Advancing OSCM scientific knowledge by replicating empirical findings: Step-by-step procedure and illustration for transformative replication endeavors

Abstract

Replication endeavors contribute to the accumulation of scientific evidence about previously reported findings and are crucial for scientific progress. Replication studies are, however, often discouraged and rarely published in the operations and supply chain management (OSCM) discipline. In this article, we offer a framework for replications consisting of two complementary tables. This framework recognizes two types of replications already defined in the literature (i.e., The Exact (EXT) Replication and the Methods-Only (MTD) Replication) and adds to these two new types (i.e., the Bounded-Conceptual-Extension (BCE) Replication and the Transformative (TRF) Replication). The framework clarifies what constitutes replications, forms of replication endeavors, and their purposes. Importantly, we also differentiate replication endeavors from reproducibility tests, robustness checks, and post hoc analyses. Moreover, we describe a seven-step procedure to guide the design, execution, and presentation of replication endeavors, illustrating these steps by conducting a TRF Replication that incorporates, at the same time, a BCE Replication and an MTD Replication of Polyviou et al. (2018). The proposed framework and seven-step procedure hopefully motivate OSCM scholars to embrace replications as valuable scientific endeavors that can yield corroborating evidence to bolster confidence in previously reported findings and, better yet, provide new nuanced findings to advance precise scientific understanding of past and new OSCM phenomena.