Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2023: USI research awarded

During the Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2023, held in Boston, the paper 'Using Counterfactuals for Theory Building in Management and Organisation Studies' written by Gizem Kadioglu, a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Marketing and Corporate Communication of USI Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society, in collaboration with Bareerah Hafeez Hoorani, Assistant Professor at the Nijmegen School of Management and Michael Gibbert, Full Professor at USI Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society received the Best Student Paper Award from the Research Methods Division and a prestigious nomination for the Carolyn B. Dexter Award.

Gizem, can you tell us more about the study?

Our paper, titled "Using Counterfactuals for Theory Building in Management and Organization Studies" aims to illustrate the ways of engaging with counterfactuals and offer guidance to researchers on how to employ counterfactuals in qualitative field research in management and organization studies to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomena being studied. This work encourages researchers to engage with counterfactuals to broaden their perspectives on the theory-building process and to aid in uncovering beyond the expected and/or theoretically accepted.

Why did you decide to pursue this topic?

Counterfactuals represent a distinctive feature of human intelligence. From early childhood, we naturally begin to explore how the world, events, or situations might have unfolded differently. So, we asked ourselves what would happen if we used counterfactuals as a tool to uncover richer details in qualitative studies. By tracing our curiosity, our pursuit of this research topic seeks to shed light on the potential of counterfactuals with the aim of providing methodological refinement in our field.

What does this award represent for you?

This recognition underscores the dedication and passion that went into our research efforts. As we move forward, I am excited about the opportunities this award presents for advancing our understanding in the field. Receiving the best student award from our interest group is a recognition of the novelty of our work and its potential to explore the untapped areas in management literature.

What is the Carolyn B. Dexter 2023?

We are thrilled to announce that our paper has received a prestigious nomination for the 2023 Carolyn B. Dexter Award for Best International at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2023. This esteemed award recognizes papers that make a substantial contribution to the internationalization of the Academy of Management. Nominees for this award are selected by each of the Academy's Divisions and Interest Groups and are evaluated based on criteria such as offering new insights, being rich in observations, and employing creative methodologies that are not present in the U.S. mainstream. Our paper is nominated by the Research Methods Division among all the submissions after the consideration of meeting the criteria for the award.