Questions and Answers

Open questions carried by the project, in priority order. These are unresolved; answers are recorded when they arrive.

Q1. Does the central finding survive an objective outcome measure?

Status: unanswered — this is the blocking question.

The headline results rest on a single self-report item that is also the object of the study’s own measurement critique. Three outcomes are possible: the objective and self-report measures converge, giving the strongest available evidence; the objective measure is stronger, supporting the measurement-gap argument; or the objective measure returns nothing, in which case the finding is a common-method artefact and the paper must be reconstructed. Resolution paths were drafted on 2026-05-04; none has been executed.

Q2. Can the panel-dependent methods be re-estimated on the true panel?

Status: unanswered.

Of 219 firms, 171 appear in only one wave. Two of the five triangulating methods assume genuine panel structure and therefore need to be restricted to the subset of firms observed in more than one year. Whether that subset retains sufficient power is not yet tested. Year fixed effects do not substitute for firm fixed effects on single-wave cohorts.

Q3. What survives multiple-comparison correction?

Status: partially answered.

With eight hypotheses evaluated across 36 models, family-wise error is a real risk. Under a corrected threshold the claim becomes narrower and must be restated as such. The fix is re-tabulation and an explicit confirmatory/exploratory split, not re-analysis — which is why it is sequenced last despite being straightforward.

Q4. Does the interaction survive a proper common-method-variance diagnostic?

Status: unanswered.

The draft cites a single-factor test as its CMV diagnostic. The methodological standard explicitly recommends against relying on that test alone. A latent method factor approach is required, and CMV belongs in Methods rather than Limitations.

Q5. Is the contribution a theoretical extension or a methodological one?

Status: unresolved framing question.

The draft claims an organizational-level extension of a person-level theory in one section while defending the work as a methodological extension elsewhere. These cannot both stand. Resolving it means engaging the organizational-level alternatives — complementarity theory, dynamic capabilities, resource-based reasoning — rather than asserting novelty.

Q6. How many theories should the discussion actually integrate?

Status: answered — fewer.

The draft’s discussion invokes sixteen frameworks. The review’s judgement, accepted here, is that four or five carry the argument and the rest should be citations rather than integrations.