This study explores how researchers in the organizational sciences use and/or cite methodological ‘best practice’ (BP) articles. Namely, are scholars adhering fully to the prescribed practices they cite, or are they cherry picking from recommended practices without disclosing? Or worse yet, are scholars inaccurately following the methodological best practices they cite? To answer these questions, we selected three seminal and highly cited best practice articles published in Organizational Research Methods (ORM) within the past ten years. These articles offer clear and specific methodological recommendations for researchers as they make decisions regarding the design, measurement, and interpretation of empirical studies. We then gathered all articles that have cited these best practice pieces. Using comprehensive coding forms, we evaluated how authors are using and citing best practice articles (e.g., if they are appropriately following the recommended practices). Our results revealed substantial variation in how authors cited best practice articles, with 17.4% appropriately citing, 47.7% citing with minor inaccuracies, and 34.5% inappropriately citing BP articles. These findings shed light on the use (and misuse) of methodological recommendations, offering insight into how we can better improve our digestion and implementation of best practices as we design and test research and theory. Key implications and recommendations for editors, reviewers, and authors are discussed.

本研究探讨了组织科学领域的研究人员如何使用和/或引用方法论“最佳实践”(BP) 文章。也就是说，学者们是完全遵守他们引用的规定实践，还是从推荐的实践中挑选而不透露？或者更糟糕的是，学者们是否不准确地遵循了他们引用的方法论最佳实践？为了回答这些问题，我们选择了发表在组织研究方法 (ORM) 上的三篇开创性且被高度引用的最佳实践文章在过去十年内。这些文章为研究人员就实证研究的设计、测量和解释做出决策提供了明确而具体的方法论建议。然后我们收集了所有引用这些最佳实践的文章。使用全面的编码形式，我们评估了作者如何使用和引用最佳实践文章（例如，他们是否适当地遵循了推荐的实践）。我们的结果显示，作者引用最佳实践文章的方式存在很大差异，17.4% 的引用恰当，47.7% 的引用有轻微错误，34.5% 的引用不恰当。这些发现阐明了方法学建议的使用（和误用），深入了解我们如何在设计和测试研究和理论时更好地改进对最佳实践的消化和实施。讨论了对编辑、审稿人和作者的主要影响和建议。