Projects Tony Hak
Temporaly ordered necessary conditions
Collaborators: Tony Hak, Ferdinand Jaspers, and Jan Dul
In organizational research the object of study is often a process, that is, a complex of events and activities that unfolds over time. In this chapter we focus on temporally ordered configurations, which can be defined as those configurations in which conditions occur in a specific temporal order. We illustrate the aims, characteristics, and limitations of several approaches that have been proposed as tools for the analysis of temporal order. Our illustration involves an analysis of the ‘‘gestation activities’’ of nascent entrepreneurs, that is, persons involved in the creation of a new firm. We aim to identify temporal sequences of gestation activities that generate or allow a successful outcome of the gestation process, while an occurrence of the same activities in another temporal order will not generate or allow that outcome. First we discuss Event Structure Analysis and Optimal Matching and conclude that these approaches cannot provide the kind of analysis that we are aiming at in this chapter. Then we discuss Temporal Qualitative Comparative Analysis, for which our analysis points to technical limitations that constrain its application. We then present and discuss an alternative approach, Temporal Necessary Condition Analysis.
Publications:
Hak, T., Jaspers, F., & Dul, J. (2013). The analysis of temporally ordered configurations: Challenges and solutions. In P. Fiss, B. Cambre, & A. Marx (Eds), Configurational theory and methods in organizational research. Vol. 38: 107–127. Bingley: Emerald.
Ceilings and floors: where are there no observations?
Collaborators: Gary Goertz, Tony Hak, and Jan Dul
There are situations where the data or the theory suggest or require, respectively, that one estimate the boundary lines that separate regions of observations from regions of no observations. Of particular interest are ceiling or floor lines. For example, many theories use terms such as veto player, constraint, only if, and so on, which suggest ceilings. Ceiling hypotheses have a nonstandard form claiming the probability of Y will be zero for all values of Y greater than the ceiling value of Yc for a given value of X. Conversely, ceiling hypotheses make no specific prediction about the value of Y for a given value of X except that it will be less than the ceiling value. Floors work by guaranteeing minimum levels. The article gives numerous examples of theories that imply ceiling or floor hypotheses and numerous examples of data that fit such hypotheses. The article proposes quantile regression as a means of estimating the boundaries of the no-data zone as well as criteria for evaluating the importance of the boundary variable. These techniques are illustrated for ceiling and floor hypotheses relating gross domestic product/capita and democracy.
Publications:
Goertz, G., Hak, T., and Dul, J. (2008). Ceilings and floors: theoretical and statistical considerations when the goal is to draw boundaries of data, not lines through the middle. Proceedings of the 2008 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, August 28-31, 2008.
Goertz, G., Hak, T., and Dul, J. (2013). Ceilings and floors where are there no observations? Sociological Methods & Research, 42 (1), 3-40.
Necessary condition hypotheses in operations management
Collaborators: Jan Dul, Tony Hak,, Gary Goertz, and Chris Voss
The purpose of this paper is to show that necessary condition hypotheses are important in operations management (OM), and to present a consistent methodology for building and testing them. Necessary condition hypotheses (“X is necessary for Y”) express conditions that must be present in order to have a desired outcome (e.g. “success”), and to prevent guaranteed failure. These hypotheses differ fundamentally from the common co-variational hypotheses (“more X results in more Y”) and require another methodology for building and testing them. The paper reviews OM literature for versions of necessary condition hypotheses and combines previous theoretical and methodological work into a comprehensive and consistent methodology for building and testing such hypotheses. Necessary condition statements are common in OM, but current formulations are not precise, and methods used for building and testing them are not always adequate. The paper outlines the methodology of necessary condition analysis consisting of two stepwise methodological approaches, one for building and one for testing necessary conditions. Because necessary condition statements are common in OM, using methodologies that can build and test such hypotheses contributes to the advancement of OM research and theory.
Publications:
Dul, J., Hak, T., Goertz, G., & Voss, C. (2010). Necessary condition hypotheses in operations management. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 30, 1170–1190.
Success in bank mergers. An application of Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) in business history
Collaborators: Gerarda Westerhuis, Jan Dul, Abe de Jong and Tony Hak
This paper investigates the necessary conditions for successful performance in mergers and acquisitions in banking. In mergers and large acquisitions the success of the restructuring may depend on a set of conditions that must be present or, in other words, of which the presence is «necessary». This paper specifies a set of hypotheses about such necessary conditions and performs tests on a set of Dutch mergers and acquisitions in the Dutch financial sector in the period 1960-1991. The mergers in our sample include both domestic and cross-border transactions. This allows us to relate to the conference theme as we will discuss the additional tension that arises in international acquisitions, when compared to domestic takeovers. This paper has two contributions to the literature. First, the paper describes and applies necessary condition analysis (NCA), a new method of theory-building and theory-testing that requires only a small number of cases (Dul et al., 2010). Second, the paper describes the conditions that were necessary for the success of mergers and acquisitions in the Dutch financial sector in the period 1960-1991. The business history literature currently contains many case studies of companies or industries. These studies are eclectic in their view on the companies and therefore present broad perspectives. Several review studies have been written, which generalize based on sets of case studies. Business history researchers struggle with a Catch 22 situation where the historical approach requires in depth analysis of individual cases, while generalizations require larger sets of cases (Coleman, 1987; Wilson, 1995). In their recent review Jones and Zeitlin (2007) conclude that the core of business history research is case study research, while increasingly comparative studies are published. Necessary Condition Analysis is a form of analysis in which generalization can be achieved based on an in-depth analysis of a small number of cases. We study mergers and focus on the performance during the trajectory of integration immediately following the merger decision. Integration of the companies is our measure of performance of the merger process. Successful integration occurs when the goals set at the time of the merger are reached. We study mergers in which the leading company is Dutch in the period 1960-1991. We study mergers in the financial industry, including commercial and investment banking and insurance. Our sources are secondary sources, including company histories, newspaper/magazine articles, and biographies.
Publications:
Westerhuis, G., Dul, J., De Jong, A., & Hak, T. (2012). Success in bank mergers. An application of Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) in business history [Abstract]. Book of Abstracts, p.31. 16th Annual conference of the European Business History Association congress, Paris, Aug-1 Sep 2012.
