Isolating Effects of Policy Choices
A core problem of quantitative research on international business (indeed, the qualifier "international" may be dropped) lies in the basic job specification handed to the researcher on business administration. The "business normative" goal is to advise managers on the best choice for some business policy. A natural research strategy is to draw a suitable sample of firms that have made different choices for that policy and estimate the value of the out-come or performance level associated with each decision. The resulting estimate of each choice's effect will be unbiased if the decision makers make their choices "in the dark," randomizing their strategies so that they are uncorrected with the structural opportunities surrounding the business (that is, random "treatments" applied to experimental "plots").