A Workshop on Writing for Scholarly Publication

By

Dr. Arifin AngriawanUGM, Yogyakarta, September 2014

PURPOSEThe purpose of this workshop is to describe and practice writing a scholarly paper. I will explain the main points that need to be addressed in each of the major sections commonly found in scholarly papers in management research: Title, Abstract, Introduction, Literature Review/ Theory Development & Hypotheses, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Limitation and Future Research.

I will use sections from published papers to illustrate the main points discussed. I will then ask the participants to practice what they have learned. Articles might be distributed and used for this exercise.

TITLETitles should be interesting and reflect the content of the paper. Include key constructs in the title.

Examples:

Domestic mindsets and early international performance: The moderating effect of global industry conditions (Nadkarni, Herrmann, and Perez, 2011).

Foreign-based competition and corporate diversification strategy (Bowen & Wiersema, 2005).

ABSTRACTO It is a summary of the paper.O You could touch on each of the major

sections of the paper. Do not forget to introduce key constructs and clarify contribution. Show that it is interesting.

O Huff (1999) suggests that we use short sentences, present tense, active voice and reduce redundancies. She suggests that the order of sentences in an abstract follow that of the paper.

EXAMPLE OF ABSTRACT

“We develop and test a sensemaking model of …... Our central contention is that ……. We test this contention with a sample of …. firms from 20 industries. Our results highlight….. the role of domestic mindsets in the early phases of internationalization and prescribe the types of domestic mindsets needed to maximize early international performance in global, multi-domestic, and transnational industry conditions. Our results also provide valuable insights to top managers … on how to reduce the risk of failure and how to successfully prepare ….” (Nadkarni, Herrmann, and Perez, 2011, pg.510)

EXAMPLE OF ABSTRACT

“…..Despite the growing and widespread importance of foreign-based competition, the influence that such competition may exert on corporate diversification strategy is a question largely overlooked in the strategic management literature. This paper examines the impact of foreign-based competition in a firm’s core business on both the level and nature of a firm’s diversification strategy at the corporate level in a panel dataset of U.S. firms over the period 1985–94. Our findings provide the first evidence that increased foreign-based competition is indeed a statistically significant factor explaining both the reduced business-level diversity and the increased strategic focus of U.S. firms that has been widely perceived over the past two decades .“(Bowen & Wiersema, 2005; pg. 1153).

INTRODUCTIONO Identify research question and define key

constructsO Explain why the research question is

important (researchers and/or practitioners) i.e. advancing understanding

O Describe settingO Recognize issues raised in the existing

literatureO Identify contributionO Introduce the structure of the paper

EXAMPLE OF INTRODUCTION

“Recently, there has been a shift in the internationalization literature, from the strategic (e.g., diversification), ……to sensemaking theories which contend that a firm’s success in international markets is tied to managerial mindsets-the lens through which top managers view the environment and make decisions.......Despite its importance, several gaps persist in research on sensemaking in internationalization. First, ……. Second,…..Finally,……We address these important gaps by developing and testing an integrated sensemaking model that ties domestic mindset of top managers to international industry conditions and early international performance………………We theorize that …The fit between the international industry conditions and domestic mindsets of top managers will maximize early international performance.. Theoretically, our results extend previous literature in two ways….Moreover, our results inform top managers …..on how to reduce the risks of failures and how to successfully prepare for and cope with international environments by matching their domestic mindsets with the international industry environments……..” (Nadkarni, Herrmann, and Perez, 2011; pg.510 and 511).

EXAMPLE OF INTRODUCTION (Bowen & Wiersema, 2005)

“For over 30 years the topic of corporate diversification strategy has been a central focus of strategy research. Despite the importance of this topic, few studies consider the fundamental question of how corporate diversification strategy evolves in response to changes in a firm’s business environment. …………A significant source of change in business conditions since the late 1970s has been the growing presence and pressure of foreign competition…” (p.1153).

EXAMPLE OF INTRODUCTION (Bowen & Wiersema, 2005)

“This paper seeks to fill this important gap, and to contribute to the literature on corporatediversification strategy, by providing a theoretical framework and thorough empirical examination of how the hostile competitive conditions engendered by foreign-based competition in a firm’s core business influences a firm’s choice of both the extent and nature of its diversification; relationships not previously examined…” (pg.1154).

EXAMPLE OF INTRODUCTION (Bowen & Wiersema, 2005)

“Our theoretical framework utilizes both transaction cost theory and resource-based theory to formulate predictions about a firm’s strategic response, in terms of the extent and nature of its diversification, to competition from foreign-based firms. Transaction cost theory (Williamson, 1985)……………….Our empirical analysis of these theoretical predictions of a firm’s response to foreign-based competition contains several novel elements……………our research design and choice of estimation technique represent important methodological contributions in the domain of empirical strategy research……” (pg. 1154 and 1155).

LITERATURE REVIEW/ THEORY DEVELOPMENT & HYPOTHESESO To show the current state of knowledge as well

as to highlight your contribution. So do not just focus on others’ work but also voice yours. Provide thorough discussions of the current literature insights for each of the key constructs and relationships between them.

O Research is about advancing understanding, so literature review must not necessarily lead to filling the gap. What is more important is advancing understanding, not simply filling any gaps. You can use a model to depict your theory.

O Hypotheses: tell a story that explains why the relationships exist.

EXAMPLE OF LITERATURE REVIEW/ THEORY DEVELOPMENT

& HYPOTHESES“Our sensemaking model of early internationalization, shown in Figure 1, is rooted in the sensemaking literature………..Organizational sensemaking literature suggests that mindsets of top managers influence actions through three sensemaking mechanisms—noticing, interpreting, and identifying appropriate actions…………The ability to make sense of complex information has been tied to two facets of mindsets—breadth and depth…….(Nadkarni, Herrmann, and Perez, 2011; pg. 512)

LITERATURE REVIEW/ THEORY DEVELOPMENT & HYPOTHESES

EXAMPLE OF LITERATURE REVIEW/ THEORY DEVELOPMENT & HYPOTHESES

Collectively, extant research suggests that breadth and depth are likely to influence performance outcomes and that this relationship is likely to be moderated by industry conditions. Thus, we hypothesize that the influence of depth and breadth of domestic mindsets on early international performance will be moderatedby international industry conditions…….(Nadkarni, Herrmann, and Perez, 2011; pg.513 and 514)

EXAMPLE OF LITERATURE REVIEW/ THEORY DEVELOPMENT

& HYPOTHESES“…Prior research has utilized ….. Transaction cost theory posits that a firm’s optimal level of diversification is a function of balancing the economic gains from diversification against the bureaucratic costs of a multi-business firm (Jones and Hill, 1988)…. this increase in organizational differentiation requires greater collaboration and integration of interdependencies on the part of a firm, leading to increased costs of coordinating its activities…… the firm will choose to reallocate scare managerial resources and attention away from its non-core businesses, and thereby choose to lower its level of diversification.

Hypothesis 1: The level of firm diversification will be negatively related to core industry import penetration (Bowen & Wiersema, 2005; pg. 1155 and 1156)

METHODSThis section contains data collection, sample and measures. This section informs the readers how the researcher/s arrive at the findings, conclusions or contribution. Describe the study procedures, context and explain why the procedure is appropriate to test the research questions (Daft, 1995). Thus, theory section must be in alignment with the method section. Report the reliability and validity of the constructs (i.e., discriminant, convergent)

EXAMPLE OF METHODS

“The role of domestic mindsets in early internationalization is likely to be more prominent forlarger and older firms than for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and born-global firms,……………… To select firms from our population of interest— large and established domestic firms2, we chose the year 1990, which helped us minimize the selection bias by offering a diverse and representative pool of established firms with no…… Three factors guided our choice of firms in 1990……………… Our data source for measuring mindsets is the CEO’s letter to shareholders (LTS)….. inter-rater reliability ranged from 0.87 to 0.95 on…” (Nadkarni, Herrmann, and Perez, 2011;pg. 516 and 517)

EXAMPLE OF METHODS

We conduct our empirical investigation using a panel (i.e., pooled time-series, cross-section) dataset of U.S. firms from 1985 to 1994.8 The full panel consists of 8961 observations with varying numbers of firms in each sample year. The full dataset consists of all firms appearing in Compustat’s Line of Business database for which data on all model variables were available. As further discussed below, only our analysis of the level of diversification employs the full panel; our analysis of the nature of diversification instead restricts the dataset to only multi-business firms (2875 observations)…. (Bowen & Wiersema, 2005; pg. 1158 and 1159).

RESULTSO Discuss acceptance or rejection of

the hypotheses. Support with descriptive data and results table (Ortinau, 2011).

EXAMPLE OF RESULTS

We tested our model relationships by use of the two-stage least squares (2SLS) Regression…………Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics and intercorrelations among study variables and Table 2 shows the 2SLS moderated regression results….. These results confirm the moderating effect of international industry conditions and support propositions 1 and 2……(Nadkarni, Herrmann, and Perez, 2011;pg. 520 and 521).

EXAMPLE OF RESULTS

Table 1 presents descriptive statistics and correlations for the full dataset used for the level. Table 2 presents the heteroscedasticity-corrected Tobit results of estimating both the full and partial (interactions excluded…The results for Models 1a, 2a, and 3a in Table 2 support Hypothesis 1 that core industry import penetration has a significant negative effect…………(Bowen & Wiersema, 2005;pg.1162).

DISCUSSIONO Tell the audience what you are going to say, say it,

and tell them what you said.O Discuss your findings and carefully and explicitly

articulate your theory/ new insight of understanding.O Discuss how the data and findings advance the

literature or our understanding of the phenomenon. Tie your discussion to the literature in terms of theoretical contribution, methodological contribution and practice contribution.

O Articulate why or how your contributions are important for researchers and practitioners. (Note: choose research question wisely. Look for important contribution)

DISCUSSIONO Overall, research tells a story (Daft,

1995) that describes what, how, why, who, when and where of a phenomenon.

O You could include the limitations (boundary, methodological etc.) and future research sections in this section. Including the limitation helps the readers to interpret the findings more appropriately.

EXAMPLE OF DISCUSSION“Our results support the contention that the fit between the domestic mindsets of top managers……………. We discuss the important theoretical and practical implications of these findings in the following sections. Our results extend sensemaking theories in internationalization in three ways…………. However, these results must be interpreted in light of the limitations inherent in the research design. First, we focused on newly internationalizing U.S. firms. Because host country characteristics are critical predictors of internationalization (Agarwal and Ramaswami, 1992), future studies may want to study firms from other countries. Second, we……(Nadkarni, Herrmann, and Perez, 2011; pg. 523 to 526).

EXAMPLE OF DISCUSSIONDespite the growing and widespread importance of foreign competition, and continuing efforts in the strategy management literature to understand the causes and consequences of corporate diversification strategy, the influence that foreign competition may exert on the evolution of corporate diversification strategy is a question largely overlooked in the field…… The study contributes to the theoretical literature on corporate diversification strategy by articulating a much-needed framework for understanding why and how a firm would be expected to refocus in the face of increased foreign competition…. In general, the study argued that foreign-based competition is unusual. It introduces new and unfamiliar bases of competitive advantage, and it can…………….. Since no single study can embrace all aspects of an issue, we conclude by noting some limitations of the present study and directions for future investigation. First,………………………. (Bowen & Wiersema , 2005; pg. 1167 and 1168)……. product market diversity and geographic market diversity appears an exciting direction for further analysis.

FINAL NOTES (Daft, 1995)

O Various parts of the paper must fit together.

O Introduction, theory, method, results and discussion sections must be in alignment.

O Must show theory skill, design skill, writing skill.

ARTICLES FOR EXERCISE

O CEO Personality, Strategic Flexibility, and Firm Performance: The Case of the Indian Business (Nadkarni & Herrmann, 2010).

O Top Management Team Functional Background Diversity and Firm Performance: Examining the Roles of Team Member Colocation and Environmental Uncertainty (Cannella Jr, Park, & Lee, 2008).

REFERENCESBowen, H. P., & Wiersema, M. F. (2005). Foreign-based competition and corporate diversification strategy. Strategic Management Journal, 26(12), 1153-1171.

Cannella Jr, A. A., Park, J.-H., & Lee, H.-U. (2008). Top management team functional background diversity and firm performance: examining the roles of team member colocation and environmental uncertainty. Academy of Management Journal, 51(4), 768-784.

Daft, R. L. (1995). Why i recommend that your manuscript be rejected. In L. L. Cummings & P. J. Frost (Eds.), Publishing in the Organizational Sciences. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.

Huff, A. (1999). Writing for scholarly publication. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.

Nadkarni, S., Herrmann, P., & Perez, P. D. (2011). Domestic mindsets and early international performance: The moderating effect of global industry conditions. Strategic Management Journal, 32(5), 510-531.

Nadkarni, S., & Herrmann, P. O. L. (2010). Ceo personality, strategic flexibility, and firm performance: the case of the indian business process outsourcing industry. Academy of Management Journal, 53(5), 1050-1073.

Ortinau, D. J. (2011). Writing and publishing important scientific articles: A reviewer's perspective. Journal of Business Research, 64(2), 150-156.