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Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to present a subset of seven statistical and methodological myths and urban legends (SMMULs). When present, SMMULs degrade the overall research process and make manuscript evaluation problematic during the review process. SMMULs covered here included those pertaining to accepting the theoretical model, conventional cutoff values, exploratory factor analysis, common method bias, moderation analysis, Baron and Kenny's four-step mediation test, and permitting correlated item residuals.

Design/Methodology – Given that the details underlying the SMMULs have already been published, the present chapter was a summary of each. The summaries presented the urban legend and sources for it. Subsequently, the kernel of truth underlying the SMMUL was presented, and how this truth may have been lost and distorted. Each summary ends with the recommended “good” practices as presented by the original authors.

Findings/Implications – The implication for researchers is to modify their current practices to strengthen their research and to make better inferences. And for editors and reviewers, the implication is to develop accurate decision rules to strengthen the review process.

Originality/Value – The overall value of the chapter is to improve the research process in general.

A survey questionnaire was designed and distributed to samples of internal and external change agents which measured the extent to which they professed values traditionally associated with the field of OD. The survey also included questions concerning the types of interventions utilised in the change programmes that respondents had been associated with in the previous five years as well as how these programmes had been evaluated. As predicted, external change agents were more likely to profess traditional OD values and to be associated with change programmes which included human processual interventions. Contrary to expectations, internal change agents were less likely than external change agents to be associated with the utilisation of technostructural interventions. Support was also generated for the prediction that internal change agents are more likely to carry out extensive programme evaluations.

Illegitimacy is widely identified as a cause of revolution and other forms of transformative political change, yet when and how it affects these processes is ambiguous. We examine when and how illegitimacy affects the stability of political regimes through a historical analysis of South Africa's National Party (NP) and its apartheid regime, which lasted from 1948 to 1994. Many scholars of South Africa identify the regime's illegitimacy as a catalyst for the end of apartheid. Yet, consistent with assertions that illegitimacy does not result in political instability, the NP maintained power for decades despite a domestic crisis of legitimacy and a global movement that decried the apartheid regime's illegitimacy. Interrogating this contradiction, we detail how the regime's illegitimacy contributed to the negotiated revolution in South Africa when it resulted in unacceptable costs for the allies that the government depended on for survival, motivating those allies to withdraw support. Building on our findings, we detail how turning attention to the ways that illegitimacy affects relationships with allies – rather than particular outcomes, such as revolution or state failure – allows us to account for variation in both when and how illegitimacy matters.

With occupational stress representing just one example, different streams of research have emerged over the past several decades to explain the antecedents to and consequences of possessing a “healthy” workforce. A positive characteristic of these seemingly independent efforts is that a triangulation of results has emerged supporting the importance of attending to the health and well being of the individual worker. A drawback to these efforts, though, is that while utilizing at times the identical constructs, these constructs are configured differently depending on the conceptual premises of the focal framework. In an attempt to bring the different perspectives together, a model of the “healthy work organization” is presented and tested in this chapter. The model recognizes that there are higher-order constructs characterizing many of the component constructs of the previous efforts, and it is at this level that much of the unification of those efforts is achieved. Utilizing structural equation modeling procedures, the healthy work organization model was supported.

The purpose of this study is to examine when perceived organizational support (POS) may be more likely to play a mediator versus moderator role in stressor and strain relationships by considering POS relative to challenge and hindrance stressors, cognitive/emotional and physical strains.

This cross‐sectional survey research was conducted in two samples (n=720, 829) of employees working for a large retail organization in the USA. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

As hypothesized, results indicate POS mediates relationships between hindrance stressors and cognitive/emotional strains, but does not mediate relationships between challenge stressors and physical strains. POS does not moderate any of the relationships examined.

This paper is one of few studies to examine challenge and hindrance stressors and to examine POS relative to physical strains.

Welcome to volume 6 of Research Methodology in Strategy and Management! In creating this series about eight years ago, our belief was that the organizational sciences needed a forum wherein leading scholars could openly express their views about important and emerging issues within research methods. In particular, we wanted the book series to serve as a metaphorical bridge between areas of inquiry that could benefit from increased interaction with each other. This sixth volume of the series recalls these roots by being built around the theme of “Building methodological bridges.”

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).

The service-profit chain model (Heskett, Jones, Loverman, Sasser, & Schlesinger, 1994) highlights the well-documented relationship between employee and customer attitudes suggesting that employees who are satisfied and engaged with their work provide better customer service resulting in higher levels of customer satisfaction and, ultimately, driving firm revenue. The authors propose an expansion of the service-profit margin identifying the leadership behaviors that create positive employee attitudes and engagement. Specifically, the authors suggest that leaders who focus on recognition, involvement, growth and development, health and safety, and teamwork (Kelloway, Nielsen, & Dimoff, 2017) create a psychologically healthy workplace for customer service providers and, ultimately, an enhanced customer experience.