Tips for Writing Research Paper by CMCD, BIMTECH

1. Source: Seven articles available on AMJ Website
Center for Management Case Development
Birla Institute of Management Technology

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3.  CSR- consumer attitude, retention and role of brand success
 Goal orientation and leadership effect on sales performance
 Digital age – marketing overspending
 When brand anthropomorphism alters perceptions of justice: The
moderating role of self-construal
 The differential impact of brand loyalty on traditional and online word
of mouth: The moderating roles of self-brand connection and the
desire to help the brand
 Dark side of marketing: ambush marketing, resistance to marketing,
compulsive buying, materialism, online trolling
 Online Shopping and Social Media: Friends or Foes?
 Should Anthropomorphized Brands Engage Customers? The Impact
of Social Crowding on Brand Preferences
 Customer Inspiration
 Effects of Product Recalls on Firm Value
 Luxury brands 3

4.  Self-managing organizations
 Work and the good life, happiness, meaning in life
 Dysfunctions of power in teams
 Emotional division-of-labor
 Overconfidence at work
 Transactive Goal Dynamics Theory
 Reflexivity
 Routines and transactive memory systems
 Sustainability and leadership
 Trouble With Homogeneous Teams
 Truth About Hierarchy
 Lifelong Learning
 Corporate Compliance Programs
 Company Needs More Collaboration
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5.  Ethics of online research
 Academic ethics
 Forced-Choice Personality Measures and Academic Dishonesty
 Antecedents of Ethical Climates
 Academic integrity
 Ethics in Finance research
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6.  Entrepreneurship
 Innovation and creativity
 Critical thinking
 Sustainability
 CSR
 Knowledge management
 Ethical dilemma
 Happiness and quality of life
 Millennial behaviour Leadership
 Digital empowerment
 Redefining competitive advantage
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8.  Seeds for many rejections are planted at the inception of a project,
in the form of topics that—no matter how well executed—will not
sufficiently appeal to AMJ’s reviewers and readers
 Distinct criteria of effective topics
◦ Significance: Taking on Grand Challenge
◦ Novelty: Changing the conversation
◦ Curiosity: Catching and Holding Attention
◦ Scope: Casting a Wider Net
◦ Actionability: Insights for Practice
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9.  Significance: Taking on Grand Challenge
◦ UN MDG: Eradicate global poverty, disease and hunger
 Novelty: Changing the conversation
◦ Will it change the existing conversation
◦ Recombination of knowledge
◦ Avoid: the familiarity trap, the maturity trap, and the
nearness trap
 Curiosity: Catching and Holding Attention
◦ Prove expected to be wrong, mystery
◦ Instead: The Effects of Leader Displays of Happiness on
Team Performance
◦ Probe: Whether team performance would be facilitated
by leaders displaying happiness or by leaders displaying
anger
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10.  Scope: Casting a Wider Net
◦ Even the best topic ideas can be undermined if the resulting study is too
small
◦ Studies cannot tackle grand challenges if they are not ambitious in scope
◦ The best topics set out to fully and comprehensively sample the landscape in a
given domain and may even include constructs and mechanisms derived by
using multiple lenses
 Actionability: Insights for Practice
◦ It should offer insights for managerial or organizational practice
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11.  Five major ways that management studies can be actionable:
◦ Offering counterintuitive insights
◦ Highlighting the effect of new and important practices
◦ Showing inconsistencies in, and consequences of, practices
◦ Suggesting a specific theory to explain an interesting and current situation
◦ Identifying an iconic phenomenon that opens new areas of inquiry and
practice.
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12.  Should be driven by
◦ Research questions
◦ Avoid threats of validity
 Practical problem
◦ No hard and fast rules
◦ External factors limit the ability to carry out optimal designs
 Broad design problems
◦ Mismatch between research question and design
◦ Construct validity – issues in measurement and operation
◦ Inappropriate or incomplete model specification
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13.  Cross sectional data
◦ Most management research question implicitly try to measure change
◦ Study of causality requires repeat measures: Manager’s behaviour affects
motivation
 Inappropriate samples and procedures
◦ Are the sample and procedures appropriate
◦ Effect of gender on reactions to male and female managers: Asking students
versus scenario building
 In the manuscript make a case showing appropriateness of samples
and procedures
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14.  New constructs
◦ Define boundaries and map its association with existing
◦ Consistent treatment through out: Orgn legitimacy should not later become
Orgn reputation
 Inappropriate adaptation of existing measures
◦ Show face validity of modified items
◦ List all items in appendix
 Inappropriate application of existing measures
◦ Inconsistency between the present study and prior works
 Common method variance
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15.  Challenge is
◦ Theoretically may not be possible to include all control and mediating
variables
◦ Yet careful attention may yield dividends at the review stage
 Control variable inclusion criteria
◦ Theoretical or prior empirical tie of the variable with dependent
variable
◦ Strong expectation that the control variable be correlated with
hypothesized independent variables
◦ There is a logical reason that it cannot be central variable in the
study
 Mediating variables
◦ Explains why a set of variables are related
◦ Helps in understanding the relationship better
◦ For more mature areas of research – more mediators
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16.  Importance of introductions: presenting the
essentials of your study in a way that
◦ Captures reader interest
◦ Identifies the “conversation” you are joining
◦ Explains what your study contributes
◦ Articulates how you will accomplish your goals
 Effective introduction answers
◦ What is the topic or research question, and why is it
interesting and important in theory and practice?
◦ What key theoretical perspectives and empirical findings
have already informed the topic or question?
◦ How does your study fundamentally change, challenge,
or advance scholars’ understanding?
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17.  Failing to motivate and problematize
◦ Providing insufficient justification for the importance of the topic and question,
and how the paper contributes new knowledge
 Lack of focus: Symptoms
◦ Too long
◦ Using too many frameworks
◦ Which section will be presented in what order?
 Overpromising
◦ Setting too high expectations and failing to meet them
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18.  This involves
◦ Positioning hypotheses in relation to related research
◦ Developing a clear, logical argument explaining why the
core variables or processes are related in the proposed
fashion
◦ Creating a sense of coherence in the relationships among
the variables and processes in the proposed model
 Engaging Prior Research
 Building the argument
◦ Substantiating hypotheses, Utilizing multiple theories,
Coherence
 Pitfalls
◦ Lack of specificity, Fragmented Theorizing and Stating the
obvious
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19.  How and why data were obtained?
 How the data were analyzed and what was found?
 Methods
◦ Completeness: Describe data collection
◦ Clarity: Adaptation, Coding
◦ Credibility: Justify sampling, Conceptual definition of constructs
 Results
◦ Completeness: Descriptive statistics, unit of analysis, sample
size, independent and dependent variables
◦ Clarity: Relate findings with hypothesis; Don’t sweep negative
findings under the rug
◦ Credibility: Justify interpretations are correct, Practical
implications, compare with other researchers
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20.  After thought on the lines
◦ Something secondary or expedient
◦ An action or thought not originally intended
 Not a reflection after an act – exploring deeply about the
significance of the act
 Researchers often fail to appreciate that others may not
share the same theoretical interests and/or see their
underlying merit
 An effective Discussion section not only reports the study’s
theoretical inroads, but also contextualizes them in a
fashion that makes clear their larger utility for readers and
fellow researchers
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21.  Theoretical & practical implications; study limitations and future research
 Revisit paper’s original theoretical motivation and establish to what extent it is
solved or clarified. What remains unsolved?
 First order implications:
◦ What do the results tell us about underlying theoretical constructs, principles, and their
relationships?
◦ When do these patterns emerge, and in what context?
◦ How do they refine appreciation of the underlying theory?
 Implications: an end – new beginning
◦ More interesting is to probe – Why?
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22.  Common pit falls
◦ Rehashing results
◦ Meandering: referencing too many unconnected frameworks – not aligned to
the main hook of the paper
◦ Overreaching: sweeping conclusions not supported by data
 Best Discussions (in addition to outlining their studies’ limitations,
practical implications, and suggestions for future research) provide a
clear and compelling answer to the original research question, cast
in a theoretical light
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23. ◦ June 2011: Jason A. Colquitt, Gerard George. Part 1: Topic Choice
◦ August 2011: Joyce E. Bono, Gerry McNamara. Part 2: Research Design
◦ October 2011: Adam M. Grant, Timothy G. Pollock. Part 3: Setting the Hook
◦ December 2011: Raymond T. Sparrowe, Kyle J. Mayer. Part 4: Grounding Hypotheses
◦ February 2012: Yan (Anthea) Zhang, Jason D. Shaw. Part 5: Crafting the Methods and
Results
◦ April 2012: Marta Geletkanycz, Bennett J. Tepper. Part 6: Discussing the Implications
◦ June 2012: Pratima (Tima) Bansal, Kevin Corley. Part 7: What's Different About
Qualitative Research?

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24.  October 2013: Jason A. Colquitt. Crafting References
in AMJ Submissions
 December 2012: Jason D. Shaw. Responding to Reviewers
 October 2009: Michael G. Pratt. For the Lack of a Boilerplate:
Tips on Writing Up (and Reviewing) Qualitative Research
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