1. Home
Professional Development Workshop

Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA): Logic, Theory, Methodology, and Applications

Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2018 in Chicago
Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2018
August 11, 2018
10:45 to 12:45
Sheraton Grand Chicago

Workshop Description

“Necessary but not sufficient” statements are commonplace in organizational and management publications. Such statements often indicate that a certain factor is considered important for a certain outcome, but that it is not the only factor. However, the logical meaning of a “necessary condition” for an outcome is that the outcome cannot exist without it; it is needed. Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) is an upcoming approach for formulating and testing necessary condition theories. The method was recently published in Organizational Research Methods and is now used in many fields. NCA understands cause-effect relations as “necessary but not sufficient” and not as additive logic used in regression. “Necessary” means that an outcome will not occur without the right level of the condition, independently of the rest of the causal structure (thus the condition can be a “bottleneck”, “critical factor”, “constraint”). In practice, the right level must be put and kept in place to avoid guaranteed failure, and to allow the outcome to exist. NCA has been applied in a variety of organization and management disciplines (Strategy, Entrepreneurship, HRM, OB, Operations, etc.) to formulate and test necessity theories. It can provide strong results that are complementary to traditional additive logic and regression approaches. By adding a different logic and data analysis approach, NCA adds both rigor and relevance to theory and data analysis. Because it provides a new way of analyzing at existing phenomena using NCA can increase your publication chances. An editor of a top journal said: “From my perspective, [this NCA paper] is the most interesting paper I have handled at this journal, insofar as it really represents a new way to think about data analyses”. This interactive session has two parts. Part 1 is a general introduction discussing the importance of necessary conditions, illustrated with examples from different fields, and comparing NCA with regression. Part 2 helps participants to become the first users of NCA in their field, with hands-on instructions about how to build necessity theories, and how to analyze data for testing such theories using the NCA software. For more information on NCA see: www.erim.nl/nca.

  • Presenter: Jan Dul, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University
  • Presenter: Stefan Breet, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University
  • Presenter: Henk Van Rhee, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University

Workshop sponsors: Research Methods (RM) Division, Operations and Supply Chain Management (OCSM)

Related Posts

Research Talks

Do You Need to Be a Broker to Be Innovative? A Necessary Condition Analysis
October 19, 2018

I gave a virtual presentation to the Social Network Analysis Discussion Group of the University of Saskatchewan on brokerage, innovative performance and necessary condition analysis

Research Talks

Is Brokerage Necessary for Innovative Performance? A Necessary Condition Analysis
June 30, 2018

Service Workshops

JBR Special Issue Paper Development Workshop
November 21, 2024

This paper development workshop is designed for researchers interested in submitting their work to the upcoming special issue on NCA in strategy, innovation, and entrepeneurship research that will be published in the Journal of Business Research.

Blog

Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA): Upcoming Events and Important Deadlines
August 1, 2024

An overview of three upcoming events and deadlines related to Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA).