Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA)
提出必要条件分析(NCA)方法,用于识别组织科学中“必要但不充分”的条件,帮助研究者判断哪些因素对结果必不可少,并提供免费软件支持。
Theoretical “necessary but not sufficient” statements are common in the organizational sciences. Traditional data analyses approaches (e.g., correlation or multiple regression) are not appropriate for testing or inducing such statements. This article proposes necessary condition analysis (NCA) as a general and straightforward methodology for identifying necessary conditions in data sets. The article presents the logic and methodology of necessary but not sufficient contributions of organizational determinants (e.g., events, characteristics, resources, efforts) to a desired outcome (e.g., good performance). A necessary determinant must be present for achieving an outcome, but its presence is not sufficient to obtain that outcome. Without the necessary condition, there is guaranteed failure, which cannot be compensated by other determinants of the outcome. This logic and its related methodology are fundamentally different from the traditional sufficiency-based logic and methodology. Practical recommendations and free software are offered to support researchers to apply NCA.