This seminar builds on recently published work in the Journal of Operations Management (Pagell, 2020) to discuss how empirical business researchers can address the replication crisis in their own disciplines. I encourage more replication studies, but I also assume that such studies will remain rare.

Therefore, it is argued that the replication crisis can be partially addressed by conducting theory testing and refining research in a more systematic fashion that acknowledges researchers’ and journals’ incentives to publish new knowledge, while also efficiently helping to ensure that the foundations of that new knowledge are generalizable and not based on idiosyncratic, spurious, or questionable findings.

This is achieved via enhanced transparency, designing research to include tests of nomological validity and account for the possibility that the results will not replicate, and more careful consideration of controls. The payoff from this investment in designing replication logic into theory testing and refining research would be that in the course of conducting normal science we would be able to make much stronger claims about the veracity of our theories, facts, and predictions.

Mark Pagell

Mark Pagell holds a Chair in Global Leadership and is a Professor of Sustainable Supply Chain Management at University College Dublin. He is also the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Supply Chain Management, an International Affiliate Faculty at Audencia Business School, and an Adjunct Scientist at the Institute for Work and Health in Toronto, Canada.