special issue showcases the advantages of experimental methods for organization theory. The articles exemplify what makes for high-quality experimental research across theories and realms of interest. All the authors vowed to increase transparency and replicability by preregistering hypotheses, sharing materials, and adopting good research practices.
In our Primer on Experiments, we review the method’s strengths and address some criticisms and misconceptions. From the myriad manuscripts we reviewed, we devised a checklist for research design and analysis. We also review recent trends in experimental research and advocate for new types of experiments, including those studying experimental organizations. This current shift towards experimental approaches, we believe, has the potential to significantly reshape the field of organization theory.
Special Issue Articles
Managing Uncertainty: An Experiment on Delegation and Team Selection By: John R. Hamman, Miguel A. Martínez-Carrasco
When Reflection Hurts: The Effect of Cognitive Processing Types on Organizational Adaptation to Discontinuous Change By: Marlon Fernandes Rodrigues Alves, Vincenzo Vastola, Simone Vasconcelos Ribeiro Galina, Maurizio Zollo
The (Bounded) Role of Stated-Lived Value Congruence and Authenticity in Employee Evaluations of Organizations By: Vontrese Deeds Pamphile, Rachel Lise Ruttan
Social Exchange and the Reciprocity Roller Coaster: Evidence from the Life and Death of Virtual Teams By: Jérôme Hergueux, Emeric Henry, Yochai Benkler, Yann Algan
Converging Tides Lift All Boats: Consensus in Evaluation Criteria Boosts Investments in Firms in Nascent Technology Sectors By: Xirong (Subrina) Shen, Huisi (Jessica) Li, Pamela S. Tolbert
Iterative Coordination and Innovation: Prioritizing Value over Novelty By: Sourobh Ghosh, Andy Wu
Effects of Social Information on Risk Taking and Performance: Understanding Others’ Decisions vs. Comparing Oneself with Others in Short-Term Performance By: Sabine Pittnauer, Martin Hohnisch, Andreas Ostermaier, Andreas Pfingsten
How Do Performance Goals Influence Exploration-Exploitation Choices? By: Marlo Raveendran, Kannan Srikanth, Tiberiu Ungureanu, George L. Zheng
Delays Impair Learning and Can Drive Convergence to Inefficient Strategies By: Hazhir Rahmandad, Michael Shayne Gary
Primer for Experimental Methods in Organization Theory By: Sheen S. Levine, Oliver Schilke, Olenka Kacperczyk, Lynne G. Zucker
To Stem the Tide: Organizational Climate and the Locus of Knowledge Transfer By: Giada Di Stefano, Maria Rita Micheli
Microfoundations of Problem Solving: Attentional Engagement Predicts Problem-Solving Strategies By: Daniella Laureiro-Martinez, Jose Pablo Arrieta, Stefano Brusoni
Context and Aggregation: An Experimental Study of Bias and Discrimination in Organizational Decisions By: Michael Christensen, Christian M. Dahl, Thorbjørn Knudsen, Massimo Warglien
A Matter of Transition: Authenticity Judgments and Attracting Employees to Hybridized Organizations By: Nevena Radoynovska, Rachel Ruttan
Social Movements, Collective Identity, and Workplace Allies: The Labeling of Gender Equity Policy Changes By: Cynthia S. Wang, Jennifer A. Whitson, Brayden G King, Rachel L. Ramirez
Microfoundations of Adaptive Search in Complex Tasks: The Role of Cognitive Abilities and Styles By: Carsten Bergenholtz, Oana Vuculescu, Ali Amidi
Building an Equilibrium: Rules vs. Principles in Relational Contracts By: Robert Gibbons, Manuel Grieder, Holger Herz, Christian Zehnder
Collateral Damage: The Relationship Between High-Salience Events and Variation in Racial Discrimination By: Andreea Gorbatai, Peter Younkin, Gordon Burtch
Organizing Entrepreneurial Teams: A Field Experiment on Autonomy over Choosing Teams and Ideas By: Viktoria Boss, Linus Dahlander, Christoph Ihl, Rajshri Jayaraman
Cooperation with Strangers: Spillover of Community Norms By: Mario Molina, Victor Nee, Hakan Holm
When Do Evaluators Publicly Express Their Legitimacy Judgments? An Inquiry into the Role of Peer Endorsement and Evaluative Mode By: Tijs van den Broek, David J. Langley, Michel L. Ehrenhard, Aard Groen
Gender Differences in Responses to Competitive Organization? A Field Experiment on Differences Between STEM and Non-STEM Fields from an Internet-of-Things Platform By: Kevin J. Boudreau, Nilam Kaushik
Network Centralization and Collective Adaptability to a Shifting Environment By: Ethan S. Bernstein, Jesse C. Shore, Alice J. Jang
Authenticity-Based Connections as Organizational Constraints and the Paradox of Authenticity in the Market for Cuban Cigars By: J. Cameron Verhaal, Oliver Hahl, Kevin J. Fandl
Guess the article title this image is based on:
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