Incorporating Composites in Structural Equation Modeling: Exploiting the Henseler—Ogasawara Specification

This thesis is about the use of composites in the context of SEM. I present new approaches to incorporating composites into SEM by exploiting the Henseler—Ogasawara (H—O) specification. My goal in this thesis is to provide a flexible way for researchers to overcome the obstacles that they face when embedding composites in SEM. Chapter 1 provides an overview of SEM with composites. In this chapter, I discuss two reasons for using composites, present the composite model, and explain the contribution of this thesis. Chapter 2 presents different ways of operationalizing different types of theoretical concepts. Specifically, two types of theoretical concepts are distinguished, namely behavioral concepts and forged concepts. Chapter 3 discusses the merits and limitations of existing approaches to incorporating composites in SEM. Furthermore, I introduce a refinement of the H—O specification to address the problems of the original H—O specification. Chapter 4 highlights the difficulties researchers face in aligning the model with the proposed theory when studying aggregate constructs. To overcome the difficulties, I propose an innovative way of specifying aggregate constructs in SEM, namely Higher-Order Component Analysis (HOCA). Chapter 5 describes a novel approach to item parceling to address some of the controversies surrounding the use of item parceling techniques. Finally, I conclude the thesis by recapitulating the two reasons for including composites in SEM and aligning each chapter with them. Additionally, I present the contribution of this thesis and future research.