Abductive Reasoning and Publishing in

Academy of Management Discoveries

Peter Bamberger
Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University
Editor-in-Chief, Academy of Management Discoveries
 The Norm:
Classic Theory-grounded Research - 1
• Underlying Characteristics:
– Grounded on a positivist, hypothetic-deductive
tradition
– Focuses on rationality, objectivity, certainty, and
the ruling out of alternative explanations.
• Two classic forms of reasoning used in social
sciences as defined by Peirce:
– Deductive
– Inductive
 The Norm:
Classic Theory-grounded Research -2
Deduction
• Allows us to infer the specific character of
phenomena or relations in a sample on the
basis of our knowledge of their character in
the population from which we know the
sample to be drawn at random.
• Proceed from knowledge of the character of a
population (general principles) and of the
method of sampling to a falsifiable, a-priori
prediction which is then tested, allowing for a
conclusion about the character of the sample.
 The Norm:
Classic Theory-grounded Research -3
(TRUE) Induction
• Allows us to infer the probable prevalence of general laws
using insights drawn from our sample.
• Useful in offering proximate explanations describing the
mechanisms for a phenomenon, but less so in offering
ultimate explanations describing why the phenomenon
exists in the first place.
• Can only confirm or deny, with a given degree of
approximation, the prevalence of conjectured laws, rules, or
regularities in the population.
• But it only serves to test a conjecture regarding the general
character of a population; it can never suggest a conjecture
for deductive testing, or “make a first suggestion” for the
possible laws, regularities, or uniformities that may prevail
in a population of phenomena
 Abduction:
What It Is and How It Is Different?
• Not positivist, but rather pragmatic.
• Aim is to rule-in the plausible and offer “first
suggestions”. Charles Pierce (1903/1955)
• “Intelligent guessing” (Popper, 1959)
• Science moves from facts/results to explanation. To
get to a theory of celestial mechanics requires using
data to identify the physics of planetary motion; an
abductive process. Process is more efficient if guided
by established theoretical frames/assumptions.
(Muthukrishna & Henrich, 2019)
• Serves as the basis for:
– AI and “deep learning”
– Differential diagnosis in medicine
 Abduction – Two Forms
• “Explorative abduction”
– Researcher is confronted with an empirical question or set of puzzling
facts, but does not know of a general rule, law, or nature that may
readily explain them.
– Uses pattern of results to conceive a plausible explanation.
– Summary: The researcher must conceive the general rule itself, and use
pattern of findings to argue for its plausibility.
– Example: Impact of Pay Transparency on Gender Pay Gap

• “Exploitive abduction” (a bit like HARKing; often labeled as inductive)

– Take advantage of some known general rule, and apply to the facts
under investigation in order to explain those facts.
– Outcome: Provisional hypothesis (but NOT CONFIRMATION) that the
general rule is at work in the production of the facts observed.
– Summary: The researcher already knows the general rule stated in
the first premise and her reasoning focuses on associating the
rule with the observed phenomena.
 Classic Example of Explorative Abduction

We explore several possible mechanisms for this effect, including voluntary changes by
referees in their decision making, behavioral adaptation by players, institutional pressure
by the NBA on referees to change their decisions, and more dramatic institutional
changes (firing of certain referees, changes in how referees are assigned to games, etc.).
While the exact mechanism is hard to pin down…
 Exploitative Abduction:
Complements or Precedes Induction
• Abduction to Surface and Diagnose
– Phenomenological Ethnographies

Describe
Narrow range of plausible explanations
Offer direction for down-the-road theorizing
 Effective Abduction: Justification
• Offer convincing justification of the abductive
inquiry. Why necessary?
– Importance of phenomena or relationship under
examination
– Failure of extant theory to account for observed
patterns or to fit concept into some nomological
net.
• Use theory & prior findings to give direction to
the inquiry: What’s the hunch?
• Lay out and justify strategy for exploration
Effective Abduction: Selection of Data - 1
• Deductive: Sample to minimize sampling error
(internal validity threat) and maximize external
validity
– Never sample on the D.V.
• Abductive: Theoretical & Multiple Samples
– Objective is to expose “error” and discover
systematic patterns.
– Sample from divergent populations to identify
consistency or shifts in patterns. Iterative sampling.
– Sample on basis of different outcomes (sampling on
the DV) to identify divergent antecedent patterns.
Effective Abduction: Design & Methods
• Deductive: Determined a-priori as “best test of
the hypothesis”
• Inductive/Abductive: Dynamic, Fluid & Expansive
– Change methods as plausible explanations emerge
• Test for convergence and divergence
• Test for method-specific/ artefactual results
– Replicate with alternative methods
– Resampling
– Add variables to enhance/expand explanation
• Strengthen plausibility by testing alternatives
• Add insight by exploring conditioning factors & mechanisms
 Effective Abduction: Analyses
• Deductive: Binary and Definitive (hypotheses
supported or not)
• Abductive:
– Progresses iteratively, “ever tightening the explanatory
web around the anomaly” (Farjoun et al., 2015) towards
the “best explanation” (Lipton; Hurley & Cornelissen).
– Focus is not certainty but comprehensiveness and
coherence (clarity, consistency & logic)
• Don’t worry about overlapping variance
• Use multiple analyses to provide roadmap of complexities
• Consistent & COHERENT patterns indicate potential hypotheses or
at least criteria that theory must meet
– Contrasts; Disconfirmation
 Effective Abduction: Discussion
• Breadth: How might findings demand revision of
theory in multiple domains
• Depth: For most important of these domains:
– What criteria do findings suggest that future
theorizing needs to meet?
– What are key defining elements/parameters for any
theoretical model that might be grounded on your
empirical insights?
– What are the next steps to enhance our
understanding of phenomena/relations examined?
– The AMR test; How would these findings influence an
AMR theory paper?
 AMD Paper Characteristics
AMD papers are guided by empirical abduction and use data
exploration in order to:
• Surface significant new or emerging phenomenon using any
number of empirical approaches including rich description,
quantitative construct validation, and/or empirical taxonomic
analyses.
• Identify and explore surprising relationships using rigorous
qualitative and/or quantitative methods in order to develop
plausible explanations for those relationships and provide a
grounded basis for innovative theorizing.
– Surprising relationships lacking plausible explanation may still be
published as “Discoveries-in-Brief”
• Leverage original, secondary or “big” data and any number of
alternative approaches (including lab and field/quasi-
experiments, meta-analyses and replication studies) in order to
offer empirically-driven insights into and/or a plausible
resolution of critical anomalies and discrepant findings.
 AMD Special Issue
MIGRATION ‘MANAGEMENT’: Tensions,
Challenges, and Opportunities for Inclusion
Submission deadline: August 1 – Sept 1, 2020

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