BIO
Jose M. Cortina is a Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship and Director of Publishing Success in the School of Business at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is a past Editor of Organizational Research Methods and Associate Editor of the Journal of Applied Psychology. Dr. Cortina was honored by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology with the 2001 Distinguished Early Career Contributions Award, by the Research Methods Division of AOM with the 2004 Best Paper Award, by the ORM Editorial Board with the 2012 and 2017 Best Paper Awards, and by the Academy of Management Review Editorial Board with the 2020 Best Paper Award. He was honored by GMU with a 2010 Teaching Excellence Award and by SIOP with the 2011 Distinguished Teaching Award. In 2023 he was honored by VCU with the Internationally Recognized Scholar Award. Dr. Cortina served as President of SIOP in 2015. In 2020, he was honored by the Research Methods Division of AOM with the Distinguished Career Award. Among his current research interests are the improvement of research methods in the organizational sciences and the use of promotions as a performance management tool.
Preliminary title
Restricted Variance Interactions: A new way of thinking about cross-level moderators.
Abstract
Cross-level interactions are quite common. As many have pointed out, however, they can be difficult to justify. My presentation will explain how you can strengthen such justifications with restricted variance (RV) reasoning. An RV interaction is an interaction that exists for a particular reason. As the value of a higher-level variable in a system changes, certain values of another, lower-level variable in the system become less plausible, thus restricting its variance. This, in turn, influences relationships between that variable and other variables. These types of interactions are quite common, even if they are not recognized as RV interactions, and they exist at every level of analysis. The advantage of the RV interaction is that, compared to other interaction types, it is relatively simple to justify. Moreover, they offer an opportunity to test not only for the presence of a cross-level interaction, but also for one of the reasons for the interaction. The different forms of RV interaction do, however, contain complexities of which a researcher must be aware. I will describe the forms that RV interactions can take and the implications of many of the forms using as examples the published work of audience members. I will also explain a bit about how one should go about testing them.