2. Agenda
In the Spirit of Scholarship
When Knowledge Wins: Transcending
The Sense & Nonsense of Academic
Rankings
What Constitutes a Theoretical
Contribution?
Building theory about theory building:
what constitutes a theoretical
contribution?
2
3. In the Spirit of Scholarship
Mike W. Peng (PhD, University
of Washington) is the Provost’s
Distinguished Professor of
Global Strategy at the
University of Texas at Dallas.
His research interests are
strategic management,
international business, global
strategy, and emerging
economies, with a focus on the
institution-based view.
3
Gregory G. Dess (PhD,
University of Washington) is the
Andrew Cecil Chair of Applied
Ethics at the University of Texas
at Dallas. His research interests
are strategic management,
knowledge management, and
entrepreneurship.
4. In the Spirit of Scholarship
1.criticism
(1)lack of relevance and lack of impact
on practice
(2)scholarly competition
2.defense
(1)the criticism is flawed
(2)scholarship competition resembles
Olympic Games:discipline, dedication
4
5. In the Spirit of Scholarship
we must go beyond such notions as
“what is popular in the popular press.”
as scholars our role is to develop and
test sound theory and not to compete
with The One Minute Manager.
three techniques of an effective manager:
one-minute goals,
one-minute praisings
one-minute reprimands.
5
6. In the Spirit of Scholarship
CONCLUSION
we all share the sacred responsibility to
“continuously enhance the value and visibility of
scholarship”
But perhaps most of us would agree that such an
approach, driven by the spirit of scholarship, is
better than managers prescribing, by analogy,
phlebotomy as Dr. Rush did, to every challenge
they face.
6
7. When Knowledge Wins: Transcending
The Sense & Nonsense of Academic
Rankings
Nancy J. Adler (PhD, UCLA) is
Anne-Wil Harzing (PhD, University of
Bradford) is professor at the
University of Melbourne, Australia.
Her research interests include
international HRM, HQ-subsidiary
relationships, cross-cultural
management, and the role of
language in international business.
Since 1999 she maintains an
extensive website (www.harzing.com)
with resources for international
management and academic
publishing.
theS. Bronfman Chair in
Management at McGill University,
Montreal, Canada. She conducts
research and consults on global
leadership and arts and
leadership. Dr. Adler is a Fellow
of the Academy of Management,
the Academy of International
Business, and the Royal Society
of Canada. Nancy is also a visual
artist. 7
8. When Knowledge Wins: Transcending
The Sense & Nonsense of Academic
Rankings
Jeffrey Garten (2006), in supporting Asia’s 21st
century revival of Nalanda, raised a fundamental
question: Do societies understand that real power
comes from great ideas and from the people who
generate them?
Do today’s universities, operating more than
sixteen centuries after the founding of Nalanda,
remember that their primary role is to support
scholarship that addresses the complex questions
that matter most to society?
8
9. When Knowledge Wins: Transcending
The Sense & Nonsense of Academic
Rankings
The worldwide community of scholars.
the Academy of Management (AOM)
The Association to Advance Collegiate
Schools of Business (AACSB)
Thomson Reuters Scientific
9
10. When Knowledge Wins: Transcending
The Sense & Nonsense of Academic
Rankings
The Financial Times,
recently asked “why
business ignores business
schools” and concluded
that business views
business school research
as irrelevant, pointedly
highlighting the fact that
“chief executives pay little
attention to what business
schools do or say”.
10
11. When Knowledge Wins: Transcending
The Sense & Nonsense of Academic
Rankings
academic ranking systems usually
include
(a) “fairness” in universities’ hiring,
promotion, and tenure decisions, and
(b) accountability and value-for-research-
dollars in the grant-awarding
processes of governments and other
providers of research funds (Murphy,
1996).
11
12. When Knowledge Wins: Transcending
The Sense & Nonsense of Academic
Rankings
RANKING SYSTEMS: THE ARBITRARY NATURE
OF DECISION CRITERIA
Which Publications to Include: The Need to
Become More Global and Comprehensive
Should be ranked according to productivity, impact,
and/or some surrogate for quality?
Why Only Journal Articles?
Why English Only?
12
13. When Knowledge Wins: Transcending
The Sense & Nonsense of Academic
Rankings
Assessing Quality: Journals Fail as Proxies for
Article Quality
Assessing Influence: Being Prolific Doesn’t
Guarantee Impact
Weighting Single Versus Multiauthored Articles: No,
It Is Not All the Same
Weighting the First Author: Recognizing Leadership
13
14. When Knowledge Wins: Transcending
The Sense & Nonsense of Academic
Rankings
DISCUSSION
“ . . . when we, as academics, plead powerlessness
in choosing what we research . . .because of
incentive and reward systems. . . , we dehumanize
our careers and our lives.”—Sara L. Rynes, Editor-in-
Chief
Professor of Management & Organizations,
University of Iowa
14
15. When Knowledge Wins: Transcending
The Sense & Nonsense of Academic
Rankings
we recommend that academia
(a) institute a temporary moratorium on institutional
rankings;
(b) attempt to better understand and subsequently
address the macrolevel dynamics that implicitly
collude in keeping such dysfunctional ranking
systems in place;
(c) redesign individual rankings to render them
more globally inclusive, accurate, and equitable;
and
(d)create environments that foster and appreciate
excellent scholarship on the questions that matter
most to business and society.
15
16. When Knowledge Wins: Transcending
The Sense & Nonsense of Academic
Rankings
Peter Rathjen—proclaimed that the main goal of
university research is to tackle society’s problems
(Buckridge, 2008). Rather than emphasizing the
university’s need to achieve top rankings,
he underscored its research mission: to contribute
to “both the store of human knowledge and the
innovation that will underpin economic advance[s].”
He went on to implicitly expose the dysfunctional
institutional pressures on the university, including
the “challenging research environment made more
demanding by the threat of the now defunct
Research Quality Framework (RQF).”
16
17. When Knowledge Wins: Transcending
The Sense & Nonsense of Academic
Rankings
The Future of Scholarship:Reclaiming the
Patrimony of Nalanda
The 21st century needs more international,
integrative, interesting, and important
research.
the question always remains: “Has the
scholar asked an important question and
investigated it in such a way that it has the
potential to advance societal understanding
and well-being?”
17
18. When Knowledge Wins: Transcending
The Sense & Nonsense of Academic
Rankings
18
communit
y
Rankin
g
count
Fair
popula
sense
or
nonsens
e
r competition
19. What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?
David A. Whetten
1989 Illinois University
David A. Whetten
Brigham Young University
AOM 55th President (2000)
BS, MS, Brigham Young University
PhD, Cornell University
19
20. What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?
This article is organized around three key
questions:
(a) What are the building blocks of theory
development?
(b) What is a legitimate value-added
contribution to theory development?
(c) What factors are considered in judging
conceptual papers?
20
21. What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?
The first section describes the
constituent elements of a theory.
The second section uses this
framework to establish standards for
the theory-development process.
The third section summarizes the
expectations of reviewers regarding
the substantive contribution and
appropriateness of AMR papers.
21
22. What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?
(a) What are the building blocks of theory
development?
Dubin (1978) a complete theory must contain four
essential elements: “what, how, why, and who,
where, when”
What
Which factors (variables, constructs, concepts)
logically should be considered as part of the
explanation of the social or individual phenomena
of interest two criteria exist for judging the extent to
which we have included the “right” factors
comprehensiveness (i.e,, are all relevant factors
included?) and parsimony (i.e., should some
factors be deleted because they add little additional
22
23. What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?
How
How are they related? Operationally this involves using
"arrows" to connect the "boxes."
What and How elements constitute the domain or
subject of the theory.
In particular, formal models aid theory developers and
users to assess the balance between parsimony and
completeness.
23
Means versus Ends in Opaque Institutional Fields:
Trading off Compliance and Achievement in Sustainability
Standard Adoption.
24. What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?
Why
What are the underlying psychological, economic,
or social dynamics that justify the selection of
factors and the proposed causal relationships?
This rationale constitutes the theory‘s
assumptions—the theoretical glue that welds the
model together.
During the theory-development process, logic
replaces data as the basis for evaluation.
The mission of a theory-development journal is to
challenge and extend existing knowledge, not
simply to rewrite it.
24
25. What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?
Why
Combining the Hows and the Whats produces the
typical model, from which testable propositions can
be derived.
The primary difference between propositions and
hypotheses is that propositions involve concepts,
whereas hypotheses require measures.
What and How describe; only Why explains.
25
26. What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?
Who, Where, When
Scholars who study the effects of time and context
on people and events keep asking nagging
questions like.
In their efforts to understand a social phenomenon
they tend to consider it only in familiar
surroundings and at one point in time.
26
27. What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?
(b) What is a legitimate value-added contribution to
theory development?
Most organizational scholars are not going to
generate a new theory from scratch. Instead, they
generally work on improving what already exists.
Poincare (1903) aptly noted, "Science is facts, just
as houses are made of stone. . . . But a pile of
stones is not a house, and a collection of facts is
not necessarily science.“
Therefore, theoretical insights come from
demonstrating how the addition of a new variable
significantly alters our understanding of the
phenomena by reorganizing our causal maps.
27
28. What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?
Three broad themes underlie this section:
First, proposed improvements addressing only a
single element of an existing theory are seldom
judged to be sufficient.
Second, theoretical critiques should marshal
compelling evidence. This evidence can be logical,
empirical, or epistemological.
Third, in general, theoretical critiques should
propose remedies or alternatives. critics should
share responsibility for crafting improved
conceptualizations.
28
29. What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?
(c) What factors are considered in judging
conceptual papers?
reviewers consider other factors, including clarity of
expression, impact on research, timeliness, and
relevance.
The following list of seven key questions, roughly in
the order of frequency in which they are invoked,
summarizes the concerns raised most frequently
by our reviewers.
“What's new? So what? Why so? Well done? Done
well? Why now? Who cares?”
29
30. What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?
What's new?
Does the paper make a significant, value-added
contribution to current thinking? (modifications or
extensions of current theories)
So what?
Will the theory likely change the practice of
organizational science in this area?
the purpose of the standard theoretical paper
should be to alter research practice, not simply to
tweak a conceptual model in ways that are of little
consequence.
30
31. What Constitutes a Theoretical
Contribution?
Why so?
Are the underlying logic and supporting evidence
compelling? Are the author's assumptions explicit?
Are the author's views believable?
Theory development papers should be built on a
foundation of convincing argumentation and
grounded in reasonable, explicit views of human
nature and organizational practice.
31
32. What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?
Well done?
Does the paper reflect seasoned thinking,
conveying completeness and thoroughness?
Are multiple theoretical elements (What, How, Why,
When-Where-Who) covered, giving the paper a
conceptually well-rounded, rather than a
superficial, quality?
Do the arguments reflect a broad, current
understanding of the subject?
If propositions are included, are they used
properly? Does the argument have any glaring
logical flaws?
32
33. What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?
Done well?
well written? flow logically? central ideas easily
accessed? Is it enjoyable to read? long enough to
cover the subject but short enough to be
interesting? format and content consistent with the
specifications in the Notice to Contributors?
Why now?
Is this topic of contemporary interest to scholars in
this area?
Will it likely advance current discussions, stimulate
new discussions, or revitalize old discussions?
33
34. What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?
Who cares?
What percentage of academic readers are
interested in this topic? A paper may be technically
adequate but inherently uninteresting to most of
our broad audience.
In conclusion
the theory-development process and criteria for
judging theoretical contributions need to be broadly
understood and accepted so that editors and
contributors can communicate effectively.
34
35. Kevin G. Corley
(kevin.corley@asu.edu) is an
associate professor of management in
the W. P. Carey School of Business at
Arizona State University and an
associate editor of the Academy of
Management Journal. He received his
Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State
University. His research interests
focus on sensemaking and organizing
processes, especially in relation to
organizational change and identity,
image, identification, and knowledge.
35
Building theory about theory building:
what constitutes a theoretical
contribution?
Dennis A. Gioia (dag4@psu.edu) is the
Klein Professor of Management in the
Smeal College of Business at The
Pennsylvania State University. His
doctoral degree is from Florida State.
Previously he worked as an engineer
for Boeing Aerospace at Cape
Kennedy during the Apollo program
and for Ford as corporate recall
coordinator. Current theory/research
focuses on the ways in which identity
and image relate to sensemaking,
sensegiving, and organizational
change.
36. SYNTHESIZING CURRENT VIEWS ON “WHAT CONSTITUTES A THEORETICAL
CONTRIBUTION”
36
Building theory about theory building:
what constitutes a theoretical
contribution?
37. Corley, K. G., & Gioia, D. A. (2011). Building theory about theory building: what
constitutes a theoretical contribution?. Academy of Management Review,36(1),
12-32.
37
38. References
Peng, M. W., & Dess, G. G. (2010). In the spirit of
scholarship. Academy of Management Learning &
Education, 9(2), 282-298.
Adler, N. J., & Harzing, A. W. (2009). When knowledge wins:
Transcending the sense and nonsense of academic
rankings. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 8(1),
72-95.
Whetten, D. A. (1989). What constitutes a theoretical
contribution?. Academy of management review, 14(4), 490-495.
Corley, K. G., & Gioia, D. A. (2011). Building theory about theory
building: what constitutes a theoretical contribution?. Academy
of Management Review,36(1), 12-32.
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_Minute_Manager
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Rush 38