The great debate

Which research methods are better, quantitative or qualitative? What is more important, getting a richer picture of what goes on in organizations, or seeking generalizable insights about causality? This debate has raged at the very least since Glaser and Strauss popularized the grounded theory method in the mid twentieth century. In 2025, we want to put this debate to rest. We asked one of the best econometric scholars we know (Brad Greenwood) and one of the best qualitative scholars we know (Youngjin Yoo) to fight this debate on air and come up with their very own end-of-all arguments. The result? It may surprise you: We all ought to get mad. Episode reading list Chang, H. (2008). Inventing Temperature: Measurement and Scientific Progress. Oxford University Press. Burtch, G., Carnahan, S., & Greenwood, B. N. (2018). Can You Gig It? An Empirical Examination of the Gig Economy and Entrepreneurial Activity. Management Science, 64(12), 5497-5520. Greenwood, B. N., Kobayashi, B. H., & Starr, E. P. (2025). Can You Keep a Secret? Banning Noncompetes Does Not Increase Trade Secret Litigation. SSRN, Kraemer, K. L., Dickhoven, S., Tierney, S. F., & King, J. L. (1987). Datawars: The Politics of Modeling in Federal Policymaking. Columbia University Press. Roth, J., Sant'Anna, P. H. C., Bilinski, A., & Poe, J. (2023). What's Trending in Difference-in-Differences? A Synthesis of the Recent Econometrics Literature. Journal of Econometrics, 235(2), 2218-2244. Matherly, T., & Greenwood, B. N. (2024). No News is Bad News: The Internet, Corruption, and the Decline of the Fourth Estate. MIS Quarterly, 48(2), 699-714. Levitt, S. D., & Dubner, S. J. (2005). Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. William Morrow. Greenwood, B. N., & Wattal, S. (2017). Show Me the Way to Go Home: An Empirical Investigation of Ride-Sharing and Alcohol Related Motor Vehicle Fatalities. MIS Quarterly, 41(1), 163-187. King, A. A. (2025). Does Corporate Social Responsibility Increase Access to Finance? A Commentary on Cheng, Ioannou, and Serafeim (2014). Strategic Management Journal, forthcoming. Seidel, S., Frick, C. J., & vom Brocke, J. (2025). Regulating Emerging Technologies: Prospective Sensemaking through Abstraction and Elaboration. MIS Quarterly, 49(1), 179-204. Pentland, B. T. (1999). Building Process Theory with Narrative: From Description to Explanation. Academy of Management Review, 24(4), 711-725. Lee, J., & Berente, N. (2013). The Era of Incremental Change in the Technology Innovation Life Cycle: An Analysis of the Automotive Emission Control Industry. Research Policy, 42(8), 1469-1481. Anderson, P., & Tushman, M. L. (1998). Technological Discontinuities and Dominant Designs: A Cyclical Model of Technological Change. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35(4), 604-633. Brynjolfsson, E., & Hitt, L. M. (1996). Paradox Lost? Firm-Level Evidence on the Returns to Information Systems Spending. Management Science, 42(4), 541-558. Noe, R. (2025). Moral Incoherence During Category Emergence: The Contentious Case of Connected Toys. Harvard Business School Working Paper, 24-071,

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The great debate is an episode from this IS research by Jan Recker.

This episode is 01:04:03 long.

This episode was published on Jun 24, 2025.

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