... and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode Unfortunately, it appears that many researchers do not understand that composites and latent variables are not interchangeable in models, and that there are important implications of using...

... provides concrete examples and techniques to practicing marketing and social science researchers regarding how to incorporate composites into their work, and how to make decisions regarding such. Originality/value This work presents a novel perspective on PLS critiques by showing how researchers can...

... concept proxy framework (CPF) is inherently anti-realist in nature. Furthermore, Henseler and Schuberth’s suggestion that composite-creating statistical packages [such as partial least squares (PLS)] can model emergent variables should be treated with skepticism by realists. Research limitations...

... no utility as a realist scientific tool but may be of interest to constructivists. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to assess PLS’s alignments and mismatches with constructivist and scientific realist perspectives. Composites PLS partial least...