AN ASSESSMENT OF RESEARCH DESIGNS IN STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT RESEARCH: THE FREQUENCY OF THREATS TO INTERNAL VALIDITY

The authors content analyze 76 empirical Strategic Management Journal articles to determine how studies control for threats to internal validity, a common source of flaws in research designs. Results indicate that most studies fail to control for one or more threats to internal validity. In particular, selection effects were the most frequently appearing threat, followed by history effects, ambiguity about the direction of causal inference, changing data sources and subject mortality. In general, the results suggest that strategy researchers need to more carefully account for threats to the internal validity of their research designs. Suggestions for addressing these problems are provided.