Necessary Condition Hypotheses in Operations Management

Purpose – To show that necessary condition hypotheses are important in operationsmanagement, and to present a consistent methodology for building and testing them.Necessary condition hypotheses (“X is necessary for Y”) express conditions that must bepresent in order to have a desired outcome (e.g. “success”), and to prevent guaranteed failure.These hypotheses differ fundamentally from the common co-variational hypotheses (“more Xresults in more Y”) and require another methodology for building and testing them.Design/methodology/approach – Reviewing operations management literature for versionsof necessary condition hypotheses. Combining previous theoretical and methodological workinto a comprehensive and consistent methodology for building and testing such hypotheses.Findings – Necessary condition statements are common in operations management, butcurrent formulations are not precise, and methods used for building and testing them are notalways adequate. Outline of the methodology of Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA)consisting of two stepwise methodological approaches, one for building and one for testingnecessary conditions.Originality/value – Because necessary condition statements are common in operationsmanagement, using methodologies that can build and test such hypotheses contributes to theadvancement of operations management research and theory