Some thoughts

on writing managerial implications

Winter AMA 2015

Son K. Lam

Associate Professor in Marketing

University of Georgia

Agenda

• What are managerial implications?

• Common mistakes

• Rules of thumbs

• Some suggestions

• Discussion

Managerial Implications

• Change the way managers think or do things

“How much thinking and behavior on the part of how many marketing stakeholders likely will change as a consequence of the novel insights of the paper?” (Kohli 2011, p. 2)

• Emerging Marketing thought and practice (2013– present): Marketing as an integral part of the organization

A focus on marketing efficiency and effectiveness, and stakeholder engagement (Kumar 2015, p.2)

• Differ from theoretical implications, but related

Common Mistakes

• Rehash empirical findings without

‘interpreting’

• Not thoughtful

– Too intuitive/obvious

– Restate what managers are doing any way

• Stretching too far

– Going beyond the findings

• From the audience …..

Rules of thumb (1)

• Think before you write

• How confident are you with the empirical

results?

– Generalizeability issues (e.g.,

Sample/Industry)

– Methodological limitations (e.g., causality,

endogeneity, response rates)

Rules of thumb (2)

• Viable/Doable: are these things managers can implement?E.g., Compensation plans for each salesperson ?

• NovelE.g., Salespeople are less satisfied under outcome control systems

• Discuss both significant and non-significant effects– Non finding must be interpreted with care (many

reasons for non findings)

• If your findings is inconsistent with existing knowledge: discuss why and what managers should do.

Rules of thumb (3)

• Flow

– Discuss interesting implications first

– Organize into subsection

– Incorporate some examples, if any

• Run some simulated results

• From the audience….

Some Ideas (1)

• Conceptual implications/contribution

• Empirical results

• Substantive motivation

Managerial implications

Some Ideas (2)

• Discussing antecedents/consequences

– Can discuss relative strength of antecedents

• Compare and contrast effect size

• Cross-sectional versus longitudinal effects

– Can discuss R-squares

Some ideas (3)

• Discussing mediation effects (Zhao, Lynch, and Chen 2010)

– Types of mediation (complementary,

competitive, indirect-only, direct-only

nonmediation)

– Multiple mediation

– Effect decomposition/Specific mediation

Some Ideas (4)

• Discussing moderator effects (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Ahearne, and Bommer 1995; Voss, Godfrey, and Seiders 2010)

– Form of moderation

• Complementarity

• Substitution

• Cross-over

– Two-way interactions

– Three-way interactions

– Cross-level interaction effects

Some ideas (5)

• Discussing non-linear effects

– Curvilinear effects are interesting

– Can be interesting if combined with an

interaction effect

• Discussing moderated mediation/mediated

moderation

– Need to run additional analyses (Hayes 2013)

Some more thoughts

• The review team can give you some

constructive suggestions

• They also determine whether your

discussion is appropriate or not.

Word Choice

• Our results confirm …..

• Our results indicate ….

• Our results suggest ….

• Our results illustrate that ….

• Our results inform managers that …..

• Our results reveal that …..

• Our results seem to suggest …..

Select references

• Aguinis, Herman and Steven Andrew Culpepper (2015), “An Expanded Decision-

Making Procedure for Examining Cross-Level Interaction Effects with Multilevel

Modeling,” ORM, forthcoming.

• Brown, Roger L. (1997), “Assessing Specific Mediational Effects in Complex

Theoretical Models,” Structural Equation Modeling, 4(2), 142–156.

• Podsakoff, Philip M., Scott B. MacKenzie, Michael Ahearne, and William H. Bommer

(1995), “Searching for a Needle in a Haystack: Trying to Identify the Illusive

Moderators of Leadership Behaviors,” Journal of Management, 21(3), 422–470.

• Voss, Glenn B., Andrea Godfrey, Kathleen Seiders (2010), “How Complementarity

and Substitution Alter the Customer Satisfaction–Repurchase Link,” Journal of

Marketing, 74(6), 111–127.

• Zhao, XinShu, John G. Lynch, and QiMei Chen (2010),”Reconsidering Baron and

Kenny: Myths and Truths about Mediation Analysis,” JCR, 37(August), 197–206.