Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) Seminar and Workshop

Professor Bart Cambre, Professor of Business Research Methods, Antwerp Management School.

Entrepreneurship Research Group, Centre for Knowledge, Innovation, Technology and Enterprise, Newcastle University Business School, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Partners

Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) is an analytic technique that is currently rising in popularity within the business and management field. In the day long workshop, Professor Cambre will introduce the key concepts, explore implementation through software, and provide guidance on how to publish fsQCA papers.

What is fsQCA? Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a relatively new analytic technique that uses Boolean algebra to implement principles of comparison used by scholars engaged in the qualitative study of macro social phenomena. Typically, qualitatively oriented scholars examine only a few cases at a time, but their analyses are both intensive and integrative. By formalizing the logic of qualitative analysis, QCA makes it possible to bring the logic and empirical intensity of qualitative approaches to studies that embrace more than a handful of cases. Boolean methods of logical comparison represent each case as a combination of causal and outcome conditions. These combinations can be compared with each other and then logically simplified through a bottom-up process of paired comparison. The use of fuzzy-set logic extends this technique by permitting membership in the interval between two qualitative states of full membership and full non-membership.

Agenda for the day is as follows:

9:00 – 9:30 Registration
9:30 – 10:30 A Configurational Story
10:30-12:00 Configurational methods and fsQCA
12:00-13:00 Lunch
13:00-14:00 Introduction to the software
14:00-15:00 How to get fsQCA papers published

Professor Bart Cambre is Director of Research and Professor of Business Research Methods at Antwerp Management School. He is also assoc. prof. in Research Methods and Statistics at the University of Antwerp. His current research involves business research methods with a focus on the configurational approach, quality of work and organizational networks. Before joining Antwerp Management School, he was a consultant and asst. professor in methodology and organizational design at the universities of Ghent, Leuven and Tilbury in the TIAS business School. He aims to bridge academic insights and practical management needs.