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Organizational search is widely used to explain the generation and diffusion novelty. Our most commonly applied theories conceptualise search as a process. For example, A Behavioural Theory of the Firm, Cyert and March's (1963) seminal contribution to organizational theory, conceptualizes search as a process whereby actors seek to discover alternative ways of meeting performance goals. Management scholars have typically selected research methods that tell us little about the process of search, what goes on between when one decides to initiate a search and when one decides to terminate it. This PDW aims stimulate theory development by exploring how a broad range of methods can be used to unpack the search process. The workshop will unfold in two parts. 

In the first part, we pair three scholars whose work looks at search from distinct methodological traditions with a discussant working in a different tradition to stimulate a discussion of how these methods push theorizing about the search process in distinct directions. In the second part, PDW participants self organize into three roundtables, organized by methodological approach. The participants, panellists, and organizers will use the roundtables to explore the challenges each face in identifying and/or applying methods that enable them to address important theoretical questions relating to organizational search process. The overarching goal is to introduce PDW participants to methods that enable them to better unpack the process of organizational search and inspire them to use these methods to ask novel questions that advance theoretical and empirical knowledge of search.

Dr. Sam MacAulay