This PhD seminar provides a foundation for theory building and empirical analysis in the study of organizations. Rather than focus on particular statistical or analytical methods, the goal is to provide participants with a rigorous grounding in the scientific approach to constructing theoretical arguments and designing appropriate empirical tests. The course is organized around the question of how to do good research. Topics to be covered include common threats to validity in research design, decisions regarding the choice of samples and settings, measurement issues such as reliability and validity, estimation methods, data collection tools, and ethics in planning, conduct, and publication of research. The seminar thus serves as a complement to other basic and advanced research method courses, and will develop skills needed to: 1. build and analyze theoretical arguments 2. design effective tests of theory 3. understand the interplay between theory building and theory testing Students will get some experience critiquing the methodology used in published studies and hopefully develop some idea about how to start conducting their own dissertation research.