PLS: A Silver Bullet?

We are writing this editorial because it appears to us that some researchers in the Information Systems community view partialleast squares modeling (PLS; also referred to as path analysis with composites or soft modeling) as some type of magical silverbullet. These researchers are less critical about the use of PLS than they should be. In spite of cautiously proposed rules o f thumbavailable in the PLS literature, we are frustrated by sweeping clai ms made by some researchers that PLS modeling can or shouldbe used (often instead of the covariance-based approach) because it makes no sample size assumptions or because somehow“Sample size is less important in the overall model” (Falk and Miller 1992, p. 93). We are seeing an increasing number of suchclaims in papers submitted for review. It would be nice to think that such statements would be weeded out in the review proces s.However, more and more studies across a number of disciplines ar e creeping into the literature in which the samples are dwindli ngto ridiculously small sizes, despite the inferential intentions of the studies and the magnitude of parent populations. The use ofsmall samples in these studies is frequently legitimized by refere nces to the original developers of the PLS approach. Even