Bridging Quantitative and Qualitative
Content analysis is valuable in organizational research because it allows researchers to recover and examine the nuances of organizational behaviors, stakeholder perceptions, and societal trends. It is also an important bridge between purely quantitative and purely qualitative research methods.
In one regard, content analysis allows researchers to analyze socio-cognitive and perceptual constructs that are difficult to study via traditional quantitative archival methods. At the same time, it allows researchers to gather large samples that may be difficult to employ in purely qualitative studies.
Overcoming Challenges
Although content analysis is increasingly used by management researchers as a tool to analyze text and qualitative data, many researchers are unfamiliar with the various content analysis techniques and how to deal with challenges inherent in its application.
These challenges include finding adequate measures, developing proxy dictionaries and coding schemes, working with texts from various sources, ensuring reliability and validity, and conducting manual versus computer-aided content analysis.
Quotes
“Content analysis is a class of research methods at the intersection of the qualitative and quantitative traditions. It is promising for rigorous exploration of many important but difficult-to-study issues of interest to organizational researchers in areas as diverse as business policy and strategy, managerial and organizational cognition, organizational behavior, human resources, social-issues management, technology and innovation management, international management, and organizational theory.”
from Duriau, Reger, & Pfarrer, 2007. A Content Analysis of the Content Analysis Literature in Organization Studies: Research Themes, Data Sources, and Methodological Refinements. Organization Research Methods, 10: 5–34.
“Our use of advanced content analysis techniques to code affective content of articles and blog posts continues to extend recent organizational research on social perceptions management that recognizes the importance of trying to open the ‘black box’ that is often present in strategy research.”
from Zavyalova, Pfarrer, Reger, & Shapiro, 2012. Managing the Message: The Effects of Firm Actions and Industry Spillovers on Media Coverage Subsequent to Wrongdoing. Academy of Management Journal.
“Content analysis techniques can help bridge the gap between large-sample archival research, which may suffer from internal validity issues, and small sample research, which allows for the collection of primary data and in-depth analyses but may suffer from external validity problems. Analyzing the content of a firm’s press releases, media coverage, or stakeholder blogs can enhance archival research (which has been criticized for failure to provide insight into cognitive processes), while maintaining the advantages of using large samples.”
from Pfarrer, Pollock, & Rindova, 2010.
A Tale of Two Assets: The Effects of Firm Reputation and Celebrity on Earnings Surprises and Investors’ Reactions. Academy of Management Journal, 53: 1131–1152
Researchers
Goce Andrevski
Queen’s University
Andrevski’s research interests include competitive dynamics, strategic entrepreneurship and alliance networks. He uses a content analysis approach to examine competitive aggressiveness and entrepreneurial behavior of firms over time.
Mike Bednar
University of Illinois
Bednar’s research focuses on corporate governance and executive leadership. He has used content analysis to measure the tone of media coverage and to examine how the media can serve as a governance mechanism and in some cases, prompt firm action.
Jon Bundy
Arizona State University
Bundy’s research focuses on the social and cognitive forces that shape organizational outcomes and behavior. He uses content analysis to study social evaluations, crisis management, and organizational wrongdoing. His content analysis experience ranges from simple hand-coding to advanced topic modeling and natural language processing.
Lorenz Graf-Vlachy
ESCP Business School
Graf-Vlachy’s research interests include digital innovation, top executives and organizational communication. He uses manual qualitative and computer-aided quantitative methods of content analysis.
Joseph Harrison
Texas Christian University
Harrison uses content analysis to examine social and psychological processes among top executives and corporate directors. His recent work has examined the tone of media coverage as a form of social evaluation influencing directors’ reputations and decisions to serve on particular boards. He is also using content analytic techniques to understand how executives’ cognitions and personalities influence firm-level outcomes.
Tim Hubbard
University of Notre Dame
Hubbard researches social approval assets, Chief Executive Officers, and boards of directors. He has used a combination of dictionary-based and machine-learning techniques to analyze rhetoric and discourse. His research has analyzed the content of press releases, media coverage, conference calls, Facebook posts, and transcripts from various experiments. His methods have used a combination of R, LIWC, and NVivo.
Jason Kiley
Clemson University
Kiley researches firm perceptions and impression management are related to significant firm outcomes and behaviors. His recent work uses content analysis for event classification, impression management detection, and sentiment analysis.
Andreas König
University of Passau
König studies the socio-cognitive effects of top executives’ communication. He uses various approaches of content analysis — from manual coding to deep learning algorithms — to measure concepts such as metaphorical communication, leader humor, cognitive frames, and the favorability of journalists and securities analysts.
Aaron McKenny
Indiana University
McKenny’s research using content analysis has focused on how researchers can use computer-aided text analysis to measure organizational phenomena directly at the organizational level.
Vilmos Misangyi
Penn State University
Misangyi researches how managerial and organizational actions influence and are influenced by their external environments. He has used content analysis techniques to examine the effects that charismatic language in organizational discourse (e.g., CEO vision statements in letters to shareholders) has on external organizational participants (e.g., securities analysts).
Mike Pfarrer
University of Georgia
Pfarrer uses content analysis to examine external perceptions of firm actions related to reputation, celebrity, and crisis management. His recent research has analyzed traditional and web-based media accounts of stakeholders’ reactions to earnings surprises and product recalls.
Tim Pollock
University of Tennessee
Pollock uses content analysis to investigate the social construction of markets and the media’s impact on public impressions of the firm. Specifically, he has analyzed CEO celebrity, earnings surprises, and the role of market ”experts” in shaping impressions about IPO performance and survival.
Rhonda Reger
University of North Texas
Reger uses content analysis to examine external perceptions of firm actions related to reputation dynamics. Along with Vincent Duriau and Michael Pfarrer, her paper exploring the uses of content analysis in management research won the 2007 best publication award from Organizational Research Methods. She first used content analysis in 1993 (with Marjorie Lyles) to study upward influence in joint ventures. Her recent research analyzes traditional and web-based media accounts of stakeholders’ reactions to product recalls and alternative energy.
Jeremy Short
University of North Texas
Short’s research focuses on multilevel determinants of firm performance, strategic decision processes, entrepreneurship, research methods, franchising and family business.
Miles Zachary
Auburn University
Zachary uses content analysis to investigate phenomena related to issues of organizational identity and signaling by examining a variety of organizational narratives. His work has focused on operationalizing constructs using CATA and testing the performance implications of firm-level measures.
Anastasiya Zavyalova
Rice University
Zavyalova uses content analysis to study management of social approval assets, such as reputation and celebrity. She specifically focuses on the process of social perception management after wrongdoing. In a recent paper published in the Academy of Management Journal, Zavyalova employed manual and computer-assisted content analysis techniques in the context of product recalls.