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The overall goal of science is to build a valid and reliable body of knowledge about the functioning of the world and how applying that knowledge can change it. As personnel and human resources management researchers, we aim to contribute to the respective bodies of knowledge to provide both employers and employees with a workable foundation to help with those problems they are confronted with. However, what research on research has consistently demonstrated is that the scientific endeavor possesses existential issues including a substantial lack of (a) solid theory, (b) replicability, (c) reproducibility, (d) proper and generalizable samples, (e) sufficient quality control (i.e., peer review), (f) robust and trustworthy statistical results, (g) availability of research, and (h) sufficient practical implications. In this chapter, we first sing a song of sorrow regarding the current state of the social sciences in general and personnel and human resources management specifically. Then, we investigate potential grievances that might have led to it (i.e., questionable research practices, misplaced incentives), only to end with a verse of hope by outlining an avenue for betterment (i.e., open science and policy changes at multiple levels).

As a consumer of research published in scientific journals, do you ever wonder what degree of belief you should place on the results being presented? Alternatively, and perhaps more importantly, do you ever think whether the findings would apply in your own organisation to guide business practice? Clearly, these are important considerations.

The slack-innovation relationship has interested scholars for years. The authors aim to delve into the impact of financial slack on firm innovation by replicating a classic study arguing that this relationship has an inverse U-shape.

The sample consists of all US firms that were publicly traded between 1993 and 2011. The authors employ the standard econometrics methodology of panel regression with firm-fixed effect and time-fixed effect to estimate the regression equation of firm innovation on financial slack.

The authors find that the relationship between financial slack and R&D investments is similar to that suggested by earlier authors, thus enhancing the generalizability of this important finding in management research. The authors also find that this relationship holds even during economic downturns.

The authors replicate Nohria and Gulati's classic study by considering the impact of slack on innovation. The authors also move away from survey data, as used by Nohria and Gulati. The authors utilize actual firm-level data for a large sample of US publicly traded firms from 1993 to 2011, thus enhancing the generalizability of these findings.

This work describes and demonstrates a novel measurement system refered to as videometrics. Videometrics uses third-party ratings of video samples to assess individuals’ characteristics with psychometrically validated instruments of the measures of interest. Videometrics is argued to help ensure valid measurement in difficult to access subject pools, offering substantial promise for future research. This work explains the methodology and demonstrates the applicability and validity of videometrics in multiple studies in the context of a difficult to access subject pool – chief executive officers (CEOs). Finally, the applicability of the method to samples for which lack of access to individuals of interest has limited empirical investigation is discussed.

Acute and chronic pain affects more Americans than heart disease, diabetes, and cancer combined. Conservative estimates suggest the total economic cost of pain in the United States is $600 billion, and more than half of this cost is due to lost productivity, such as absenteeism, presenteeism, and turnover. In addition, an escalating opioid epidemic in the United States and abroad spurred by a lack of safe and effective pain management has magnified challenges to address pain in the workforce, particularly the military. Thus, it is imperative to investigate the organizational antecedents and consequences of pain and prescription opioid misuse (POM). This chapter provides a brief introduction to pain processing and the biopsychosocial model of pain, emphasizing the relationship between stress, emotional well-being, and pain in the military workforce. We review personal and organizational risk and protective factors for pain, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, optimism, perceived organizational support, and job strain. Further, we discuss the potential adverse impact of pain on organizational outcomes, the rise of POM in military personnel, and risk factors for POM in civilian and military populations. Lastly, we propose potential organizational interventions to mitigate pain and provide the future directions for work, stress, and pain research.

Deregulation shifts the responsibility for mitigation of agency problems from the regulatory parties to the firms' shareholders. We investigate whether and how governance structure changes in response to the dynamics of the new business environment after the Regulatory Reform Act of 1994 for the US trucking industry. We show that deregulation increases market competition in the trucking industry. The deregulated trucking firms not only adjust internal governance structure but also alter antitakeover provisions to adapt themselves to the competitive status of business environment after deregulation.

The conduct of scientific research is supposed to be a collective, public enterprise requiring the cooperation of all those involved. As Sieber (1991, p. 1) observes:

The authors aimed to examine the presence and character of inter- and intra-approaches to replication studies published in five leading marketing journals (Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Marketing Science, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science) across four decade intervals (i.e. 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010/2011). The research sought answers to three research questions.

Content analysis of a randomly selected sample of 2,717 articles found 128 replicative studies in the journal issues. Comparisons of the replication approaches of the studies address two issues: the criticism that intra-study replication is not true replication as it is inconsistent with the criterion of researcher independence and the reported outcomes of the replicative studies relative to those of the original studies.

Overall, the presence of replications increased over time; however, the increase was attributable primarily to the number of intra-study replications published in two decades, the 2000s and 2010/2011 intervals. Conflicting findings infrequently appeared in the replication studies regardless of approach, indicating the possible existence of confirmation bias in the marketing literature.

Replication in marketing is either improving or stagnant depending on the accepted definition of replication. Of special importance, given the questioning of the intra-study approach as true replicative research, more replicated findings produced by independent researchers are needed to establish theoretical validity of marketing knowledge for use by both marketing academicians and decision makers.

This study focused on analysing the effect of acquisition characteristics on post‐acquisition operating performance for 83 bids consisting of 83 public listed bidders acquiring 80 private, 2 public listed and 1 non‐public listed targets in Malaysia during the period 1988–1992. The specific bid characteristics analysed are business relatedness, management turnover, the relative size of targets to bidders, the method of payment offered and board of directors' ownership structure. Since the specific feature of the current sample is that it consists mainly of privately owned targets, the characteristics of disciplinary bids found in acquisitions of public listed targets were not expected in agreed bids between the bidders and targets in this study. The results indicate that the target directors' turnover and the directors' share ownership do not have a significant effect on the post‐acquisition performance. Rather it appears that, if anything, retention of existing management is more likely to lead to performance improvement. Further analysis shows that replacement of target management has no impact on post‐acquisition performance regardless of the relatedness line of business. The latter findings reinforce the unique characteristics of the data set used in the current analysis of acquisitions of privately owned Malaysian companies in which unique skills of previous directors may often be retained post‐acquisition regardless of the business relatedness. The study also provides evidence that acquisitions of highly related business between target and acquiring firm, large relative size of target to bidders and payment for the acquisition by shares have a significant positive impact on post‐acquisition control‐adjusted performance. However, highly related business between target and bidder and payment by shares are the only significant acquisition characteristics that have a significant positive impact on the post‐acquisition control‐adjusted performance when multiple regression is used.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to examine the frequency of multi-study research packages in the organizational sciences and advocate for their use by detailing strengths and recognizing limitations.

Methodology/approach – Philosophy of science research, focusing on multi-study research packages, is discussed followed by a 20-year review of incidence of these packages in top organizational sciences journals.

Findings – The publication of multi-study research packages have increased over the past 10 years, most notably in micro-level journals.

Social implications – For reasons of validity and generalizability, society benefits if scholars adopt multi-study approaches to knowledge generation and disseminate.

Originality/value of the chapter – This chapter provides the most comprehensive review of multiple-study research packages in the organizational sciences to date, examining publication trends in eight leading micro-and macro-level journals. We also summarize the use of multi-study packages in our own research and offer recommendations for improving the science of replication.