WEBVTT 00:00:00.480 --> 00:00:06.320 Concepts and theories are basic products of social science research. When you read a research article 00:00:06.320 --> 00:00:14.160 the first time or hear a theory the first time it might be difficult to understand what that 00:00:14.160 --> 00:00:20.400 article or what that theory is about. Unless you understand what the concepts that the article or 00:00:20.400 --> 00:00:25.440 theory addresses are. For this reason it is very important to be able to identify 00:00:25.440 --> 00:00:32.080 the key concepts in an article and also find the definitions for those concepts. Sometimes the 00:00:32.080 --> 00:00:37.840 definition is provided by article, sometimes it is assumed to be common knowledge. Sometimes you 00:00:37.840 --> 00:00:42.240 need to go elsewhere to look for a definition. Without understanding, how the concepts are 00:00:42.240 --> 00:00:47.920 defined in an article, it is very difficult to understand what the article actually is about. 00:00:48.640 --> 00:00:54.240 Let's start by looking at what is theory. Sometimes theory is thought of being opposite 00:00:54.240 --> 00:01:00.800 of practice but in social sciences and in science more generally, theory has more specific meaning. 00:01:00.800 --> 00:01:06.720 So theory is a set of connected statements about causal relationships between concepts. 00:01:07.280 --> 00:01:14.320 And importantly theory does not simply state that x causes y, 00:01:14.320 --> 00:01:17.520 but the theory also explains the causal process. 00:01:18.160 --> 00:01:26.080 How, when and why x causes y. For example we could have a proposition, which is a basic causal 00:01:26.080 --> 00:01:32.080 claim within a theory that innovativeness causes companies to be more successful. 00:01:32.720 --> 00:01:38.960 Then to have a theory to support that proposition we would have to explain the different 00:01:39.600 --> 00:01:45.440 causal pathways or the different mechanisms through which innovativeness causes companies 00:01:45.440 --> 00:01:53.120 to be more successful. For example we could say that innovativeness allows companies to come up 00:01:53.120 --> 00:01:59.520 with better products, better products allow them to capture more marketshare and that allows them 00:01:59.520 --> 00:02:05.360 to grow and be more profitable. We could also say that innovativeness allows them to have 00:02:05.360 --> 00:02:12.560 improved processes, less crap, more efficiency, therefore lower costs and more profitability. 00:02:12.560 --> 00:02:20.240 So that kind of how, when and why explanation is required for a theory along with the proposition 00:02:20.240 --> 00:02:25.120 which states that they are the key causal relationship that the theory is about. 00:02:25.120 --> 00:02:32.000 Quite often theories contain multiple propositions so we might have for example a theory 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:40.480 that early international expansion leads to growth but it also leads to a higher risk of failure. 00:02:41.520 --> 00:02:47.200 Now, let's take a look at concepts. And our example article is by Harry Sapienza 00:02:47.200 --> 00:02:53.440 and co-authors from 2006 in Academic Management Review, which is a journal 00:02:53.440 --> 00:02:58.880 that publishes only non-empirical articles. So a non-empirical article is an article 00:02:58.880 --> 00:03:04.480 that advances some kind of theoretical argument or presents some kind of theory but 00:03:04.480 --> 00:03:12.160 does not present any evidence back in that theory. This kind of articles present a new idea but don't 00:03:12.160 --> 00:03:19.760 necessarily test the idea. So let's take a look at the theory of this paper and how we can make sense 00:03:19.760 --> 00:03:25.840 of this paper. Of course you can start reading the paper from the first line and proceed like you 00:03:25.840 --> 00:03:31.440 would read a novel from the beginning to the end and hope that you will understand it as you go. 00:03:31.440 --> 00:03:36.960 But that's not the most efficient way of trying to understand, or more effective or most efficient 00:03:36.960 --> 00:03:42.160 and effective way of understanding an article. It's better to first skim through the article 00:03:42.160 --> 00:03:47.520 to get an idea of what the article is about. And then try to identify the key concepts. 00:03:48.240 --> 00:03:53.120 What you're basically looking for when you evaluate an article that presents a theory, is 00:03:54.080 --> 00:04:00.080 something like this. So this article presents a graphical summary of all the propositions. 00:04:00.080 --> 00:04:05.760 So each of these propositions, there are eight in total, is a causal claim 00:04:05.760 --> 00:04:11.680 that the article also explains. Once you start to read an article the first thing that you 00:04:11.680 --> 00:04:19.120 need to understand or identify is what are the key concepts. And then how are they defined. 00:04:20.080 --> 00:04:27.440 It's pretty obvious that because each of these box presents a concept, these boxes at least should be 00:04:27.440 --> 00:04:33.760 considered the key concepts. Once we have the key concepts we need to identify how are the concepts 00:04:33.760 --> 00:04:40.640 causally related. So each of these arrows presents a proposition which corresponds to a causal, 00:04:40.640 --> 00:04:46.560 which is basically a causal statement. So the article says that once you decide 00:04:46.560 --> 00:04:52.800 to go international that actually decreases the probability of survival. Then the article contains 00:04:52.800 --> 00:05:01.840 an explanation of why that is so. But that's not the only place where you find these concepts. 00:05:01.840 --> 00:05:08.240 You need to also look at the concepts within the arrows. The arrows present the causal mechanisms. 00:05:08.960 --> 00:05:16.000 You need to look at the "why", why do these arrows exist. What kind of concepts are used to explain 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:24.720 the mechanisms that there are in these arrows. Then once you have identified all the concepts you 00:05:24.720 --> 00:05:31.360 need to understand what the concepts are about. So if we just look at these boxes, six boxes here, 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:38.160 probability the firm survival. We understand survival means not dying, a growing means getting 00:05:38.160 --> 00:05:43.040 bigger that's pretty easy to understand. Age, it's pretty easy to understand, 00:05:43.040 --> 00:05:46.560 experience, we have an intuitive understanding what experience means. 00:05:47.360 --> 00:05:53.360 But what is research fungibility. How do we define resource fungibility? 00:05:53.360 --> 00:05:58.640 What is the meaning of this term? Also there are the theory part, the part that 00:05:58.640 --> 00:06:03.120 explains the logic behind these arrows. Contains concepts such as 00:06:03.120 --> 00:06:09.440 dynamic capabilities and imprinting. If we go and ask any person at the university 00:06:09.440 --> 00:06:13.360 what is dynamic capabilities, what is imprinting, what is fungibility. 00:06:13.360 --> 00:06:18.400 And if that person is not familiar with this literature they have probably no idea. 00:06:19.200 --> 00:06:22.560 But to understand this paper you need to understand these terms. 00:06:23.920 --> 00:06:30.720 How do we know what these terms mean? Quite often, once you have identified the key terms you can 00:06:30.720 --> 00:06:36.000 start looking for definitions in the article. This is a good article and it presents 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:40.800 definitions, for example here is the definition of dynamic capabilities. 00:06:41.600 --> 00:06:46.960 It stated that the dynamic capabilities are organizational and strategic routines by 00:06:46.960 --> 00:06:52.640 which managers alter firms resource base through acquiring, shedding, integrating and recombining 00:06:52.640 --> 00:06:59.360 resources to generate new value-creating strategies. And well a dynamic capability 00:06:59.360 --> 00:07:06.560 is a special kind of capability. So it's worth also defining what the capability is and how 00:07:07.120 --> 00:07:13.440 dynamic capabilities differ from other kinds of capabilities. So based on this description 00:07:14.160 --> 00:07:21.760 we can understand a dynamic capability. Something that allows firms to develop new capabilities 00:07:21.760 --> 00:07:27.120 or reconfigure existing capabilities. So the dynamic capabilities basically are the 00:07:27.120 --> 00:07:33.280 capability of a firm to adapt to its environment or create new things. If you want to know more 00:07:34.080 --> 00:07:39.760 there is citation to Eisenhardt & Martin's article from which this definition comes from. 00:07:40.400 --> 00:07:46.400 Quite often, when an article presents a concept and it presents a definition, if that article is 00:07:46.400 --> 00:07:52.560 not the first one to come up with that concept and the definition, they will cite the source 00:07:52.560 --> 00:07:58.800 or the original source of that concept. So dynamic capabilities was not, or capability, 00:07:58.800 --> 00:08:04.160 was not introduced the term was not introduced by Eisenhardt & Martin but this definition that 00:08:04.160 --> 00:08:11.760 this article by Sapienza applies comes from that article. So sometimes we change the definition 00:08:11.760 --> 00:08:18.240 of a concept because we have realized that there are how we use the concept is actually involved 00:08:18.240 --> 00:08:24.800 or we realize that the existing definition was too imprecise. It was easy to misunderstand or 00:08:24.800 --> 00:08:30.400 something and then we need to redefine it. Just that everyone has a shared vocabulary and that we 00:08:30.400 --> 00:08:36.000 understand what we are talking about. And both the reader and the author 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:42.880 can have the shared meaning for the same concept. If you want to know more about capabilities 00:08:42.880 --> 00:08:48.000 this article points to Nelson and Winter's book and then that's a book length 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:52.320 treatment of what routines and capabilities are for those who are more interested. 00:08:52.320 --> 00:08:57.840 Of course, if you're just looking at this article as a part of a course work or part of a larger 00:08:57.840 --> 00:09:02.240 review you probably don't want to go to these original sources but it's nice to have them 00:09:02.240 --> 00:09:07.040 available in case you for example want to write the dissertation about dynamic capabilities. 00:09:07.760 --> 00:09:15.280 Here we have a definition of imprinting. It comes from Hannan and Stinchcombe's work. 00:09:16.080 --> 00:09:20.000 The idea of imprinting is that it is something, it is a process through, 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:24.400 which something that happens early on in a life cycle has a lasting consequence. 00:09:25.360 --> 00:09:29.760 How would you know what imprinting means? Well you can look for this definition or 00:09:29.760 --> 00:09:32.880 you can perhaps put the term in Google. Maybe you have seen the 00:09:32.880 --> 00:09:38.480 term imprinting used in different contexts. Generally, when you see a term used the first 00:09:38.480 --> 00:09:44.640 time in an article there's a definition for it or at least the definition can be found 00:09:44.640 --> 00:09:50.640 somewhere near the first use of the term. For example if the introduction states that 00:09:50.640 --> 00:09:54.640 there is imprinting involved, then the definition of imprinting might be in the 00:09:54.640 --> 00:09:59.280 theory part that follows the introduction that explains the imprinting process in more detail. 00:10:00.080 --> 00:10:08.000 Then we have the definition for fungibility. It relates to whether resources 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:14.160 can be used for different purposes. And once we understand what these concepts are about 00:10:14.800 --> 00:10:19.360 then it's a lot simpler to understand what the actual theory is about. 00:10:20.160 --> 00:10:26.400 So when you read an article, you need to identify the concepts, you need to identify the 00:10:27.520 --> 00:10:33.600 definitions and then you can understand it. What if a concept is not defined? For example 00:10:33.600 --> 00:10:40.640 this article uses the term resource endowment, which it does not present the definition for. 00:10:41.440 --> 00:10:44.720 Well, we need to first consider is that the central concept. 00:10:45.280 --> 00:10:50.640 The answer to this question is no. We don't need to know what is the exact definition 00:10:50.640 --> 00:10:56.080 of what resource endowment means. But if we have no idea what endowment is, 00:10:56.080 --> 00:11:01.280 we can simply look at the dictionary definition. So put it in Google and you'll find a definition. 00:11:01.280 --> 00:11:07.280 An endowment is something that you initially have or possess. So resource endowment could be 00:11:07.280 --> 00:11:14.080 understood as what your initial resources are in a company. Of course dictionary and definitions are 00:11:14.080 --> 00:11:22.080 not always the same as the definitions used in social science research. And sometimes the same 00:11:22.080 --> 00:11:26.560 term is applied with different definitions in different fields or different contexts. 00:11:27.280 --> 00:11:33.840 But if you simply want to understand the argument of a paper and the concept is not 00:11:33.840 --> 00:11:40.080 central to that paper then dictionary definitions are good enough for you. You should not shy away 00:11:40.080 --> 00:11:45.360 from putting things to Google and checking the definitions and try to understand it that way. 00:11:45.360 --> 00:11:50.080 If you understand the detail incorrectly it does not really make a difference for your 00:11:50.080 --> 00:11:54.800 understanding of the main idea of the paper. So how do you evaluate articles? 00:11:55.440 --> 00:11:59.120 How do you understand theory and how do you understand non-numerical papers? 00:12:00.480 --> 00:12:06.320 First of all you need to identify the key concepts. Quite often the key concepts are 00:12:06.320 --> 00:12:10.560 presented in boxes and arrows like this. So boxes are the concepts, arrows are the 00:12:10.560 --> 00:12:19.040 propositions that state, the the claimed causal relationships. If an article does not present such 00:12:20.240 --> 00:12:25.920 a graphic or such a figure as this one, then I quite often myself 00:12:26.800 --> 00:12:32.080 draw a figure myself. So an article that presents theory quite often has propositions 00:12:32.080 --> 00:12:40.320 and propositions are in the form x causes y. So I will put all the x's in boxes on the y's in boxes 00:12:40.320 --> 00:12:46.560 and connect the x's and y's using arrows. And I'll draw this kind of figure based on 00:12:46.560 --> 00:12:53.920 what the paper writes and that helps. Then I start looking at okay, so what is fungibility. 00:12:53.920 --> 00:13:00.720 I go through the central concepts. Typically there are few, maybe 10, maybe less, maybe a bit more 00:13:01.920 --> 00:13:05.840 and importantly not all concepts are central. For example resource endowment 00:13:06.640 --> 00:13:10.240 is not something that you need to really understand to understand this theory. 00:13:11.760 --> 00:13:16.080 Then you need to look at the boxes and the explanation of the arrows. 00:13:16.080 --> 00:13:19.440 Once you have the list of the different key concepts 00:13:19.440 --> 00:13:22.880 then you start looking at the definitions. What those definitions are? 00:13:23.600 --> 00:13:27.680 And often found in the article underline the key definitions. 00:13:27.680 --> 00:13:32.720 If you can't find it in the article, you open the article, you type the concept 00:13:32.720 --> 00:13:38.320 in the pdf-search. If you still can't find the definition then put it in Google. 00:13:38.960 --> 00:13:44.240 Sometimes the concept like "age" is common knowledge and it does not need to be defined. 00:13:45.040 --> 00:13:50.000 Once you have identified the key concepts and their definitions, then you read the article. 00:13:50.000 --> 00:13:55.920 So once you understand what imprinting is, then you are in the position to read and understand 00:13:56.560 --> 00:14:03.840 why imprinting would have an effect on, for example a probability of firm growth.