In this article I describe and compare a number of alternative generic strategies for the analysis of process data, looking at the consequences of these strategies for emerging theories. I evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the strategies in terms of their capacity to generate theory that is accurate, parsimonious, general, and useful and suggest that method and theory are inextricably intertwined, that multiple strategies are often advisable, and that no analysis strategy will produce theory without an uncodifiable creative leap, however small. Finally, I argue that there is room in the organizational research literature for more openness within the academic community toward a variety of forms of coupling between theory and data.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/259349.pdf

Strategies for Theorizing from Process Data

Research on organizational diversity, heterogeneity, and related concepts has proliferated in the past decade, but few consistent findings have emerged. We argue that the construct of diversity requires closer examination. We describe three distinctive types of diversity: separation, variety, and disparity. Failure to recognize the meaning, maximum shape, and assumptions underlying each type has held back theory development and yielded ambiguous research conclusions. We present guidelines for conceptualization, measurement, and theory testing, highlighting the special case of demographic diversity

/pdf/what-s-the-difference-diversity-constructs-as-separation-26wv9bj3r1.pdf

What's the difference? Diversity constructs as separation, variety, or disparity in organizations.

https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/ifi/INF5181/h15/articles-teamwork/mathieu_etal_2008_team-effectiveness-1997_2007_a_review_of_advancements_and_a_glimpse_into_the_future.pdf

Team Effectiveness 1997-2007: A Review of Recent Advancements and a Glimpse Into the Future:

Upper Echelons Research Revisited: Antecedents, Elements, and Consequences of Top Management Team Composition:

Recent Research on Team and Organizational Diversity: SWOT Analysis and Implications

Set on its current course thirty years ago by Herbert Simon's notions of bounded rationality and sequential stages, the research literature of organizational decision making is claimed in this paper to have suffered from three major limitations labeled reification, dehumanization, and isolation. In particular, it has been stuck along a continuum between the cerebral rationality of the stage theories at one end and the apparent irrationality of the theory of organized anarchies at the other. This paper seeks to open up decision making in three respects. First, the concept of “decision” is opened up to the ambiguities that surround the relationship between commitment and action. Second, the decision maker is opened up to history and experience, to affect and inspiration, and especially to the critical role of insight in transcending the bounds of cerebral rationality. Third, the process of decision making is opened up to a host of dynamic linkages, so that isolated traces of single decisions come to be seen as interwoven networks of issues. The paper concludes with a plea to open up research itself to the development of richer theory on these important processes.

Opening up Decision Making: The View from the Black Stool

This article reports partial results of an eight-year field study of the Top Management Teams (TMTs) of a global multidivisional financial services corporation and compares those results with large-sample work in the TMT literature. In particular, it investigates the operationalization of TMT cognitive diversity by the proxies of age, team tenure, industry experience, and functional background heterogeneity most often used in statistical work, and compares those operationalizations with cognitive diversity itself. In addition to highlighting which proxies seemed to most closely approximate cognitive diversity and why, it demonstrates the confounding impact of power on all operationalizations. A comparison of the field results with three representative studies with respect to the operationalization of the dependent variables of diversification, innovation, and performance helps to explain why previous TMT heterogeneity research has often produced inconsistent results or nonfindings. It offers some suggestions that should improve the robustness of statistical research and demonstrates the reciprocal usefulness of case and large-sample research.

Patricia Pitcher

Papers

Opening up Decision Making: The View from the Black Stool

Top Management Team Heterogeneity: Personality, Power, and Proxies

The clock is ticking: surviving privatization and deregulation by utilizing the running time