Organizational Research Methods ( ORM ) is a research methods journal that aims to publish articles making a methodological contribution to management and organization science. In this editorial, we provide guidance for what constitutes a methodological contribution for this journal. Our goal is to facilitate understanding of how methodological contributions differ from theoretical or empirical contributions. We also seek to illustrate how a paper aspiring to make a methodological contribution needs to be crafted differently, including different needs for conceptual argumentation and empirical evidence. We offer specific examples of various kinds of methodological contributions that are more typical in qualitative and quantitative traditions, those of an ontological and epistemological nature, or those related to the method of theorizing more generally. We further highlight published ORM papers that offer concrete examples for each kind of contribution.
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Köhler et al. (2026) studied this question.
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