1. Some thoughts
on writing managerial implications
Winter AMA 2015
Son K. Lam
Associate Professor in Marketing
University of Georgia

2. Agenda
• What are managerial implications?
• Common mistakes
• Rules of thumbs
• Some suggestions
• Discussion

3. Managerial Implications
• Change the way managers think or do things
“How much thinking and behavior on the part of how many
marketing stakeholders likely will change as a consequence
of the novel insights of the paper?” (Kohli 2011, p. 2)
• Emerging Marketing thought and practice (2013– present):
Marketing as an integral part of the organization
A focus on marketing efficiency and effectiveness, and
stakeholder engagement (Kumar 2015, p.2)
• Differ from theoretical implications, but related

4. Common Mistakes
• Rehash empirical findings without
‘interpreting’
• Not thoughtful
– Too intuitive/obvious
– Restate what managers are doing any way
• Stretching too far
– Going beyond the findings
• From the audience …..

5. Rules of thumb (1)
• Think before you write
• How confident are you with the empirical
results?
– Generalizeability issues (e.g.,
Sample/Industry)
– Methodological limitations (e.g., causality,
endogeneity, response rates)

6. Rules of thumb (2)
• Viable/Doable: are these things managers can
implement?
E.g., Compensation plans for each salesperson ?
• Novel
E.g., Salespeople are less satisfied under outcome
control systems
• Discuss both significant and non-significant
effects
– Non finding must be interpreted with care (many
reasons for non findings)
• If your findings is inconsistent with existing
knowledge: discuss why and what managers
should do.

7. Rules of thumb (3)
• Flow
– Discuss interesting implications first
– Organize into subsection
– Incorporate some examples, if any
• Run some simulated results
• From the audience….

8. Some Ideas (1)
• Conceptual implications/contribution
• Empirical results
• Substantive motivation
 Managerial implications

9. Some Ideas (2)
• Discussing antecedents/consequences
– Can discuss relative strength of antecedents
• Compare and contrast effect size
• Cross-sectional versus longitudinal effects
– Can discuss R-squares

10. Some ideas (3)
• Discussing mediation effects
(Zhao, Lynch, and Chen 2010)
– Types of mediation (complementary,
competitive, indirect-only, direct-only
nonmediation)
– Multiple mediation
– Effect decomposition/Specific mediation

11. Some Ideas (4)
• Discussing moderator effects
(Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Ahearne, and Bommer 1995; Voss, Godfrey, and Seiders 2010)
– Form of moderation
• Complementarity
• Substitution
• Cross-over
– Two-way interactions
– Three-way interactions
– Cross-level interaction effects

12. Some ideas (5)
• Discussing non-linear effects
– Curvilinear effects are interesting
– Can be interesting if combined with an
interaction effect
• Discussing moderated mediation/mediated
moderation
– Need to run additional analyses (Hayes 2013)

13. Some more thoughts
• The review team can give you some
constructive suggestions
• They also determine whether your
discussion is appropriate or not.

14. Word Choice
• Our results confirm …..
• Our results indicate ….
• Our results suggest ….
• Our results illustrate that ….
• Our results inform managers that …..
• Our results reveal that …..
• Our results seem to suggest …..

15. Select references
• Aguinis, Herman and Steven Andrew Culpepper (2015), “An Expanded Decision-
Making Procedure for Examining Cross-Level Interaction Effects with Multilevel
Modeling,” ORM, forthcoming.
• Brown, Roger L. (1997), “Assessing Specific Mediational Effects in Complex
Theoretical Models,” Structural Equation Modeling, 4(2), 142–156.
• Podsakoff, Philip M., Scott B. MacKenzie, Michael Ahearne, and William H. Bommer
(1995), “Searching for a Needle in a Haystack: Trying to Identify the Illusive
Moderators of Leadership Behaviors,” Journal of Management, 21(3), 422–470.
• Voss, Glenn B., Andrea Godfrey, Kathleen Seiders (2010), “How Complementarity
and Substitution Alter the Customer Satisfaction–Repurchase Link,” Journal of
Marketing, 74(6), 111–127.
• Zhao, XinShu, John G. Lynch, and QiMei Chen (2010),”Reconsidering Baron and
Kenny: Myths and Truths about Mediation Analysis,” JCR, 37(August), 197–206.