Open Science and Study Registration: Tools for A Brighter Future of Management and Organizational Science

In the early 2010s, a large crisis shocked the scientific community, the media, and the public: Prominent researchers admitted to faking their data, others published findings that are physically impossible (“Feeling the future”), and large-scale research projects revealed that most findings in psychology and the broader social sciences could not be replicated. Given that the relevance and utility of scientific findings in management and organizational research critically hinges on the trustworthiness of its methods and results, these developments constitute a huge burden for scientists and for stakeholders wanting to apply scientific knowledge. I will discuss the reasons and processes that led to this so-called replication crisis and showcase Pre-Registration and Registered Reports as pathways to more trustworthy research. We will interactively discuss these open science measures and submission formats and their relevance for researchers in different fields. Scholars will be able to critically reflect on scientific findings and ask questions about the relevance and applicability of pre-registration and Registered Reports (for them).

Roman Briker is an Assistant Professor in Organizational Behavior & HRM at Maastricht University (The Netherlands). After studying psychology with a focus on social, IO, and cognitive psychology in Germany, Roman did his Ph.D. at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen and TCU (Texas) in Organization & HRM. He studies the psychology of leadership, human reactions toward AI, and social hierarchies. He is the Open Science Ambassador at Maastricht University and also investigates open science in his research and presentations. He is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow and his research has received several awards and has been published in prestigious applied psychology journals such as Personnel Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, or Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.