The main aim of this contribution is to expand the dominant rationale of organizational design research by including solutions and possibilities not observed in reality. We believe that the counterfactual approach to configurations responds to an open call in organization theory and strategy to move the modelling of fit towards a more robust and theory-based specification. With this new approach we propose to rediscover the roots of organization design as a distinct normative discipline that ‘should stand approximately in relation to the basic social sciences as engineering stands with respect to physical sciences or medicine to the biological’. At a more general level, our view implies an expansion of the dominant meaning of the concept of ‘relevance’ in management research. While we agree with Gulati (2007: 780) that we as scholars should probe ‘more deeply into the problems and other issues that managers care about’, we also believe that relevance does not necessarily mean that researchers have to use an ex-post rationality by studying only empirically frequent phenomena. In contrast, we think that any management esearcher should bring with her or himself a fragment of the spirit of the great Greek philosopher Anaximander (c. 610–c. 546 BC), who foresaw the concept of the infinite universe without the support of any empirical observation and against the predominant wisdom of the time. Not by chance, Karl Popper (1998) onsidered Anaximander’s intuitions among the most vivid demonstrations of the power of human thought and logic.
Exploring the topology of the plausible: Fs/QCA counterfactual analysis and the plausible fit of unobserved organizationalconfigurations
SODA, GIUSEPPE;FURNARI, SANTI
2012
Abstract
The main aim of this contribution is to expand the dominant rationale of organizational design research by including solutions and possibilities not observed in reality. We believe that the counterfactual approach to configurations responds to an open call in organization theory and strategy to move the modelling of fit towards a more robust and theory-based specification. With this new approach we propose to rediscover the roots of organization design as a distinct normative discipline that ‘should stand approximately in relation to the basic social sciences as engineering stands with respect to physical sciences or medicine to the biological’. At a more general level, our view implies an expansion of the dominant meaning of the concept of ‘relevance’ in management research. While we agree with Gulati (2007: 780) that we as scholars should probe ‘more deeply into the problems and other issues that managers care about’, we also believe that relevance does not necessarily mean that researchers have to use an ex-post rationality by studying only empirically frequent phenomena. In contrast, we think that any management esearcher should bring with her or himself a fragment of the spirit of the great Greek philosopher Anaximander (c. 610–c. 546 BC), who foresaw the concept of the infinite universe without the support of any empirical observation and against the predominant wisdom of the time. Not by chance, Karl Popper (1998) onsidered Anaximander’s intuitions among the most vivid demonstrations of the power of human thought and logic.
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