Individual or interactive exercise: Researchers normally betray their epistemology in the language they use. Here are seven brief statements of the aims of different papers.

Which is which? What clues did you spot?

1. ‘We advance research on absorptive capacity by extending and empirically validating the conceptual distinction between potential and realized absorptive capacity’ (Jansen et al., 2005: 1000).

2. ‘This paper develops a holistic model of the overall process, by integrating knowledge oriented, routine oriented, and social/context of perspectives’ (Hong et al., 2006: 1027).

3. ‘This article contributes to the study of managerial agency in the absorption of new knowledge and skills … Empirical data are drawn from a longitudinal study of a …’

(Jones, 2006: 355).

4. ‘We (also) examine the influence of tacit and explicit knowledge on IJV performance. We find that relational embeddedness has a stronger influence on the transfer of tacit knowledge than it has on the transfer of explicit knowledge’

(Dhanaraj et al., 2004).

5. ‘These findings can be explained by elements of JCT and social exchange theory. As expected, when both LMX quality and empowerment were low the most negative outcomes resulted, and in general, when both variables were high the most positive outcomes resulted’ (Harris et al., 2009: 397).

6. ‘Organizational routines are ubiquitous, yet their contribution to organizing has been under-appreciated. Our longitudinal, inductive study traces the relationship between organizational routines and organizational schemata in a new research institution’

(Rerup and Feldman, 2011: 577).

7. ‘This brings me to a discussion of the credibility performance of agency – client relations. In some respects the very structure of a corporation can be seen in how it arranges performances … Like an individual, a corporation may be seen as a performer …’ (Moeran, 2005: 917).