WRITING IN RIPCO – SOME THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS

Abstract

The International Journal of Psychosociology and Management of Organizational Behavior (RIPCO) is an interdisciplinary journal that aims to publish research articles focusing on organizational behavior—regardless of the type of organization studied, the methodology used, and the contexts in which the research is conducted. These articles may be theoretical or empirical in nature.In management science, according to Cropanzano (2009), articles without empirical descriptions or data collections can take three main forms: articles with a theoretical aim, literature reviews, and critical approaches. Among the former, a distinction should be made between theoretical and conceptual articles depending on whether the aim is to propose new explanations about processual phenomena, or new constructions (Gilson and Goldberg, 2015). In principle, neither type of research uses systematic observations or measurements, although in reality “most organizational researchers will not generate a new theory out of thin air” (Whetten, 1989, p. 492).The exploitation of field data can lead to three types of proposal: qualitative empirical articles (using mainly non-metric data), quantitative empirical articles (relying mainly on measurements) and mixed empirical articles (using both qualitative and quantitative data). In empirical work, Colquitt and Zapata-Phelan (2007) differentiate between research whose ambition is to create a theory (inductive approach) and tests employing an existing model (hypothetico-deductive method)…