building theory about theory building: what

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BUILDING THEORY ABOUT THEORY BUILDING: WHAT CONSTITUTES A THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTION? KEVIN G. CORLEY Arizona State University DENNIS A. GIOIA The Pennsylvania State University We distill existing literature on theoretical contribution into two dimensions, origi- nality (incremental or revelatory) and utility (scientific or practical). We argue for a revision in the way scholars approach the utility dimension by calling for a view of theorizing that would enable theories with more “scope” (both scientific and practical utility). We also argue for an orientation toward “prescience” as a way of achieving scope and fulfilling our scholarly role of facilitating organizational and societal adaptiveness. Theory is the currency of our scholarly realm, even if there are some misgivings about a possible overemphasis on theory building in organization and management studies (Hambrick, 2007). Every top-tier man- agement journal requires a “theoretical contri- bution” before a manuscript will be consid- ered for publication. This tenet is perhaps most strongly felt in this journal, the Academy of Management’s premier conceptual journal (and also, not inconsequentially, the most cited journal in organization studies [based on Web of Science Journal Citation Reports data for 2009]). Consistent with this concern, the Academy of Management Review (AMR) has published two special issues dedicated to theory building (1989, issue 4, and 1999, issue 4) and numerous “Editor’s Comments” dedi- cated to trying to articulate what constitutes either theory (e.g., Brief, 2003; Conlon, 2002) or a theoretical contribution (e.g., Kilduff, 2006; Whetten, 1990). These writings, however, de- spite their thoughtfulness, do not represent comprehensive treatments, especially of the latter issue, and do not seem to have hit the mark in a way that provides a satisfactory resolution to the crucial question of what makes for a theoretical contribution. Thus, scholars are still trying to articulate what it means to make a theoretical contribution (Bar- tunek, Rynes, & Ireland, 2006; Kilduff, 2006; Rindova, 2008; Smith & Hitt, 2005). A question that typically arises at this point is “What is theory?” Although there are many an- swers to this question, there is little agreement on a universal definition—to wit, “Lack of con- sensus on exactly what theory is may explain why it is so difficult to develop strong theory in the behavioral sciences” (Sutton & Staw, 1995: 372). For our purposes we use a simple, general definition: theory is a statement of concepts and their interrelationships that shows how and/or why a phenomenon occurs (cf. Gioia & Pitre, 1990). We believe, however, that a more pro- ductive question to ask, and for us to address, is “What is a theoretical contribution?” That is, what signifies a significant theoretical (as op- posed to an empirical or a methodological) advancement in our understanding of a phenomenon? Part of the difficulty in delineating the elusive concept of theoretical contribution is that orga- nization and management studies is an eclectic field—and one with multiple stakeholders as well. Not only do we self-identify as “borrowers” from many other scientific disciplines (e.g., psy- chology, sociology, economics, etc.) but we also claim to speak to both academics and practition- ers. This medley of foundations, voices, and au- We offer a heartfelt thanks to Blake Ashforth, Don Ham- brick, Trevis Certo, Don Lange, Glen Kreiner, and our anon- ymous reviewers for their helpful comments and critiques on earlier versions of this paper. We especially acknowledge Amy Hillman for her encouragement, commentary, and ex- cellent guidance throughout the revision process. Academy of Management Review 2011, Vol. 36, No. 1, 12–32. 12 Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyright holder’s express written permission. Users may print, download, or email articles for individual use only.

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Page 1: BUILDING THEORY ABOUT THEORY BUILDING: WHAT

BUILDING THEORY ABOUT THEORYBUILDING: WHAT CONSTITUTES A

THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTION?

KEVIN G. CORLEYArizona State University

DENNIS A. GIOIAThe Pennsylvania State University

We distill existing literature on theoretical contribution into two dimensions, origi-nality (incremental or revelatory) and utility (scientific or practical). We argue for arevision in the way scholars approach the utility dimension by calling for a view oftheorizing that would enable theories with more “scope” (both scientific and practicalutility). We also argue for an orientation toward “prescience” as a way of achievingscope and fulfilling our scholarly role of facilitating organizational and societaladaptiveness.

Theory is the currency of our scholarlyrealm, even if there are some misgivingsabout a possible overemphasis on theorybuilding in organization and managementstudies (Hambrick, 2007). Every top-tier man-agement journal requires a “theoretical contri-bution” before a manuscript will be consid-ered for publication. This tenet is perhapsmost strongly felt in this journal, the Academyof Management’s premier conceptual journal(and also, not inconsequentially, the mostcited journal in organization studies [based onWeb of Science� Journal Citation Reports�data for 2009]). Consistent with this concern,the Academy of Management Review (AMR)has published two special issues dedicated totheory building (1989, issue 4, and 1999, issue4) and numerous “Editor’s Comments” dedi-cated to trying to articulate what constituteseither theory (e.g., Brief, 2003; Conlon, 2002) ora theoretical contribution (e.g., Kilduff, 2006;Whetten, 1990). These writings, however, de-spite their thoughtfulness, do not representcomprehensive treatments, especially of thelatter issue, and do not seem to have hit themark in a way that provides a satisfactory

resolution to the crucial question of whatmakes for a theoretical contribution. Thus,scholars are still trying to articulate what itmeans to make a theoretical contribution (Bar-tunek, Rynes, & Ireland, 2006; Kilduff, 2006;Rindova, 2008; Smith & Hitt, 2005).

A question that typically arises at this point is“What is theory?” Although there are many an-swers to this question, there is little agreementon a universal definition—to wit, “Lack of con-sensus on exactly what theory is may explainwhy it is so difficult to develop strong theory inthe behavioral sciences” (Sutton & Staw, 1995:372). For our purposes we use a simple, generaldefinition: theory is a statement of concepts andtheir interrelationships that shows how and/orwhy a phenomenon occurs (cf. Gioia & Pitre,1990). We believe, however, that a more pro-ductive question to ask, and for us to address,is “What is a theoretical contribution?” That is,what signifies a significant theoretical (as op-posed to an empirical or a methodological)advancement in our understanding of aphenomenon?

Part of the difficulty in delineating the elusiveconcept of theoretical contribution is that orga-nization and management studies is an eclecticfield—and one with multiple stakeholders aswell. Not only do we self-identify as “borrowers”from many other scientific disciplines (e.g., psy-chology, sociology, economics, etc.) but we alsoclaim to speak to both academics and practition-ers. This medley of foundations, voices, and au-

We offer a heartfelt thanks to Blake Ashforth, Don Ham-brick, Trevis Certo, Don Lange, Glen Kreiner, and our anon-ymous reviewers for their helpful comments and critiques onearlier versions of this paper. We especially acknowledgeAmy Hillman for her encouragement, commentary, and ex-cellent guidance throughout the revision process.

� Academy of Management Review2011, Vol. 36, No. 1, 12–32.

12Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyrightholder’s express written permission. Users may print, download, or email articles for individual use only.

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diences often creates confusion when discuss-ing contributions. What exactly is theconsensual basis for claiming and assessingtheoretical contribution? More pointedly, isthere a consensual basis for declaring whethera theoretical contribution exists? One basis forarguing that our field has vague or inadequatestandards for assessing theoretical contributionarises from comparing the list of AMR’s BestArticles (awarded one year after publication)with the list of each year’s most cited AMR paperover the same years (based on Web of Science�Social Sciences Citation Index� and/or GoogleScholar counts). In only four of the last eighteenyears does the paper currently most cited alsoturn out to be the one chosen as the AMR BestArticle for its year of publication (see Table 1),despite the “competitive advantage” in citationssuch articles have from their publicity for win-ning the award in the first place. This somewhatdisconcerting statistic seems to imply some dis-crepancy in assessing a paper’s value right af-ter publication and its value in the future.

As scholars familiar with the practice of de-veloping theoretical contributions, we believethe time is right for our field to turn a reflectivelens on itself and try to establish more clearlynot only what currently constitutes a theoreticalcontribution but also, and perhaps more impor-tant, what should constitute a theoretical contri-bution in the future. To help accomplish the firstand set the stage for the second, we establishedtwo goals for this paper. First, we hope to con-tribute to the practice of making a contributionto theory as it currently stands. Toward this end,we provide a synthesis of the dimensions cur-rently used to justify the existence of a theoret-ical contribution and provide some perspectiveon the usefulness of these dimensions. Our syn-thesis reveals two dimensions—originality andutility—that currently dominate considerationsof theoretical contribution. We also note twosubcategories underlying each of these maindimensions, which provide a more nuanced de-scription of the current craft of contributing totheory.

Second, we hope to contribute to what wemight call the theory of theoretical contribu-tion—to build theory about theory building, ifyou will. Thus, we use our synthesis of the liter-ature, as well as our reading of AMR’s Best Ar-ticles and most cited papers listed in Table 1, as

a point of departure for outlining the need for arenewed and reframed emphasis on practice-oriented utility as a focus for future theorizing.In addition, we call for and encourage organiza-tion scholars to adopt an orientation toward pre-science in their theorizing. We define prescienceas the process of discerning or anticipatingwhat we need to know and, equally important,of influencing the intellectual framing and dia-logue about what we need to know. An orienta-tion toward prescience holds some promise foradvancing our craft of theory development, aswell as enhancing the receptivity of the audi-ences for our developing theories beyond theacademy and, therefore, conferring a greater po-tential for influencing the organizations and so-cieties we study.

We structure the rest of the article aroundthese two issues. We begin with a synthesis ofthe theoretical contribution literature as it per-tains to the field of management and organiza-tion studies, highlighting the current state of theart for making a contribution to theory in ourtop-tier management journals. Building on thissynthesis, we then argue that a practice per-spective on theory building would lead to ourtheories having greater scope and, furthermore,that an orientation toward prescience would en-hance the value and impact of our theoreticalcontributions. Finally, we discuss implicationsof our proposals for the field.

SYNTHESIZING CURRENT VIEWSON “WHAT CONSTITUTES A

THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTION”

Despite the relatively short time that organi-zation and management studies has existed asa field, there is actually quite a collection ofwritings on the notion of theoretical contribu-tion. We use the term writings because much ofthis literature is found in editorial statementspublished in AMR and AMJ. Although there are anumber of other sources outside AMR that pro-vide opinion and insight, because AMR is ourfield’s premier theory journal, much of what fol-lows stems from these writings about making acontribution to theory. In its inaugural (1976) is-sue, for instance, AMR’s “Suggestions for Con-tributors” provided a vision for the types of pa-pers the Academy of Management’s leadershipsaw as most appealing for the new journal:

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The Review publishes distinguished originalmanuscripts which (a) move theoretical concep-tualization forward in the field of management,and/or (b) indicate new theoretical linkages that

have rich potential for theory and research inmanagement, and (c) provide clear implicationsof theory for problem-solving in administrativeand organizational situations.

TABLE 1AMR Best Articles and Most Cited Papers: 1990–2008 (Citation Counts As of April 2010)

Year PropsVolume(Issue) Author(s) Google SSCI Rank

1990 Best Article 15(2) Dollinger 79 16 23rdMost cited 15(1) Reed & DeFillippi 1424 455

1991 Best Article 16(1) Oliver 2213 650 1stMost cited Same

1992 Best Article 17(4) Trevino 113 70 19thMost cited 17(2) Gist & Mitchell 1030 255

1993 Best Article 18(4) Pfeffer 604 305 4thMost cited (Google) 18(2) Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin 920 311Most cited (Social Sciences

Citation Index)18(4) Cordes & Dougherty 866 343

1994 Best Article 19(1) Kahn & Kram 49 20 23rdMost cited 19(1) Ring & Van de Ven 2247 636

1995 Best Article 20(3) Van de Ven & Poole 1132 308 4thMost cited 20(3) Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman 4014 1234

1996 Best Article 21(1) Chen 468 161 10thMost cited 21(1) Lumpkin & Dess 1662 407

1997 Best Article 22(2) Gresov & Drazin 172 54 20thMost cited 22(4) Mitchell, Agle, & Wood 2152 499

1998 Best Article 23(2) Nahapiet & Ghoshal 4106 1080 1stMost cited Same

1999 Best Article 24(1) McGrath 462 151 8thMost cited 24(3) Crossan, Lane, & White 1272 306

2000 Best Article 25(4) Lewis 317 86 7thMost cited 25(1) Hogg & Terry 897 266

2001 Best Article 26(4) Mitchell & James 147 88 13thMost cited 26(1) Priem & Butler 992 264

2002 Best Article 27(1) Adler & Kwon 1916 450 1stMost cited Same

2003 Best Article 28(2) Benner & Tushman 555 180 1stMost cited Same

2004 Best Article 29(1) Biggart & Delbridge 77 30 12thMost cited 29(4) Phillips, Lawrence, & Hardy 291 96

2005 Best Article 30(1) Ferraro, Pfeffer, & Sutton 300 100 2ndMost cited 30(1) Inkpen & Tsang 459 143

2006 Best Article 31(2) George, Chattopadhyay, Sitkin, & Barden 44 21 25thMost cited 31(2) Johns 244 116

2007 Best Article 32(1) Dane & Pratt 103 36 7thMost cited 32(1) Sirmon, Hitt, & Ireland 197 57

2008 Best Article 33(4) Birkinshaw, Hamel, & Mol 41 7 5thMost cited 33(2) Matten & Moon 93 25

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This statement emphasizes notions of advanc-ing knowledge and moving the field’s thinkingforward, providing new connections among pre-vious concepts, and exploring the practical im-plications of these connections. Interestingly,some thirty-five years later, a review of writingson theoretical contribution in AMR paints a pic-ture fairly consistent with this initial vision. Oursynthesis of the literature indicated two key di-mensions along which the notion of “value-added contribution” is typically defined, as cap-tured succinctly by Kilduff: “Theory paperssucceed if they offer important [read useful] andoriginal ideas” (2006: 252). Our assessment of thecurrent state of the art for publishing theory,perhaps especially in AMR, indicates that theidea of contribution rests largely on the abilityto provide original insight into a phenomenonby advancing knowledge in a way that isdeemed to have utility or usefulness for somepurpose.

Given the historical progression of our field,the prominence of these two criteria (originalityand utility) is perhaps not that surprising. Orga-nization and management studies started outwith a couple of distinctive attributes: relianceon anecdotal evidence from business practice(there was little “scientifically” codified knowl-edge) and eclecticism (we borrowed from every-body). Before we could establish ourselves as adistinctive, scientifically rigorous field, we hadto deal with both of these “shortcomings.” First,beginning in the 1960s and as a result of tworeports critical of business education at the time(Gordon & Howell, 1959; Pierson, 1959), businessschools (including management departments)began to emphasize more rigorous, quantitativeorientations in an attempt to gain legitimacywithin the larger academic community. By as-similating traditional academic standards andnorms of knowledge generation and dissemina-tion from the physical and social sciences, thistransformation helped move our field away fromthe criticism that management and organization-al knowledge was mainly a collection of anec-dotes and case studies. Second, at about thetime of the founding of AMR in 1976, manage-ment departments began to pride themselves onhaving become the academic repository of mul-tidisciplinary knowledge oriented toward man-agerial practice—management study became afocal point for the intersection of psychology,sociology, anthropology, economics, political

science, and so on. The product of this inter-section represented an attempt not only to as-semble insightful thinking to develop a moresystematic approach to knowledge about man-agement (an attempt that some claim failed; seePfeffer, 1993) but also to develop some distinc-tive domains of theorizing (e.g., decision mak-ing, leadership, institutional theory).

Since the 1970s, the field of organization andmanagement studies has achieved some nota-ble and laudable accomplishments. We have,for instance, become much more conceptuallyand empirically rigorous (such that the nature ofmanagement theorizing is much stronger, inscholarly terms, than it was only a generationago), which has helped allay concerns that ourknowledge base is too anecdotal. We have alsobegun to develop an institutional field identitythat is no longer based mainly on the notion ofeclecticism; that is, the top management jour-nals are now seeing work that constitutes orig-inal organizational theorizing (not merely recy-cled and dressed up psychology or economics),which, in a recursive fashion, is now beginningto influence the very fields from which we onceborrowed (Agarwal & Hoetker, 2007).

To better understand what the dimensions oforiginality and utility mean for those attemptingto publish in the top management journals, it isnecessary to explicate each notion in moredepth. Interestingly, our synthesis of the litera-ture indicates that both dimensions further di-vide into two subcategories (see Figure 1). Orig-inality can be categorized as either (1)advancing understanding incrementally or (2)

FIGURE 1Current Dimensions for Theoretical

Contribution

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advancing understanding in a way that pro-vides some form of revelation, whereas the util-ity dimension parses into (1) practically usefuland (2) scientifically useful. Our following dis-cussion of these two main dimensions and theirtwo subcategories is quite consistent with acommon characteristic of many theoretical pa-pers—the ubiquitous 2 � 2 matrix.

Originality

Perhaps more than any other criterion, origi-nality stands out as the “dimension de rigueur”for AMR reviewers and editors. This is clearlyseen in the first line of the current AMR missionstatement—“The mission of the Academy ofManagement Review (AMR) is to publish newtheoretical insights that advance our under-standing of management and organiza-tions”—as well as in editorial statements de-scribing preferences for submissions: “Themission of a theory-development journal is tochallenge and extend existing knowledge”(Whetten, 1989: 491); “We judge the value-addedcontribution of each and every article based onthe potential contribution of the articulated newinsights” (Smith, 1997: 8); and “[All AMR papersshould] improve our understanding of manage-ment and organizations, whether by offering acritical redirection of existing views or by offer-ing an entirely new point of view on phenom-ena” (Conlon, 2002: 489). Conlon’s distinction be-tween extending current understanding andoffering “entirely new points of view” is similarto Huff’s (1999) distinction between contributingto a current conversation and starting a newconversation. Accordingly, it provides the basisfor discussing originality as representing eitheran incremental or a more revelatory or surpris-ing advance in understanding—a subdivisionthat offers a more nuanced grasp of what re-viewers and editors currently consider to be atheoretical contribution worthy of publication.

Incremental insight. The notion that theoreti-cal contributions should progressively advanceour understanding is a long-venerated one(Kaplan, 1964) and is well-represented in AMR’s(1976) initial statement of purpose (reread theoriginal “Suggestions for Contributors” above).This orientation has been consistently and re-peatedly invoked over the years—for example,“The ultimate value-added test of an article isthat it has moved scholars in a field or advanced

our theoretical understanding” (Smith, 1997: 7).In perhaps one of the most recognized articleson theory, Van de Ven reiterates Lewin’s (1951:486) assertion that “nothing is quite so practicalas a good theory” in this way: “Good theory ispractical precisely because it advances knowl-edge in a scientific discipline, guides researchtoward crucial questions, and enlightens theprofession of management” (1989: 486). Based onthe (then) groundbreaking work of Dubin (1978),this perspective is rooted in the belief that whatmakes one theory preferred over another is ad-vancement toward “what is believed to be true”(1978: 13) or a state where “a group of peoplesharing an interest in some set of observationscome to agree that one theoretical model bestprovides understanding or permits accurate pre-dictions about the observational set” (1978: 13).In practice, this is often reflected in the idea that“theoretical insights come from demonstratinghow the addition of a new variable significantlyalters our understanding of the phenomena byreorganizing our causal maps” (Whetten, 1989:493).

The key to connecting this notion of advanc-ing understanding with the editor’s/reviewers’crucial task of determining value-added contri-bution arises in how one defines “significantly”in the above statement—how much additionalunderstanding must be provided to meet thesignificance criterion? Obviously, this is not aneasy question to answer, which may help ex-plain why the incremental perspective on in-sight seems to have fallen out of favor withreviewers and editors of many top journals overthe past ten to fifteen years. In fact, readingmore recent editorial statements on theory de-velopment from a spectrum of managementjournals conveys the sense that the advancingincremental understanding perspective has be-come rather too closely associated with the no-tion of minor, marginal, or even trivial improve-ments, where small advances in our thinkingabout a phenomenon provide the means toprogress through “normal science” (Kuhn, 1962).Although incremental improvement is arguablya necessary aspect of organizational research,especially in service to the contextualization oftheory (cf. Johns, 2001; Rousseau & Fried, 2001;Tsui, 2006), current thinking at AMR and othertop theory and research outlets seems to haveshifted to a focus on theoretical contributions

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deemed to be more revelatory and nonobviousto organizational scholars.

Revelatory insight. An alternative to the diffi-cult-to-answer question “How significant an ad-vance in knowledge is needed to constitute acontribution?” rests in the idea that contributionarises when theory reveals what we otherwisehad not seen, known, or conceived. In otherwords, new theory “allows us to see profoundly,imaginatively, unconventionally into phenom-ena we thought we understood. . . . theory is ofno use unless it initially surprises—that is,changes perceptions” (Mintzberg, 2005: 361). Of-ten cited in advocacy for this perspective isDavis’s (1971) “That’s Interesting!” article, inwhich he argues that research that is novel orcounterintuitive or that questions assumptionsunderlying the prevailing theory (as well asthose of the reader) will generally be seen asmore interesting and, thus, more likely to makean impact on the reader (and hence make animpact on the field through increased citations):“The best way to make a name for oneself in anintellectual discipline is to be interesting—denying the assumed, while affirming the unan-ticipated” (1971: 343). The key distinction herefrom the advancing understanding incremen-tally perspective (rooted in Dubin’s views ontruth) is that “a theorist is considered great, notbecause his/her theories are [necessarily] true,but because they are interesting” (Davis, 1971:309).

Beginning in the 1990s and rapidly ascendingto prominence since, this idea that “all contribu-tions to AMR should be ‘novel, insightful, andcarefully crafted’” (Brief, 2003: 7) has become astaple for editorial descriptions of desired AMRpapers—“The challenge then for authors pub-lished in AMR will be to convince AMR readers‘to see nature in a different way,’ even to violateparadigm-induced expectations” (Smith, 1997: 8;see also Gioia & Pitre, 1990, and Morgan & Smir-cich, 1980)—and is even boldly proclaimed onthe current AMR website (“AMR publishes novel,insightful and carefully crafted conceptual arti-cles that challenge conventional wisdom con-cerning all aspects of organizations and theirrole in society”). This refocusing on surprise hastranscended AMR and is now touted as the basisfor contribution at the other top organizationand management journals, including AMJ, asseen in Rynes’ articulation of reasons for paperrejection: “Reviewers are judging the results not

against prior literature, but rather against com-mon sense or the likely reactions of the ‘personin the street.’ . . . ‘Is this really surprising?’”(2002: 312) and Bergh’s likening of theory contri-bution to the rareness criterion of competitiveadvantage: “[Is] a contribution . . . surprisingand unexpected? Is the contribution more of acommon sense derivation, or does it represent anovel and unique insight? Originality is a criti-cal concern” (2003: 136).

Our synthesis of the existing literature thuspoints to insight based in original, especiallyrevelatory, surprising, or even transformativethinking as a key factor affecting the attributionof a theoretical contribution at many of the em-inent journals in organization study, and per-haps particularly at AMR. Therefore, our point inhighlighting this shift is not that incrementaladvancements cannot provide a theoretical con-tribution, but simply that many editorial teamsand reviewers at our top journals now preferinsights that reveal a new way of understandingas the basis for determining theoretical contri-butions, and thus as a preference for assessingpublication potential. Importantly, however, thecapacity for revelation is not the only criterion;also widely accepted is the sense that to bedeemed a contribution, theory must be useful orsomehow have utility in its application, eitherfor other organizational researchers or for prac-ticing managers.

Utility

Although most contemporary editors see reve-latory insight that discloses a new way of see-ing as necessary for a value-added contribution,it is rarely sufficient; the insight must be seen asuseful as well. That is, it must have the potentialto either “improve the current research practiceof informed scholars” (Whetten, 1990: 581) orimprove the current managerial practice of or-ganizational practitioners. Or, as Van de Venargues:

A central mission of scholars and educators inprofessional schools of management . . . is to con-duct research that contributes knowledge to ascientific discipline, on the one hand, and to ap-ply that knowledge to the practice of manage-ment as a profession, on the other (1989: 486).

In general, scientific utility is perceived as anadvance that improves conceptual rigor or the

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specificity of an idea and/or enhances its poten-tial to be operationalized and tested:

Theory can advance science by providing cohe-sion, efficiency, and structure to our researchquestions and design (Kerlinger, 1973; Van deVen, 1989). In a very practical sense, good theoryhelps identify what factors should be studied andhow and why they are related. A high qualitytheory also states the conditions and boundariesof relationships (Hitt & Smith, 2005: 2).

Alternatively, practical utility is seen as aris-ing when theory can be directly applied to theproblems practicing managers and other orga-nizational practitioners face, or as Hambricksuggests, through “the observation of real-lifephenomena, not from ‘scholars struggling to findholes in the literature’” (2005: 124). Hambrick’slarger point, however, is that such a practicalproblem focus is a good way to develop theoryper se. Thus, theory directed at practical impor-tance would focus on prescriptions for structur-ing and organizing around a phenomenon andless on how science can further delineate orunderstand the phenomenon.

This bifurcated view on the usefulness of the-ory arises directly from the trajectory of ourfield’s history; traditionally pushed to produceinsight for both the professional and academicrealms, management scholars experience pres-sures to enact the norms of a bona fide scientificdiscipline (again, originating from the 1959 Pier-son and Gordon and Howell reports) whilealso—at least ostensibly—speaking to andhelping improve the organizations we study. Wesay “ostensibly” because our review of the liter-ature reveals a very strong bias toward scien-tific usefulness as the driving factor in editorialthinking about theoretical contribution. Interest-ingly, however, these two “discrete” categoriesof utility are not necessarily mutually exclusive;there are examples of theoretical advancementsthat have the requisite capacity to improve boththe practice of research and the practice of man-agement, with a necessary “translation” fromthe scientific to the professional (as evident inthe original mission of the journal Academy ofManagement Executive—“to provide a bridge ora link among theory, research and practice”—and the research-oriented subsections of vari-ous practitioner-oriented journals). Yet the real-ity is that, excepting some passionate calls forchange during Academy of Management presi-dential addresses (e.g., Hambrick, 1994; Huff,

2000), practical utility’s role in theoretical contri-bution seems to receive mainly lip service (e.g.,several paragraphs on “practical implications”in the discussion section; see Bartunek & Rynes,2010, for insight into the utility of these sections),especially in recent times. Most of the editorialstatements advocating the practical utility oforganization and management theories occurearlier in our field’s history, with more recenteditorial statements virtually ignoring this as-pect of the utility dimension.

Implications of the Originality andUtility Dimensions

The upshot of our synthesis of the literature,then, is the recognition that the current state ofthe art for developing conceptual papers thatare deemed to provide a theoretical contributionrests in a scholar’s ability to produce thinkingthat is original (and especially revelatory or sur-prising) in its insight and useful (preferably in ascientific manner) in its application. In our view,the originality and utility dimensions usuallyare treated as working together to produce vary-ing levels of theoretical contribution. Modelingtheir interaction in a 2 � 2 matrix (Figure 1)produces a basic insight about which papersultimately succeed at the top management jour-nals (and, by implication, at AMR). Papers thatdisplay both original, revelatory insight and sci-entific usefulness (Quadrant 1) clearly stand outas most likely to pass muster with editors andreviewers (assuming they also satisfy other de-sirable criteria1). Papers that only fit one of thedimensions well—scientifically useful but with-out adequate originality (Quadrant 2) or revela-tory insight without adequate scientific useful-ness (Quadrant 4)—present a challenge to bothauthor and editor and usually must undergo sig-nificant revision, at minimum, if they are to beseen as making a significant theoretical contri-bution and, thus, become acceptable for publi-cation. Finally, papers that score low on bothdimensions (Quadrant 3) are likely to be desk-rejected or receive a firm rejection decision afterthe first round of reviews (and occasionally

1 As Whetten outlines, “Is the paper well written? Does itflow logically? Are the central ideas easily accessed? Is itenjoyable to read? Is the paper long enough to cover thesubject but short enough to be interesting?” (1989: 495).

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what one of the authors calls an “RWS”—a “Re-jection With Scorn”).

Ultimately, our synthesis of the theoreticalcontribution literature and its representation inour simple 2 � 2 model lead to several observa-tions about the current practice of making acontribution to theory. First, the dimension oforiginal insight with the power to reveal a newway of seeing is likely to remain a perennialnorm at all elite, theory-driven managementjournals, including AMR. We feel confident inmaking this less-than-bold prediction because,by its very nature, theorizing depends on newconcepts to maintain idea vitality in the field.Incremental advances in theory simply cannotproduce this energy and, although necessary intheir own right, are unlikely ever to become thefoundation on which a high-impact theory-building journal rests. Second, utility in the formof scientific usefulness also is likely to remainan important aspect of the norms for theoreticalcontribution for the foreseeable future, simplybecause scientifically useful ideas are critical tothe larger project of establishing theory that isconceptually rigorous and internally consistentand, thus, the surest path to building and main-taining academic legitimacy. Additionally, sci-entifically useful ideas do a better job of contrib-uting to the theoretical developments of otherscholars who are also working to further legiti-mize the scholarly field of organization andmanagement studies.

That said, after our attempt to synthesize theexisting literature about attributes that consti-tute a contribution to theory, we were uneasywith simply accepting what the (mostly edito-rial) literature portrayed as a theoretical contri-bution. Part of this unease arose from our read-ing of both the AMR Best Articles and most citedpapers listed in Table 1, which revealed thatalthough the majority of these papers could beclassified as being original in their ideas, thosethat provided revelatory insights did so not somuch by introducing new concepts (as the typi-cal editorial depiction would have it) but muchmore often by offering a novel approach to inte-grating prior thought and research into somemodel or framework that constituted a differentway of understanding some phenomenon.2 More

important, we also began to notice a subtletheme distinguishing the most cited papers fromthe Best Articles: although both sets of paperscould be considered high in scientific utility, themost cited papers could more often also be char-acterized as higher in utility for practice. If arti-cles receiving the most citations do a better jobof bridging scientific and practical usefulness,this suggests the possibility of a unifying di-mension that can account theoretically for bothscientific and pragmatic value (i.e., a notion wewould label scope). This also suggests the pos-sibility of expanding our conceptualization ofwhat constitutes a theoretical contribution if wecan identify ways of enhancing our ability toachieve more scope in our theorizing.

CONTRIBUTING TO THEORY ABOUT MAKINGA THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTION

Adhering to the same standards for consider-ation we just reviewed, we believe there is roomfor a contribution in the process of buildingsome new theory about the work of theory build-ing itself—an unaddressed opportunity for ourfield to take the next step forward in maturity byextending our conceptions of what makes for atheoretical contribution. There are two consider-ations that suggest a strong need to move fromwhere we are now to a more advanced plane ofthought and wider influence. First, Katz andKahn (1966) observed that organizations and in-stitutions can (and often do) have multiple, dis-parate roles in society. Academia as an institu-tion—and perhaps especially in the form of aprofessional academic institution like a schoolof management—has a dual and somewhat par-adoxical role: we are the “keepers of the flame”in disseminating tried-and-true ideas and prac-tices (usually via teaching but also via consult-ing), which Katz and Kahn term a maintenancerole—a role that has the effect of structuring,stabilizing, and institutionalizing knowledge

2 In fact, we initially used the categories “incremental”and “transformative” to characterize the originality dimen-

sion because we were trying to summarize and synthesizethe content of prior writings by scholars discussing “What isa contribution?” Instead, after reading the Best Articles andmost cited AMR papers, what we actually saw in practicewas a dimension that is better categorized as incremental orrevelatory, because relatively few of even these stellar pa-pers could be labeled as transformative in the literal sense.On balance, most of these AMR articles are original in theway they integrate, rather than in the way they create, newconcepts.

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and action; simultaneously, however, manage-ment schools are also charged with being in thevanguard in generating new knowledge (viacutting-edge theory and research) that serves toquestion received wisdom and accepted prac-tice and, thus, to undermine “the way we dothings around here.” Katz and Kahn (1966) termthis an adaptive role in society, and it serves asa substrate for transforming the social order.From our perspective, we are currently devotingmuch more energy to our maintenance role (viateaching,3 if not practice-oriented research) andunderplaying our putative adaptive role. Orga-nization and management science has, there-fore, come up short in fulfilling the charge ofbeing on the leading edge of managementthinking. Indeed, most of the new ideas in man-agement that have been put into practice havecome from the world of practice, rather thanfrom academia (cf. Barley, Meyer, & Gash, 1988).Consequently, society has granted us respect,but not much influence (see Mintzberg, 2004, andPfeffer, 1993). We believe our field has maturedto a point that the time has come to begin recti-fying that shortcoming.

As our retrospective on management and or-ganizational theorizing suggests, the dimensionof utility has historically been defined accord-ing to two tracks—scientific usefulness andpractical usefulness—with a relative neglect ofthe latter. This neglect is somewhat understand-able because practical utility is most often con-sidered as addressing specific problems with-out necessarily tapping general principles,whereas good theory emphasizes generalities(with appropriate boundary conditions identi-fied). On these grounds we clearly have as-signed more importance to scientific utility,which, although understandable, is perhapssomething of a misconstrual for a scholarlyfield that is so intimately associated with aprofessional practice domain (and schools ofmanagement are arguably more akin toschools of law or medicine than those of eco-nomics or sociology).

Second, the fact that rigorous scholarship isnot often deemed by outsiders to be relevantscholarship that both ministers to and antici-

pates societal needs suggests that we have notdevoted appropriate attention to the expectationthat good scholarship should not only havepractical relevance but also some degree of fore-sight in identifying important coming issuesand problems that need to be conceptualized.One source of the problem is that managementscholars have, in effect, created a closed indus-try engaged in producing knowledge intendedmainly for other academic knowledge produc-ers. This outcome is a consequence of overem-phasizing scientific importance (in part becausescientific importance tends to generate special-ized language that only other cognoscenti canunderstand; see Bennis & O’Toole, 2005).

Simply put, we believe that theoretical contri-butions in management and organization stud-ies have not done an adequate job of anticipat-ing the important conceptual, as well aspractical, needs of society’s now most prominentmembers—business and social organizations.As Staw outlined the problem for OB researchsome twenty-five years ago: “The field may nothave even served managerial interests well,since research has taken a short-term problemfocus rather than having formulated new formsof organization that do not currently exist” (1984:629)—an orientation that implies that we as afield are also guilty of employing short-termthinking, which Norman Lear has called “thesocial disease of our time” (cited in Bennis, 2003:15) and which undermines our ability to contrib-ute to organizational and societal adaptiveness.This is a nontrivial shortcoming in our ap-proaches to making theoretical contributionsthat could have a much wider impact—a short-coming we believe could be addressed by en-couraging an orientation toward prescience intrying to anticipate, conceptualize, and influ-ence significant future problem domains. Wenext consider these two related deficiencies inour theorizing as avenues for better fulfilling ouradaptive role in society.

Relevance to Practice As a ProminentDimension of Theoretical Contribution

As implied above, the maturation of our disci-pline has seemingly moved us farther awayfrom the very spheres of society we originallyset out to influence. Consider the following an-ecdotes, each of which in its own way is quitetelling about the current character of our theo-

3 We acknowledge that many instructors work to includenew knowledge into their courses, yet the practical fact isthat the overwhelming content of most courses constitutesaccepted theory and practice.

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retical enterprise. The first story goes that in theearly 1980s one of the officers of the Academy ofManagement concluded that as one conse-quence of the shift toward conceptual and em-pirical rigor then sweeping the field, the rele-vance of our theories to managerial practicewas waning. As a step toward redressing thistrend, he decided that our field needed to “con-nect” better with practicing executives. To thatend, he hosted a number of high-level managersat the next annual AOM meeting. He shep-herded the entourage around to various ses-sions, symposia, and social events, but theywere not very forthcoming about their impres-sions of the proceedings. At the end of the day,the hosting professor, who could contain himselfno longer, explicitly asked what they thought ofthe work of the academic management profes-sion as manifested by the events of the day.Uncomfortable silence. One of the executivesthought it over for a few pregnant seconds, how-ever, and then said simply, “You people talkfunny.”

A second anecdote involves one of the au-thors, who was discussing the criteria for Ph.D.student selection with his colleagues. There waslittle debate about the relevance of GMAT/GREscores, grade point averages, experience withthe research process, and so forth. Yet when hesuggested that because it was a professionalschool organizational experience should be con-sidered as well, another professor respondedthat practitioners were “not our audience” andthat work experience had not been shown tocorrelate with Ph.D. program success and, there-fore, should not be included on the list of desir-able criteria.

A final example hints at the difficulty of rec-onciling academic and practitioner assess-ments of theoretical contribution and value. In1985 Cummings and Frost edited a volume enti-tled Publishing in the Organizational Sciences,a compendium of writings, opinions, and adviceabout what it took to succeed when trying topublish in management journals. Early in thatvolume an academic writer touted the marvel-ous contribution offered by Gronn’s (1983) article“Talk As Work.” Curiously, later in the samevolume a practitioner writer independently de-rided the same work as trivial and obvious toany practicing manager.

The roots of our disconnect from practical util-ity. From a layperson or practitioner perspec-

tive, we academics do indeed “talk funny.” Fromour point of view, we do so for good reasons.Parsimonious theoretical language saves timeand space and (we hope) enhances clarity forother scholars; theoretical notions tend to bespecified in abstract terms that capture concep-tual meaning. Yet we should recognize that ourspecialized language tends to distance us fromthe issues that generated the theories about thephenomena we are trying to describe and ex-plain in the first place. Put differently, our distallanguage often seems to elide the relevance ofour second-order theoretical constructs from theproximal parties whose experience we are try-ing to explicate.4

Worse, perhaps, the increasing distance be-tween our theories and their practice referents issometimes justified on the grounds that theoryand practice are “different worlds” and need nothave a close relationship (as implied by thePh.D. admissions debate). The difference ofopinion about the worth of a given academicarticle highlights the common view that the sub-jects of our theorizing do not seem to attributemuch significance or value to our theorizing—anontrivial issue if we hope to enact an influen-tial stance toward our adaptive role in society.Shapiro, Kirkman, and Courtney (2007) arguethat there are actually two sources for this “talk-ing past each other” dynamic between scholarsand practitioners, which they term the lost be-fore translation problem (ideas that are essen-tially irrelevant to practice even before theo-ries are formulated or studies are conducted)and the lost in translation problem (difficultyin explaining the relevance of theories or find-ings to practice).

Relevance to practice is actually a long-standing theme in our writings about theory andtheoretical contribution (Bergh, 2003; Hambrick,1994; Thomas & Tymon, 1982), especially in termsof empirical research (see the rigor versus rele-vance debate in Gulati, 2007; Palmer, Dick, &Freiburger, 2009; Polzer, Gulati, Khurana, &Tushman, 2009; and Tushman & O’Reilly, 2007,for examples). Yet evidence that we have paidserious attention to this de facto platitude in ourtheoretical efforts is woefully lacking. Our rela-

4 Consider the last two sentences. To illustrate ourpoint, we wrote the first in plain English and the second inacademese.

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tive inattention to a bona fide concern with thepractical applicability of our theories has led toa troubling disconnect between managementtheory and practice (Ghoshal, 2005; Mintzberg,2005; Pfeffer, 1993)—an observation that givesrise to a consequential question: How might weaccomplish a reconciliation of academic andpractitioner standards for judging contribution?

First, it is important to reiterate that our theo-ries should be problem driven5—that is, in somefashion addressing a problem of direct, indirect,or long-linked relevance to practice, rather thannarrowly addressing the (theoretical) “problem”of finding the next mediator or moderator vari-able or filling theoretical gaps simply becausethey exist. When we focus mainly on the latter,we end up advancing theory for theory’s sake,rather than theory for utility’s sake. Simply put,the focal problems in our chosen field of work(organization study) should relate more directlyto the wider world’s work (organizational prac-tice) by drawing more from the world of practiceand the experience of real people, rather thanfrom abstract derivations of hypothetical formu-lations. This, ideally, would lead to an integra-tion of the scientific and practical utility dimen-sions and would produce a comprehensiveutility dimension better aligned with the notionof scope.6 As an example, one of the AMR BestArticles that also was that year’s most cited pa-per (and, not coincidentally, the most cited pa-per on Google Scholar of all those in our AMRsample) provides a good exemplar of theorizingthat has scope. Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998)provided theorizing having both scientific andpractical utility that deals with a topic of inter-est for a broad audience and integrates existingviews into a coherent and comprehensive theo-retical model.

Second, and as already noted, we should em-brace the fact that we are a profession (aca-demia) studying another profession (manage-ment), so our orientation toward theoreticalcontribution should include an explicit appreci-ation for applicability. We want to be clear,

however, that we are not arguing that we shouldtake our lead for new theorizing from practition-ers’ specifications of mundane managerialproblems—unless, of course, they are manifes-tations of wider or deeper issues. We shouldinstead be aspiring to address significant prob-lem domains that either require or will soonrequire theorizing. As Mintzberg (2005) pointsout, methodological (and even theoretical) rigoroften interferes with both insight and relevance,perhaps especially when dealing with grand-level issues or problems. Bennis and O’Toole(2005) have accused us of delimiting the scope ofour studies only to those variables we can easilymeasure, producing a kind of “methodolatry”that harbors the paradoxical possibility ofblinding rather than illuminating things that re-ally matter. The fact that Bennis and O’Toole’sarticle appeared in Harvard Business Review,whose readership is heavily oriented toward re-flective practitioners and who on reading thearticle would further dismiss the relevance ofthe academic study of organizations, only deep-ens the hole out of which we must climb.

Practical versus practice-oriented theoreticalcontribution. In our view, one of the inhibitors ofthe relevance of our theorizing is that we havebeen treating the notion of pragmatic utility aspractical utility. Based on conversations withcolleagues who are reticent to formulate practi-cal theory or conduct practical research, we sus-pect that there simply is not enough profes-sional “gravitas” associated with theory thatmight have obvious practical application. Suchideas are not seen as “big enough” for grand-level theorizing. A small shift in orientationmight make a big difference in the contributionof our theories to addressing important prob-lems, however. Focusing on the weightier notionof practice (with its pedigree in the deep philo-sophical traditions of American pragmatism)would not only signal to scholars that we areworking on significant issues but would providea firm intellectual basis for theoretical formula-tions with pragmatic relevance.

The scholarly roots of a practice approach canbe traced to James (1907, 1909) and Dewey (1938;Dewey & Bentley, 1949), who viewed theoreticalknowledge not as an “object” to be possessedbut as a dynamic phenomenon that manifests inthe act of knowing something. The move fromobjectified, static knowledge to dynamic pro-cesses of knowing shifts the focus of theorizing

5 Ideally, theories should also be opportunity driven—thatis, anticipating opportunities for enlightened practice, in afashion perhaps best exemplified by the positive organiza-tion studies (POS) movement (e.g., Cameron, Dutton, &Quinn, 2003).

6 Thanks to both Don Hambrick and one of our reviewersfor discussions relevant to the notion of scope.

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to the activities that people engage in whiledealing with problems. In this view the act ofknowing influences what is known and how it isknown (see also Morgan, 1983, and his discus-sion of “research as engagement”). Knowledge,therefore, inheres in the activities that individ-uals engage in to deal with their day-to-dayinteractions. This pragmatist philosophical ori-entation has had some influence on organiza-tional scholarship. Pentland (1992), Cook andBrown (1999), Brown and Duguid (2001), Or-likowski (2002), and Nag, Corley, and Gioia(2007), among others, all have studied connec-tions between the content knowledge of organi-zation members (i.e., what they know) and theirsocial practices (i.e., what they do). Cook andBrown (1999) treat practices as actions informedby meanings grounded in specific contexts. Inthis fashion, knowledge is viewed more as arecursive dialogue between practice (action)and meanings (cognition).

It is only a small leap from these works, whichfocus on people at work, to treating ourselves (astheorists) in a similar fashion as we examineour theorizing practices and our assumptionsabout what constitutes a contribution. In thislight it becomes apparent that we should con-duct a more intimate dialogue between practice(actions of practitioners) and meanings (theoret-ical contributions that both derive from and in-form practice). A practice view of theoreticalknowledge also connotes a significant shift be-cause focusing on theoretical knowledge assomehow independent of its pragmatics over-looks the processes through which knowledgeuse, value, and utility emerge “from the ongoingand situated actions of organizational membersas they engage the world” (Orlikowski, 2002:249).

The most important insight from a practiceorientation concerning the assessment of theo-retical contribution is that theoretical knowl-edge does not exist as a set of theory-buildingrules independent of actual practice; rather, itbecomes inextricably intertwined with the man-ifestations of the theoretical knowledge in prac-tice (and vice versa). The two key notions arisingfrom adopting a practice view of knowledge,then, are (1) that knowledge should be treated asprocess and (2) that the production of knowledgeshould be treated as a recursive dialogue be-tween theorists and reflective practitioners. Theupshot of this orientation is that merely holding

theoretical knowledge contributes little if thatknowledge is not exhibited in organizationalpractice and does not affect practices other thanour own theorizing practices. In addition, how-ever, widely influential theorizing should alsohold the potential for trying to identify domainsthat will soon be in need of theorizing (e.g., vir-tual societies, sustainability, accelerating glob-alization, new models of management not basedon the preeminence of economic factors).

An Orientation Toward Prescience to Increasethe Utility of Our Theoretical Contributions

On what level might scholars most influencepractice? As noted, because our theoretical workis aimed at more general formulations, it is oftenremoved from direct application to particularproblems. For that reason our potential for influ-ence in practical domains is often limited. If wewant to have more influence on society’s conver-sations and better fulfill our adaptive role insociety, we also should direct our energies andcapabilities at focusing on the future of manag-ing and organizing. Such an observation sug-gests that we should try to theorize about incip-ient organizational, managerial, and societalissues and problems—that is, we should work todevelop what we term theoretical prescience.Prescience is most often defined in terms of fore-knowledge, foresight, or forecasting of events.For the purposes of better executing our adap-tive role, however, prescience involves antici-pating and influencing the type of managerialknowledge needed to deal with coming societaland organizational concerns. More specifically,theoretical prescience can be defined as the pro-cess of discerning what we need to know andinfluencing the intellectual framing of what weneed to know to enlighten both academic andreflective practitioner domains. In our view, pre-scient scholarship not only fulfills the usual roleof supplying conceptual knowledge used almostexclusively in scholar-to-scholar communiquesbut also anticipates the conversations bothscholars and societal leaders should be havingand influences the framing of those conversa-tions in conceptual terms.

On theoretical prescience. Abraham Lincoln isoften credited with the observation that “thebest way to predict the future is to create it.”Computer scientist Alan Kay famously articu-lated a small adaptation of this pithy statement

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in posing that “the best way to predict the futureis to invent it.” We would suggest a modestvariation on this theme by noting that perhapsthe best way to predict the future is to influencethe conversation about what it could or shouldbe. This orientation includes but goes beyondthe notion of detecting “weak signals” (Shoe-maker & Day, 2009) and discerning where trendsare likely to lead—or, as Bennis has put it, “It’snot as important to know where the puck is nowas to know where it will be” (2003: 194; citinghockey star Wayne Gretzky). Prescience, in ourview, involves not only sensitivity toward devel-oping trends but acting to influence those trendsvia prospective sensemaking (Gioia, Corley, &Fabbri, 2002; Weick, 1979, 1995) and sensegiving(Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991; Maitlis & Lawrence,2007)—in other words, giving meaning to ambig-uous informational cues and articulating viableinterpretations and actions to cope with comingorganizational and environmental demands.

In terms of broadening the scope of our theo-retical contributions, then, we do not view pre-science as a matter of “predicting the future” orgazing at a crystal ball. Prescience in our termsis a matter of anticipating and, more important,influencing the definition of significant organi-zational problem domains to illuminate an im-portant area for consideration—that is, drawingattention to areas we need to understand from atheoretical point of view that have relevance forsignificant organizational and societal issuesand problems—as opposed to trying to predictthe next big theory from a purely intellectualviewpoint and, thus, increasing the likelihood ofcreating the next managerial fad (see Abraha-mson, 1991). An orientation toward prescienceaccentuates the notion that we in academiashould be leading-edge thinkers—we should be-come more oriented toward advancing not onlythe field’s relevance to future scholarship butalso the field’s relevance to reflective practiceconcerning problems that matter (Pfeffer, 1993;Schon, 1983).

For instance, it is apparent that sustainabilityis an important issue to theorize about for theforeseeable future. Sustainability is currentlyviewed as “atheoretical,” so it becomes appar-ent that prescient theoretical work should bedevoted to issues of sustainability and otherconcepts in its nomological net (e.g., implica-tions of global climate change for organizingand organization [Gjelten, 2009] and employee

and leadership issues arising from the eco-nomic shifts accompanying green organizingand green firms). Or consider the emergence ofdo-it-yourself (DIY) manufacturing (Anderson,2010), a rising phenomenon involving virtualteams that develop open source plans for ob-jects such as circuit boards, custom tools, furni-ture, and even cars, which are then outsourcedto a small batch manufacturer who produces aprototype and offers to set up production for aset price (if it is not intended to be a one-offproject). These small, extremely flexible, andsurprisingly profitable companies represent anew form of organizing better suited for dealingwith an era where transaction costs become al-most nonexistent because of the potential fordistributed innovation in our digitally intercon-nected society (Lakhani & Panetta, 2007).

Other current examples of nonobvious orga-nizing (e.g., Linux, Wikipedia, Grameen Bank)suggest that our theorizing has done an inade-quate job of anticipating and accounting forthese kinds of organizations, a problem likely tobe magnified in the future if we do not encour-age some form of prescience in our theorizing.The implications for organizational theories,from the micro (e.g., psychological contracts,compensation/motivation, leadership) to themacro (e.g., organizing, institutional change)and strategic (competitive dynamics, agencytheory), could be significant. Similarly, onecould imagine prescient management theorytouching on issues ranging from demographicshifts in society (affecting our OB and HR do-mains) to social changes arising from techno-logical advances (e.g., value of privacy, virtualsocieties, artificial intelligence) to strategic/institutional changes arising from trends in lo-cal and national governance.

Because the current view of what constitutes acontribution is oriented toward making judg-ments mainly on the basis of conceptual origi-nality and utility—where utility is rather nar-rowly defined as useful for further (scientific)concept development—we believe our scholarlycommunity needs to try to develop an orienta-tion toward prescience to make informed infer-ences about what will be important to know andto conceptualize. To broaden the scope of ourinfluence in making theoretical contributions,management scholars need to more credibly en-act our adaptive role by generating theory thatanticipates problem domains that will inform

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future thought and action.7 Incorporating a fu-ture orientation can help keep our theories notonly vibrant but also relevant in a constantlychanging landscape of organizational realities.Additionally, we believe that over time, as pre-science becomes more prominent in our theoret-ical formulations, the distinctions between sci-entifically useful and practically useful willbegin to blur.

Attributes of prescient scholarship. Althoughwe recognize that not all organization-al/managerial scholars will (or should) try toadopt or practice prescient theorizing, we none-theless think it is important for the field to en-courage those interested in attempting to buildprescient theory. Toward this end, we identifytwo key attributes that would be hallmarks ofprescient scholarship.

First and foremost, prescient theorizing woulddirect attention toward future problem domains.Prescient scholars would first attend to cues inthe present in a way that suggests that someconsequential issues or problems might need tobe addressed by management scholars in thefuture. This orientation does not involve somesort of academic clairvoyance but, rather, a fo-cus on what we might term projective futurism.As an example of such an orientation, climatol-ogy data indicate that global temperatures arewithin historical fluctuations, so we cannot ob-jectively assert that the globe is warming. Yetbecause of rising levels of various greenhousegases and so forth we have sound theoreticalbases for arguing and predicting that climatechange is a threat and will soon be demonstra-bly out of the envelope of normal fluctuationsand, therefore, that prudent action is necessarynow. Those actions are likely to have implica-tions for organizing differently, and we shouldtry to be anticipating possible theoretical impli-cations. The same could be said for advances inartificial intelligence and the impact they willhave on workforce decisions and strategic plan-ning in organizations of the future, or changes inprivacy law following in the wake of popularsocial networking technologies. Likewise, pay-

ing attention to popular press and news sourcesthat report on cutting-edge business can provideearly insight into new phenomena (like the DIYmanufacturing example) that serve as a harbin-ger of emerging trends. Similar logic applies toour existing theories of organizing and manag-ing; a prescient theorist would ask, “What is itabout current models that are insufficient to ac-count for likely future trends such that we needdifferent or embellished theories to account forreasonable projections?”

Prescient scholars would, therefore, developan orientation toward prospection—they wouldassume the role of making informed projectionsabout coming issues, act as if those issues havemanifested, and then infer what theoretical do-mains need attention or invention. The military,for instance, has noted that traditional orienta-tions and actions have involved informed retro-spection, which has enabled it to better fight thelast war. The military’s new orientation is to ask,“In what ways can we prospectively imaginehow to better fight the next war?” The tradi-tional retrospective sensemaking orientation(wherein we ask ourselves what consequencesour actions have had, leading to a better under-standing of the past) inevitably produces refine-ments in current ways of thinking. Organizationstudies have been mostly retrospectively ori-ented, which has had the consequence of fulfill-ing mainly our “maintenance” role in society.We would benefit from adopting a notion of pro-spective sensemaking (Gioia et al., 2002), even ifit is usually a variation on the theme of retro-spective sensemaking (Weick, 1979)—that is,casting ourselves figuratively into the futureand acting as if events have already occurredand then making “retrospective” sense of thoseimagined events.

Second, and equally important, prescient the-orizing involves a focus on sensegiving. It is notenough simply to refine our prospective sense-making abilities. It is also important to articu-late the sense made in a way that affects thecharacter of both academic and reflective prac-titioner discussions, as well as the spectrum ofpossible actions that ensue from exercising in-fluence over the framing and tenor of the discus-sions—that is, we need to become more adept atsensegiving (i.e., Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991;Maitlis & Lawrence, 2007). It is in this domainthat we can better fulfill our adaptive role insociety. Doing so implies more attention not only

7 We are not advocating that all or even most theoreticalefforts should aim for prescience, or that prescience shouldbecome a key dimension for manuscript evaluation. We aresuggesting, however, that an orientation toward prescienceshould become a not uncommon hallmark associated withsome of our best theorizing.

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to new ideas but ideas that have a more proxi-mal relationship to practice than has been ourtradition. This means finding ways to communi-cate our sense made (i.e., our theoretical contri-butions) such that those most likely to find ourwork pragmatically useful (i.e., thoughtful prac-titioners) understand it and are motivated to ap-ply it.

Consider an endeavor that is parallel to thetask of trying to gauge contribution—trying toassess “creativity.” Creativity in business is dif-ferent from creativity in the arts. Creativity inthe arts is usually defined mainly in terms ofnovelty (Amabile, 1996). In business, however,creativity has two key dimensions: novelty andpragmatic value (Ford & Gioia, 1995). We wouldargue that we should be encouraging both ofthese dimensions in trying to formulate contri-butions to theory that have wider scope; in otherwords, we should be offering not just original orrevelatory insights but new insights that arevaluable for advancing ideas with a praxis di-mension—melding two of Aristotle’s three kindsof knowledge, theoria (theory) and praxis (prac-tice)—in a way that practice informs theory, andvice versa. As we have noted above, historicalwritings in organization studies have acknowl-edged these orthogonal dimensions implicitly(i.e., in the form of the originality and utilitycriteria), but the de facto outcome has been no-tably more attention to the originality criterion.We believe an orientation toward presciencewould enhance our potential for grander scopein making theoretical contributions.

DISCUSSION

Precisely what constitutes a theoretical con-tribution in organization and management stud-ies is a vexing question that cannot be an-swered definitively, although it does seem tohave a conventional answer—for example, “Thenotion of contribution—like many other abstractconcepts, such as quality or truth—is somewhatsubjective and can only be assessed in the con-text of each unique manuscript” (Rynes, 2002:311). Our initial approach to addressing thisquestion was to review the existing literatureand provide a synthesis of current views. Thatsynthesis suggests that theoretical contributionpresently has two germane dimensions, origi-nality (classified as either incremental or reve-latory) and utility (scientific and/or pragmatic

usefulness), with a strong preference in thescholarly community for works that are revela-tory/surprising and carry mainly scientificvalue. We have summarized the current idiomfor declaring a theoretical contribution in Figure1, which provides a framework for scholars toassess whether an idea will be seen as makinga theoretical contribution.

If we take a more critical and expansive viewof our scholarly potential and ask whether it ispossible to make the grand notion of “theory”more pertinent to solving significant manage-rial and societal problems, we might ask themore pointed question, “What would constitutea theoretical contribution beyond that engen-dered by the currently accepted criteria—that is,a contribution to theory that is relevant not onlyfor scholar-to-scholar consumption but one withgreater scope and potential to influence currentand future organizational practice?” We agreewith Whetten’s assertion that “the mission of atheory-development journal is to challenge andextend existing knowledge” (1989: 491). Yet wewould encourage a conceptualization of an evenmore robust theory, one that has greater reachand would enable organization studies to real-ize its potential as both thought leader and prac-tice leader in the wider society. We take seri-ously Katz and Kahn’s (1966) observation thatorganizations and institutions can be viewed asfulfilling various societal roles, and we hold tothe ideal that academia is charged with theresponsibility of fulfilling both maintenanceand adaptive roles in society. Our assessment ofthe current criteria for judging theoretical con-tribution, however, has led us to conclude thatwe have not enacted our adaptive role as wellas we could. For that reason our approach tomaking a contribution to theory in a paper abouttheoretical contribution is to suggest a renewedand recursive consideration of the practice ele-ment for theory development, in part by suggest-ing that authors adopt an orientation towardprescience as an avenue not only to improve ourrelevance to practice but also to enhance ourinfluence in society.

Huff (1999) memorably characterized researchand writing as a series of multidimensional con-versations. To get the most out of each of theseconversations, she counseled that we scholarsconsider four guiding questions. Our concernwith importance for practice, foresight, andsensegiving has implications for each of these

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questions: (1) “Which conversations should Iparticipate in?” (those that will make the great-est difference for science and practice); (2) “Whoare the important ‘conversants’?” (scholars andpractitioners); (3) “What are scholars talkingabout now?” (answer this question mainly forthe purpose of discerning a point of departurefor tomorrow’s question); and (4) “What are themost interesting things I can add to the conver-sation?” (those that direct conversation towardwhat needs to be known for the present and thefuture).

If we attend to the overarching message con-veyed by the relevance of practice and pre-science to our theorizing, it encourages us astheorists to raise our own awareness of the lim-itations of our historical ways of thinking andsuggests viable grounds for reconsidering howwe might think more broadly about our mostimportant activity—generating new theory withscope (i.e., theory that contains both scientificand pragmatic usefulness). Thinking in suchterms also encourages us to be a bit more intel-lectually adventurous. As Mintzberg has noted,“If there is no generalizing beyond the data, notheory. No theory, no insight. And if no insight,why do research?” (2005: 361). We would add thatif theory does not have the potential for foresightand for changing the conversation, why do the-ory building? Our charge, then, is to becomemore expansive in our theorizing, to work toinfuse our theorizing with significance for prac-tice—present and future—and to “give sense” towider communities within society about the rel-evance of our theoretical work.

On Practice

If we embrace the idea that we are scholarscharged with the responsibility of generatingand disseminating useful knowledge, then thenotion of utility simply must extend beyond theimplicitly accepted idea that “useful for theorydevelopment” is the sole criterion of conse-quence and begin to account for relevance topractice in a much more substantive manner.Kilduff notes that “the route to good theory leadsnot through gaps in the literature but through anengagement with problems in the world” (2006:252). This sort of observation means that wemust begin to “choose our theories according tohow useful they are, not how true they are”(Mintzberg, 2005: 356). Our current tradition has

tended to turn us into a closed community con-ducting a dialogue with ourselves (Miller,Greenwood, & Prakash, 2009), which implies thatwe have unwittingly focused some of the bestminds in the world on a sphere too small fortheir capacity for greater contribution. We can-not be a closed community if our intent is toinfluence current and future organization stud-ies and practice (which should be our intent,given our adaptive role in society).

We are a professional field (Adler, 2006; Pfef-fer & Fong, 2002). Rather than downplaying theimportance of pragmatic contribution, weshould celebrate it by formally bringing thatdimension more prominently into our judgmentstructures and processes. We need to focus moreon contributions of a grander scope by includingutility for practice in our assessments of theory.To date, our most influential (and most highlycited) theories (e.g., macrolevel theories, such asnew institutional theory, resource dependencetheory, contingency theory, agency theory, andtransaction cost theory; meso theories, such associal capital and organizational identity andorganizational learning; and microlevel theo-ries, such as equity theory, procedural justicetheory, goal theory, and prospect theory) havebeen formulated for scholars but nonethelesshave major pragmatic implications that expandtheir scope (see Adler & Kwon, 2002; Benner &Tushman, 2003; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Ol-iver, 1991; Reed & DeFillippi, 1990; and Ring &Van de Ven, 1994, for AMR articles we believeexemplify this notion of scope). How do we getsuch scope? By thinking in a more encompass-ing fashion about what we ought to be doing astheorists. One avenue for doing so is to pursue apractice view of knowledge generation (i.e., the-ory development) in the venerable philosophicaltradition of American pragmatism.

Our arguments in this paper resonate withthose in a recent spate of articles focused on theissue of balancing methodological rigor andpractical relevance in empirical managementresearch (see the “Editor’s Forum” in volume 50,issue 4, of the Academy of Management Journaland the “Editor’s Choice” section in volume 18,issue 4, of the Journal of Management Inquiry).All address the general question of how busi-ness schools can better “pursue fundamentalunderstanding of phenomena with the goal oftackling major real-world problems” (Tushman& O’Reilly, 2007: 769). Unfortunately, an implicit

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assumption in much of this debate appears to bethat scholarly journals that favor theoretical de-velopment eschew pragmatic relevance—a be-lief seemingly based in the peculiar assumptionthat theoretical contribution and pragmatic rel-evance are somehow incompatible (see Tush-man & O’Reilly, 2007, for an exception). They arenot; theoretical contribution and pragmatic rel-evance clearly can and sometimes do workhand in hand. There is nothing about the natureof either theory or practice that prevents themfrom being served simultaneously (cf. Gulati,2007). Ultimately, we believe the dimensions oforiginality and utility/scope can come togetherto produce theories that make a difference forscience and practice. The question is simplywhether we as an academic discipline canchange our own practices to better account forthe issues and problems central to the organi-zations we study. We believe that achievingscope in our theorizing should be an institu-tional goal for our field.

On Prescience

Those from outside academia reading our the-oretical work might reasonably conclude thatwe have a rather impoverished view of whatconstitutes a contribution if we emphasizemainly clever insights and intellectual useful-ness. As Polzer et al. note, “The failure of busi-ness school research to either anticipate ordeeply understand some of the most fundamen-tal challenges of our times threatens the legiti-macy of our enterprise” (2009: 280). In a turbulentera of organizational ambiguity and complexity,a key task is to try to be prescient about what isimportant to theorize about—and such pre-science will undoubtedly lead us to focus onproblem domains with significant import for fu-ture practice. Relatedly, Kilduff, citing Lakatos(1970), notes that one of the “important criteriafor evaluating theory is the extent to which itruns ahead of existing empirical research interms of alerting us to research opportunitieshitherto unanticipated” (2006: 252–253). To thisobservation we would add that our theorizingshould not just be running ahead of empiricalresearch but, rather, should be anticipatingcoming conceptual domains in need of theoryand research.

Hambrick, in his critique of our field’s overem-phasis on theory, agrees with Helfat (2007) in

proposing that we begin by generating practicalfacts “that can inform us as to what we need atheory for” (2007: 1349). Of course, we theoristsare not necessarily attuned to the complex dy-namics of the organizational world, and wecould use some help in picking up the weaksignals (Shoemaker & Day, 2009) that suggestareas ripe for theoretical development. PennState’s Smeal College of Business publishes aperiodic “Early Indications” electronic newslet-ter written by a practitioner-academic whokeeps his antennae tuned to the business envi-ronment. Similarly, the School of InformationScience and Technology’s “Institute for GlobalPrescience” is run by a “Professor of Practice”(similar to the thirty-person foresight staff atMercedes-Benz’s Society and Technology Re-search Group). There also are organizations thatare attuned to future trends, such as the Institutefor the Future (iftf.org), the McKinsey Global In-stitute (mckinsey.com/mgi), and Deloitte’s Cen-ter for the Edge (Deloitte, 2009). Each of theseearly-warning systems signals issue and prob-lem domains in need of conceptual developmentand raises the possibility that even the way westructure ourselves to generate and disseminatetheory may need to change.

Our view of prescience, however, encouragesscholars to become not only early sensemakersbut also early sensegivers—that is, not only tosee the coming wave but to attempt to shape theconceptual conversation by influencing the pre-mises on which the conversation is predicated(Simon, 1959, 1991). Framing matters for creatinginfluence, but we as a field have drawn theboundaries of our intended influence so nar-rowly that we have unintentionally abdicatedour societal leadership responsibilities. A focuson foresight also represents a way of helping toachieve societal influence without the polemicsimplied in Pfeffer’s (1993) AMR article (a BestArticle), which essentially suggests that weshould dispense with multiparadigm ap-proaches to organization study so that we canachieve the kind of paradigm consensus associ-ated with other fields that ostensibly have beenmore successful at garnering resources. An ori-entation toward prescience implies that regard-less of theoretical approach, so long as that ap-proach is attuned to identifying or anticipatingtheoretically and pragmatically relevant futureproblem domains, the desired societal influenceis more likely to follow. An orientation toward or

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at least a sensitivity to prescience as an at-tribute of theoretical contribution does notmerely constitute an addition to a “theory oftheoretical contribution”; it also changes theway we think about our traditional notions ofcontribution itself. Admittedly, this orientationmakes the practice of theory generation morechallenging because it forces us out of our intel-lectual comfort zone, but then maturation (evenas a field) is never an easy undertaking.

Implications for Our Practice

Miller (2007) refers to the “straightjacket” manytop-tier journals put on authors that restricts thenotion of contribution to “topics that fit neatlywithin today’s popular theories and allow the de-velopment and tweaking of those theories” (Milleret al., 2009: 278). DiMaggio (1995) notes the extent towhich the “cultural resonance” of theories affectstheir receptivity (i.e., the degree to which a giventheory aligns with the cultural beliefs of the timeand of the scholarly audience for the theory). Asgatekeepers for the most desired and valued out-come in our academic pursuits (published arti-cles), journal editors will obviously have decisiveinfluence on the likelihood any change will beimplemented. If the editorial teams of our top-tierjournals continue to reward only those papersdemonstrating theoretical contributions that arescientifically but not pragmatically useful, littlewill change in the way authors practice the devel-opment of theory. We have experienced this in ourown attempts to focus our theory development onthe pragmatic aspects of a phenomenon, as evi-denced by the following reviewer comment con-cerning one of the authors’ recent manuscriptsthat attempted a melding of academic and prac-titioner voices in the paper: “Your narrative attimes sounded like a practitioner rendition.” Al-though our author’s reply attempted to explain(and perhaps educate) the reviewer on the value ofa pragmatic aspect to theory building, it remainsto be seen whether this reviewer will be convincedof the wisdom of trying to bring convergence toacademic and practitioner views.

If, however, journal editors become more opento contributions that demonstrate originalityand scope (scientific � pragmatic usefulness)and encourage these dimensions in guidelinesto authors and reviewers, then reviewers willbegin to shift how they assess theoretical con-tribution. Authors will then be rewarded for de-

veloping more pragmatically useful (and per-haps even prescient) theoretical contributions tomatch the shifting expectations of journals. If wedo not soon change our scholarly traditions inways that enhance theoretical relevance topractice and our sensegiving potential to thewider audiences, then we will continue to un-derperform our adaptive role in society and con-demn ourselves to increasing irrelevance anddiminishing influence in describing, explaining,understanding, and improving organizationsand their management.

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Whetten, D. A. 1989. What constitutes a theoretical contribu-tion? Academy of Management Review, 14: 490–495.

Whetten, D. A. 1990. Editor’s comments: Personal comments.Academy of Management Review, 15: 578–583.

Woodman, R. W., Sawyer, J. E., & Griffin, R. W. 1993. Towarda theory of organizational creativity. Academy of Man-agement Review, 18: 293–321.

Kevin G. Corley ([email protected]) is an associate professor of management inthe W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University and an associate editorof the Academy of Management Journal. He received his Ph.D. from The PennsylvaniaState University. His research interests focus on sensemaking and organizing pro-cesses, especially in relation to organizational change and identity, image, identifi-cation, and knowledge.

Dennis A. Gioia ([email protected]) is the Klein Professor of Management in the SmealCollege of Business at The Pennsylvania State University. His doctoral degree is fromFlorida State. Previously he worked as an engineer for Boeing Aerospace at CapeKennedy during the Apollo program and for Ford as corporate recall coordinator.Current theory/research focuses on the ways in which identity and image relate tosensemaking, sensegiving, and organizational change.

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