Organizational Research Methods · 2008 · 91 citations · 45 references
ManagementOrganization StudiesOrganizational BehaviorData MiningOrganizational TheoryText AnalyticsConcept ExtractionConcept MappingText ClusteringText MiningText StructureTextual AnalysisConcept MiningQualitative Data InterpretationSelf-organizing Maps
The self‑organizing map (SOM) is a versatile quantitative method widely used across disciplines to analyze large datasets. The article introduces and demonstrates the SOM method for organizational researchers applying qualitative data. The authors provide a step‑by‑step demonstration of how to implement SOM on qualitative datasets. SOM produces a similarity‑based map that yields multiple well‑grounded perspectives, improving inference quality and the robustness of concepts and categories in qualitative research.
The article provides an introduction to and a demonstration of the self-organizing map (SOM) method for organizational researchers interested in the use of qualitative data. The SOM is a versatile quantitative method very commonly used across many disciplines to analyze large data sets. The outcome of the SOM analysis is a map in which entities are positioned according to similarity. The authors' argument is that text mining using the SOM is particularly effective in improving inference quality within qualitative research. SOM creates multiple well-grounded perspectives on the data and thus improves the quality of the concepts and categories used in the analysis.
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