Implications of the research results
definitely tells us whether the hypothesis is true for this practice if the test is conducted in a case or cases from within that practice or for
very similar situations if the test is conducted in a case or cases that are very similar to the practice situation to which the study is oriented.
Test results, therefore, have direct implications for the practitioner’s options for action.
The result of a successful hypothesis-building study is a hypothesis, or a set of hypotheses, of which it is known by means of the practice of
initial testing that they are true in the set of selected cases from which these hypotheses have emerged. Before the generated hypothesis can
be considered true for the practice to which the study is oriented, it must first be tested in a next hypothesis-testing study. The exception
to this rule is the situation in which the hypothesis was built by studying the entire practice to which the research is oriented e.g. if a hypoth-
esis was built about a relation between a department’s management team’s style and the department’s performance in all departments of
a company. In the latter case a fact regarding this practice has been discovered and no further testing is needed.
The result of good descriptive practice-oriented research is a true or valid description of types of variables complaints, practices, strategies
that definitely exist in the described range of values or types in the instances in which they were identified. This result is “true” for the prac-
tice if the entire practice to which the research is oriented was studied. Chapter 11
Box 15 A practice-oriented “flash case study”
Refer to Flowchart 1.
Preparation phase
1. Define research topic
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In this book we define the terms “proposition” and “hypothesis” as having dis- tinct meanings. We define a proposition as a part of a theory and a hypothesis
as a part of a study. We noticed that some of our colleagues used these terms as synonyms. This alerted us to the possibility that we used these words in an
idiosyncratic way.
2. Define general research objective see Flowchart 3
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We wanted to do a quick practice-oriented case study to find out if the distinc- tion that we make between the terms hypothesis and proposition is accepted
in the field of business research.
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Exploration of practice. Problem finding, hypothesis available. We formulated the following hypothesis: “In high quality business research journals published
by the American Academy of Management, the term proposition is used in the context of theory and the term hypothesis in the context of an empirical study.”
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Exploration of theory for confirming relevance. In the methodological litera- ture it is common to define and use the words hypothesis and proposition
separately, as suggested by us.
3. Determine the specific research objective see Flowchart 3A
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The objective of this study is to contribute to our knowledge about the use of the words proposition and hypothesis in business research by testing the
hypothesis hypothesis-testing practice-oriented research.
Research phase
4. Choose the research strategy
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Specification of the hypothesis: a in research papers in the Academy of Management Review AMR, the word proposition is used sufficient condition;
b in research papers in the Academy of Management Journal AMJ , the word hypothesis is used sufficient condition.
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Research objective: to test the two hypotheses.
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Research strategy: a parallel single case study for each hypothesis. 5.
Select instances
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Candidate cases: issues of both journals of the last 4 years.
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Case selection: arbitrary selection of two issues per journal and five research papers per issue.
6. Conduct measurement
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Measurement: visual scanning of the papers for the words hypothesis or proposition; counting the number of times the word proposition is used in an
AMJ paper, and counting the number of times the word hypothesis is used in an AMR paper.
7. Conduct data analysis
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Analysis: rejection of the hypothesis if the number of times that the unex- pected word is used proposition in AMR; hypothesis in AMJ ⬎0.
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Results: number of times of unpredicted words is 0 : hypotheses confirmed.
Implications and report phase
8. Discuss results
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Test results 20 confirmations and 0 rejections give sufficient support for the correctness of the statement “In high quality business research journals