Text-analytic Measurement of Effectuation and Causation Orientations among Small and Global Business Managers

We demonstrate how one can measure overall quality in texts gathered from interviews by means of PERTEX text analytic method. We compare text analytic measures and content for locally active Scandinavian small business managers and globally operating Indian IT managers when recapitulating the reasons behind company growth. Using Ward’s clustering method (J Am Stat Assoc 58:236–244, 1963) on a binary matrix for connections between textual components, we suggest using the ESS value from clustering to calculate AFFI as an overall measure of quality. By further splitting the AFFI into three sub-components we are also able to display the degree of fragmentation, focus and integration in the text. We show how AFFI measures differ between managers with a causation or effectuation orientation irrespective of their role as small business manager or as an established global manager. Hence, we posit that effectuation and causation orientations may be generic characteristic of managers in general.