Conducting Studies of Decision Making in Organizational Contexts: A Tutorial for Policy-Capturing and Other Regression-Based Techniques

Abstract

Policy-capturing, conjoint analysis, and related techniques are all regression-based methods used in various areas of organizational research to determine the importance people attach to cues when they make decisions. Despite the widespread use of those methods, the organizational research literature lacks an integrated tutorial for researchers who are interested in studying decision making but who have little experience with the techniques required for this type of research. The authors use empirical findings and suggestions from a number of sources to offer a step-by-step tutorial covering the effective design, execution, analysis, interpretation, and reporting of policy-capturing studies.

Whom to Believe: Recruiting Information Source Credibility and Organizational Attractiveness

“…Policy capturing is a statistical procedure that can be used to determine an individual's decision making "policy" or unique method of combining and weighting information (Aiman-Smith, Scullen, & Barr, 2002). Using policy capturing methodology, instead of asking decision-makers about their priorities, those priorities are statistically estimated based upon the decisions that they make.…”

Consumer perceptions of co-branding alliances: Organizational dissimilarity signals and brand fit

“…First, we used a full factorial survey consisting of 16 vignettes, which is well below the recommended maximum of 80 vignettes per questionnaire (Aiman-Smith et al, 2002). Nevertheless, respondents reported fatigue while assessing the vignettes.…”

The Design Of Equity Ownership Structure In Inter-Firm Relationships: Do Managers Choose According To Theory?

“…Rather than gather data on those variables from the respondents, here we provide data to them. The aim is not to ensure reliable measurement of the variables through multiple items but rather to ensure that respondents properly understand each item (Aiman-Smith et al, 2002;Karren & Barringer, 2002). For this reason, policy capture studies often rely on a few or even single items for each theoretical construct but take steps to ensure that they convey information unambiguously to respondents (Pablo, 1994 (Tyler & Steensma, 1995;Steensma & Corley, 2000).…”

“…Scholars using the policy capture methodology routinely choose a small, manageable number of scenarios (as we have) rather than attempt full factorial designs (Aiman-Smith et al, 2002;Karren & Barringer, 2002;Tyler & Steensma, 1995). We presented the 30 scenarios to each respondent in different (randomly drawn) orders to minimize start-up effects for the first set of scenarios (AimanSmith et al, 2002).…”

“…Second, we administered the instrument to managers who were directly responsible for their companies' strategic partnerships. This enabled us to enhance the external validity of our study by matching respondents' experience and familiarity with the experimental task to that of a group of managers to which the study's results will be generalized (Aiman-Smith et al, 2002). Since it would be difficult to identify such managers from external, archival sources, we created the sampling frame from industry practitioners who had enrolled in an executive education program on alliances and acquisitions at a major U.S. business school.…”