The interplay between theory and method

This Special Topic Forum on The Interplay Between Theory and Method contains six papers that collectively address a variety of quite practical and little addressed research process questions - from design to data collection to analysis to presentation. Individually, the papers explore how theory and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Academy of Management review 2007-10, Vol.32 (4), p.1145-1154
Main Authors: Van Maanen, John, Sørensen, Jesper B., Mitchell, Terence R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Business organization
Business studies
Management theory
Methodology
Methods
Organization theory
Organizational behavior
Research methods
Studies
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Summary:This Special Topic Forum on The Interplay Between Theory and Method contains six papers that collectively address a variety of quite practical and little addressed research process questions - from design to data collection to analysis to presentation. Individually, the papers explore how theory and method inevitably interact in particular organization and management studies and are best thought of as highly intertwined rather than conceptually independent. In this introduction, we offer an overview of how theory and method have been treated to date by organization researchers and suggest that respecting both the primacy of theory and the primacy of evidence is no easy task but a necessary balancing practice that characterizes high quality research. What constitutes good or useful theory (or methods) in the field remains up in the air and will differ by readers from distinct research communities and cannot be resolved through empirical validation (or theoretical advances) alone. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
ISSN:0363-7425
1930-3807
DOI:10.5465/AMR.2007.26586080