D

vecteezy_airplane-dotted-route-line-the-way-airplane-flying-with-a_45763146.png

Developing Your Research Skills Along

THE Research Roadmap

Advice & Resources for Each Step of the Research Process

Ideation

Courtesy of Martinez Lab and SIOP DIP, here is a comprehensive guide for every step of the research process.
Leverage CARMA (Consortium for the Advancement of Research Methods and Analysis) to expand your methodological expertise. This is the best methods resource in our field.
Watch the New Scholars Network for expert talks on several research steps.
Creating a scholarly identity:
- Read the following resources:
  - Colquitt, J. A., & George, G. 2011. Publishing in AMJ—Part 1: Topic choice [Editorial]. Academy of Management Journal, 54(3), 432–435.
  - Huff, A. S. 1999. "Choosing a Topic" in Writing for scholarly publication. SAGE Publications.
- Research what interests you; a scholarly identity will emerge. Hardly anyone in this field strategically crafted their identity from Day 1. Don’t worry too much about your scholarly identity at the beginning; it will emerge.
- Don’t worry too much about the research Venn diagram for the market (i.e., many job market candidates will present three areas of their research and how they overlap with each other).
- Build a scholarly identity through work, relationships, and reflection.
- Identify which academic circles you "jive" with.
Coming up with ideas:
- Create a "Research Ideas" document (e.g., Word document or Google Doc) where you jot down any random ideas that occur to you during the day. Revisit the list from time to time. For the ideas that you still like, see if you can put them into a model with boxes and arrows. Talk to people about these ideas.
- Wander and read broadly—don't let an overemphasis on efficiency drain the joy from your work.
- Go down rabbit holes exploring topics that interest you.
Stay informed on current events & trends:
- Check business and intellectual news sources daily (e.g., WSJ, HBR).
- Use RSS feeds (e.g., Feedly) to aggregate stories related to business, tech, or your specific interests.
- Podcasts are recommended for stimulating intellectual conversations (e.g., Conversations with Tyler, Freakonomics, Hidden Brain, Lex Friedman, Psych, The Daily, The Ezra Klein Show, The TED Interview, WorkLife).
Know when to walk away from an idea, especially if it’s not working or lacks strong collaborators. Every person in this field has ideas and papers that never made it to publication.

Writing & Introduction

Courtesy of Martinez Lab and SIOP DIP, here is a guide for every step of the research process.
Courtesy of AOM's Student Community Group, here is a guide of research tools for every step of the research process.
How to start learning to write well:
- Read the following articles:
- Model successful writing from articles you admire rather than starting from scratch.
- Move away from “perfectly cogent writing” and just write. You learn best by doing and getting feedback, and trying to be “perfect” will slow down your growth and progress.
Writing an introduction:
- Read Grant, A. M., & Pollock, T. G. 2011. From the editors—Publishing in AMJ—Part 3: Setting the hook [Editorial]. Academy of Management Journal, 54(5), 873–879.
- Read well-written introductions and identify how the introduction was structured. Then use that structure to write your own introductions.
Make an interesting and important theoretical contribution in your writing:
- Storytelling in academic writing is essential. Readers have limited attention, so translating the value of your work clearly helps.
- Read the following articles:
Consider reading the following books to improve your writing:

Theorizing & Hypothesis Development

Courtesy of Martinez Lab and SIOP DIP, here is a comprehensive guide for every step of the research process.
Read all core articles relevant to your field:
- Start by reading the older literature to gain insights from the foundational work in the field.
- Pay attention to reading lists curated for your seminars for essential readings. Experts hand-select those lists and there’s a reason those articles are included (including any optional readings).
- Here are a few lists of core articles to read prior to building theory yourself:
- Take careful notes on these aforementioned articles to pull from when generating your own theories and hypotheses:
  - Make a list of every article you read (from seminars to new publications) so you can have a centralized place of all core articles of interest to you and your research.
  - Take notes on each paper for comps/prelims (e.g., use an Excel sheet to denote the major contributions, theory, and method for each paper)
  - Organize and document notes, templates, and work processes for easier access.
  - Build your citation library early.

Always be "in-the-know" on the newest research in your area:
- Sign up for journal email alerts for all top journals on their websites (AMJ, AMR, ASQ, JAP, JOB, JOM, OBHDP, OrgSci, PPsych, SMJ). When new articles are published, briefly read the title, authors, and abstract. Download any potentially interesting articles to read in full.
- Read abstracts from top journals, especially recent ones, to stay current.
- Learn to use Web of Science, Scopus, and/or other databases beyond just Google Scholar to hone your research skills.
Learn best practices in conducting comprehensive literature searches and reviews:
Learn what constitutes good theory:
Learn how to construct theory and hypotheses:
Learn how to integrate theories:
- Mayer & Sparrowe 2013. Integrating theories in AMJ Articles. Academy of Management Journal, 56(4), 917-922.
- Okhuysen, G., & Bonardi, J-F. 2011. The challenge of building theory by combining lenses. Academy of Management Review, 36, 6-11.
Learn how to conduct multi-level theorizing:
Expand your ability to build theory by focusing on theory papers:

Methodology & Analysis

Courtesy of Martinez Lab and SIOP DIP, here is a comprehensive guide for every step of the research process.
Read Dorobantu, S., Gruber, M., Ravasi, D., & Wellman, N. 2024. The AMJ Management Research Canvas: A tool for conducting and reporting empirical research. Academy of Management Journal, 67(5), 1163-1174.
Develop core methodological competencies that align with your research questions, which will lead to more collaboration opportunities. People often need a methods and/or analysis expert on their papers.
Learn and master as many research methods as possible to strengthen your career. Avoid getting bounded by a single methodological approach. More and more this field is shifting to a multi-method approach.
- Leverage CARMA (Consortium for the Advancement of Research Methods and Analysis) to expand your methodological expertise. This is the best methods resource in our field.
- Ask methods-related questions via RMNET.
- Keep learning to stay up to date as a scholar.
- Take methods courses in and outside your department.
- Master data analysis software through practice.
- Keep learning methods like regression, multilevel modeling, SEM, etc.
Consider starting by reading "Effective Research Methods for Any Project" by Dr. Amanda Rosen.
Gain a strong foundation in best methodological practices:
Learn experimentation best practices:
- Aguinis, H. & Bradley, K. J. 2014. Best practice recommendations for designing and implementing experimental vignette methodology studies. Organizational Research Methods, 17, 351–7.
- Falk, A., & Heckman, J. J. (2009). Lab experiments are a major source of knowledge in the social sciences. Science, 325(5949), 535–537.
- Podsakoff, P. M., & Podsakoff, N. P. 2019. Experimental designs in management and leadership research: Strengths, limitations, and recommendations for improving publishability. The Leadership Quarterly, 30, 11-33.
- Shadish, W. R., Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. (2002). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for generalized causal inference. Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
- Wilson, T. D., Aronson, E., & Carlsmith, K. (2010). The art of laboratory experimentation. In S. T. Fiske, D. T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (5th ed., pp. 51–81). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
- A great resource to use in experiments is SurvConf which lets participants interact in real-time directly within surveys via video, audio, or text chat interactions in groups
Learn field research best practices:
- Paluck, B., & Cialdini, R. 2000. Chapter 4: Field Research Design. In Reis, H. T., & Judd, C. M. (Eds.). Handbook of Research Methods in Social and Personality Psychology. Cambridge University Press.
Learn qualitative methods best practices:
Leverage valid and reliable scales:
- To start, here is a list of hundreds of different scales. While this is not comprehensive, it offers a good starting point.
- Hinkin, T. R. 1995. A review of scale development practices in the study of organizations. Journal of Management, 21(5), 967–988.
- Hinkin, T. 1998. A Brief Tutorial on the Development of Measures for Use in Survey Questionnaires. Organizational Research Methods, 1, 104-121.
- Hinkin, T. R., & Tracey, J. B. 1999. An analysis of variance approach to content validation. Organizational Research Methods, 2(2), 175–186.
Learn multi-level method best practices:
Constantly practice and expand your data analysis abilities:
- Keep documentation for code, analysis, and peer reviews to save time.
- Refresh your foundational statistics knowledge, especially if you have little background in statistics, by taking refresher courses on Kahn Academy.
- Refresh your coding knowledge, especially if you have little background in coding, by taking refresher courses on Codecademy.
- Learn how to leverage R:
  - Introduction to R
  - Learn about R Markdown to improve your R coding abilities.
  - Use biblioshiny to use bibliometrix without advanced coding knowledge in R.
- Learn about advanced statistical methods:
  - When learning about moderation and plotting results, refer to Dr. Jeremy Dawson's site.
  - When learning about polynomial regression, refer to Dr. Jeff Edwards' site.
If you are a DEI scholar, check out this repository of DEI research resources courtesy of the SIOP LGBTQ+ Committee (includes measures, worksheets, grants, and fellowships).

Discussion & Implications

Courtesy of Martinez Lab and SIOP DIP, here is a comprehensive guide for every step of the research process.
Read Geletkanycz, M. & Tepper, B. J. 2012. From the editors: Publishing in AMJ—Part 6: Discussing the implications. Academy of Management Journal, 55(2), 256-260.
Do not disconnect from the real world; bridging academia and practical applications is vital for relevance.
- - Read popular press articles, talk to your friends in other professions, pay attention to social media and forums, and listen to podcasts to learn what working professionals are talking about.
  - Check business and intellectual news sources daily (e.g., WSJ, HBR).
  - Use RSS feeds (e.g., Feedly) to aggregate stories related to business, tech, or your specific interests.
  - Podcasts are recommended for stimulating intellectual conversations (e.g., Conversations with Tyler, Freakonomics, Hidden Brain, Lex Friedman, Psych, The Daily, The Ezra Klein Show, The TED Interview, WorkLife).
Learning qualitative research methods such as interviews and ethnography can help you to build direct links between your theory and practice.

Presentations

Courtesy of Martinez Lab and SIOP DIP, here is a comprehensive guide for every step of the research process.
Present as much as you can. Submit to as many conferences as possible and present to your peers, faculty, etc. The more you can practice presenting the better.
Watch Mike Morrison's research presentation guide for best practices in designing a research poster.
To make your slides look nicer, you can design them in Canva and then export them to PowerPoint. You can also use online templates (e.g., SlidesGo)
Be able to answer as many questions as you can. You can prepare for these ahead of time by creating "backup" slides at the end of your deck with answers to potential questions.

Review Process

Do as much reviewing as you can and always ask for feedback on your reviews. It’s the best way to learn how to do great research early on by seeing how others are doing research.
Read Campion, M. A. 1993. Article review checklist: A criterion checklist for reviewing research articles in applied psychology. Personnel Psychology, 46, 705-718.
Start by reviewing for smaller conferences (e.g., SMA) and then larger conferences (e.g, AOM) within the first few years of your program.
Sign up for the AMR Bridge Reviewer program (additional AOM-affiliated journals will be launching similar programs in the future).

Rejections & Failing

Rejections and failure are going to happen, and probably more than success. It happens to everyone and that’s the nature of the field. That doesn’t mean failing is easy, but have strategies in place for when failure inevitably occurs.
Embrace failure; fail fast to succeed sooner.
Delayed gratification is part of this field. It’s not always easy so celebrate each little win that you can (e.g., submitting a paper, completing a study, teaching a class).
Don’t wait on feedback to progress. Be proactive and seek it out yourself.
Even if you get pushback, persist with your research ideas. You may need to pivot based on the advice you get, but there is never a reason to completely abandon an idea you have.
The best revenge is your papers. Publishing well is the ultimate response to doubt or criticism.

P

Go to:

Pursuing Your PhD Along

The PHD roadmap

Advice & Resources for Each Stage of Your PhD Journey