Search results

The purpose of this study is to fill a gap in evolutionary theorizing in the field of information systems. Evolutionary theorizing has recently been added as a useful tool to the research repertoire of information systems investigators. However, the literature on evolutionary theorizing and related empirical research lacks a clear framework that explicitly shows how information systems researchers can go, step-by-step, from a generic model of the evolution of traits in our ancestral past to a more specific model depicting the effects of technology facilitation of those traits among modern humans. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap through a framework composed of six stages.

To discuss and illustrate the framework, the authors develop an easy-to-understand generic path model explicitly depicting relationships among variables related to events that occurred in our evolutionary past. We then incrementally adapt this generic path model, eventually arriving at a focused path model depicting causal relationships among social networking site use, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job performance. In doing so, the authors also develop a theoretical model about how social networking site use can affect job performance, where a positive total effect is predicted via positive intermediate effects on job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

To discuss the final stage in the framework, the authors present an illustrative example where the focused path model is tested based on a study of the effect of Facebook use on job performance among 178 working professionals across the USA. This illustrative example provides general support for the theoretical model.

The counterintuitive hypothesis that Facebook use is associated with increased job performance is supported.

Social networking site use by organizational employees is likely to be associated with improved job performance.

This study provides a clear framework that shows how researchers can go from a generic evolutionary path model in our ancestral past to a more specific model comprising technology effects in modern humans.

The article's aim is to refine prospects for theorising in public sector accounting (PSA) research in order to capture the methodological benefits promised by its multi-disciplinarity.

The study primarily employs a bibliometric analysis of research outputs invoking New Public Management (NPM). Applying a content analysis to Hood (1991), as the most cited NPM source, bibliographic methods and citation/co-citation analysis for the period 1991 to 2018 are mobilised to identify the disciplinary evolution of the NPM knowledge base from a structural and longitudinal perspective.

The analysis exhibits disciplinary branching of NPM over time and its imprints on post-1990 PSA research. Given the discourse about origins of NPM-based accounting research, there are research domains behind the obvious that indicate disciplinary fragmentations. For instance, novelty of PSA research is found in public value accounting, continuity is evidenced by transcending contextual antecedents. Interestingly, these domains are loosely coupled. Exploring the role of disciplinary imprints designates prospects for post-NPM PSA research that acknowledges multi-disciplinarity and branching in order to deploy insularity as a building block for its inquiries.

Criteria for assessing the limitations and credibility of an explorative inquiry are used, especially on how the proposal to develop cumulative knowledge from post-1990 PSA research can be further developed.

A matrix suggesting a method of ordering disciplinary references enables positioning of research inquiries within PSA research.

By extending common taxonomies of PSA intellectual heritages, the study proposes the ‘inquiry-heritage’ matrix as a typology that displays patterns of theorisation for positioning an inquiry within PSA disciplinary groundings.

Erving Goffman has been variously interpreted as a symbolic interactionist, a structural functionalist, or an a-structural power-game theorist. However, when considering Goffman’s affiliation with the human ecology (HEC) of Robert Park and Everett Hughes, one is able to shed new light on Goffman’s relationship to the aforementioned sociological paradigms. This chapter will demonstrate that his Darwinist underpinnings and overall implicit evolutionary perspective allowed him to develop a dramaturgical theory that explicates how actors are able to understand, predict, anticipate, accommodate to, and influence others while pursuing one’s own or own group’s interests, through one or more of role “taking,” “playing,” and “making.” Furthermore, Goffman elaborates upon Park’s use of dramaturgy, following him in making more room for competition and inequalities in status and power, and offering new dimensions and categories for specifying when and why different adaptive strategies will be used, within different types and degrees of accommodation. Ecological dramaturgy is the term we give to these interdependent lines of social action within stratification contexts. Such structural concerns ultimately separate Goffman from the more subjective and less deductive elements of traditional symbolic interactionist thought. We argue that Goffman’s much neglected ecological and evolutionary-minded approach to role-taking and its inspired analysis of competitive interactive processes provide a missing link in better understanding his complicated intellectual heritage.

For service research to develop as an applied social science there is the need to refresh the process of theorizing so it focuses not only on increasing new academic knowledge but also on knowledge that is managerially relevant. This paper aims to provide guidelines to achieve this.

A theorizing process that integrates general theoretic perspectives and contextual research to develop midrange theory is developed. The process is based on the philosophical foundations of pragmatism and abductive reasoning, which has the origins in the 1950s when the management sciences were being established.

A recent research stream that develops midrange theory about customer and actor engagement is used to illustrate the theorizing process.

Practicing managers, customers and other stakeholders in a service system use theory, so there is a need to focus on how theory is used in specific service contexts and how this research leads to academic knowledge that is managerially relevant. Thus, as applied social science, service research needs to explicitly focus on bridging the theory–praxis gap with midrange theory by incorporating a general theoretic perspective and contextual research.

The contribution comes from providing a broader framework to guide the theorizing process that integrates general theoretic perspectives and applied research to develop midrange theory. While general theories operate at the most abstract level of conceptualization, midrange theories are context-specific and applied theory (theories-in-use) is embedded in empirical research.

General theories have been criticized for their inability to explore the mechanics of more specific domain knowledge and understand how, when and where general theory applies to and extends domain knowledge in supply chain management (SCM). Middle-range theorizing (MRT) is a potential solution to this limitation. This paper aims to assist researchers in understanding the relationship between MRT and general theorizing (GT) and connecting MRT research findings to general theory.

This research provides a structured literature review of 518 articles, from eight journals in logistics, SCM and operations management. Theoretically based articles are analyzed by primary domain and SCM context.

There are frameworks for conducting MRT; however, the literature does not sufficiently assist researchers in understanding how middle-range (MR) theory should relate to general theory. Findings include a better understanding of underserved areas in SCM, guideline frameworks for understanding when to apply MRT, when to apply GT and how MRT knowledge can be connected to SCM domain knowledge.

This study provides a timely and appropriate compilation of theory research in SCM, including significant implications for both theory and practice, by helping to articulate the evolving philosophy of science in SCM.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how a systematic application of middle-range theorizing, which pays particular attention to contexts and mechanisms, can be used to extend current knowledge on logistics customer service (LCS) in a number of critical areas.

The paper applies Stank et al.’s (2017) framework for middle-ranging theorizing in logistics to develop a research framework and agenda that can guide future LCS research. Results are generated through a review of the LCS literature and an application of the main concepts of middle-range theorizing.

The paper outlines opportunities for middle-range research that would extend LCS knowledge in the areas of human and behavioral factors, time-based competition, supply chain complexity, and digitization and technological innovation.

Describing the main characteristics of middle-range theorizing and how middle-range theorizing can be fruitfully applied to LCS research should help to stimulate new knowledge creation in this important area of supply chain logistics management.

By focusing on why and when questions, middle-range theorizing engages with the practical realities of LCS that interest managers and students. Middle-range theorizing moves researchers toward developing a detailed understanding of what actually has to change in order for desired LCS-related outcomes to occur and the contextual factors likely impacting the change process. The paper should, therefore, allow managers to better translate LCS theory into action.

Middle-range theorizing remains new to the supply chain logistics field. The application of middle-range theorizing to LCS research, and logistics research more generally, demands new perspectives on established relationships with the potential to drive original research in areas most relevant to managers.

This to show how critical success factors (CSFs) from practitioner-oriented research can be tested and used to generate new theory.

This paper uses an extended example regarding the integration of IT departments following organizational mergers and acquisitions to illustrate in proof of concept that such practitioner-oriented research can generate new substantive theory and be used to begin a cycle of representation-testing leading to enhancing domain knowledge. The method used consists of the identification of an exemplary practitioner-oriented research article, restatement of CSFs into testable propositions, gathering data through interviews with phenomenon participants, analyzing and interpreting data relative to these CSFs, then presenting the results pertaining to these CSFs and observations from examining them holistically.

No CSFs were affirmed in all cases, neither were they rejected in all cases. The pattern of answers reveals a significant difference between factors representing general management best practices and technical practices. The higher frequency among management factors shows a relative universality to these items, whereas the technical issues are noted less frequently as they each apply to smaller subsets of all post mergers and acquisitions integrations but remain critical when they do apply. This set of responses suggests that the frequency of responses does not indicate the importance of any given factor across settings.

This study suggests (1) CSFs, while generally helpful, can also be misleading when applied such that, where of potential importance, they can be brought into a theorizing mode for refinement and extraction of additional knowledge; (2) that CSFs can be sorted into those tending toward general management principles that apply most frequently in contrast to those of critical importance but applicable across fewer situations; and (3) that as a proof of concept the case to theory transformation method can work to introduce heuristic knowledge into a process-initiating theorizing, raising prospects for subsequent continued improvement.

Assuming robust reporting of CSFs in well-conducted cases, this study knows that at least in one setting these factors were important in achieving particular results. However, this study does not know, without subsequent testing and theorizing, whether the factor applies across circumstances and whether it requires particular handling (e.g. timing may be critical but relies on varied conditions to indicate when actions need be taken). By theorizing based upon CSFs for important IS phenomena, the authors create a bridge between knowledge as used in practice and the scientific tools for increasing its value over time.

Although the authors know of case and multiple case studies surfacing best practices in post mergers and acquisitions integrations, they know of no broad studies across numerous organizations; they also know of no studies demonstrating the relationship of management and technical CSFs in an IS phenomenon. Further, although there are other techniques advocated for theory initiation and building, the authors know of none that transforms heuristic or anecdotal knowledge for subsequent theorizing and continual improvement at a more detailed level than mid-range theory.

The purpose of this paper is to consider how practices of critical theorising directed towards present dilemmas of neoliberalisation might inadvertently participate in the reproduction of colonial power.

The paper adopts a critical theoretical approach, focussing on Wendy Brown’s recent work on neoliberalism in particular.

The paper argues that an alignment with colonial power is evident at a methodological level in Brown’s critique of neoliberalism and that this offers indication of how critical theorising in general might begin to reorient itself in ways that better ally it with the creation/promotion of decolonial possibility in contemporary contexts.

The paper makes original contribution to understanding of how western critical theorising actively participates in the reproduction of colonial power. Its value lies partly in demonstrating how this occurs in Brown’s specific case, and partly in suggesting correctives of more general applicability.

The paper aims to present the main perspectives and conclusions of a doctoral research in the history and philosophy of science conducted in France and Austria by the author on the project of “general systemology” (or “general system theory”) instigated by Ludwig von Bertalanffy.

A genealogical enquiry accounts for its scientific, philosophical and more generally cultural origins. Its genesis in Bertalanffy's works between 1926 and 1944 is explained. The process that led it to become a collective project is then discussed: the history of the Society for General Systems Research is considered, the ambivalence of its role with regard to general systemology being demonstrated. Finally, the unity of the diverse contributions to the latter's development is asserted in a framework put forward by the author in order to account for its structure and functions.

While stating a comprehensive view of its history, the paper characterizes general systemology as the project of a general science of systemic interpretation of the “real” which remains topical, although it was never fully actualized.

A new insight is thus provided on the scope and meaning of this hermeneutics: it meets the contemporary need for a better understanding of the foundations of systems research.

Scholars have called for diversity in methods and multi-method research to enhance relevance to practice. However, many of the calls have only gone so far as to suggest the use of multiple methods within the positivism paradigm, which dominates the discipline and may constrain the ability to develop middle-range theory and propose workable solutions to today’s supply chain challenges. The purpose of this paper is to present a rationale for expanding the methodological toolbox of the field to include interpretive research methods.

This research conceptually illustrates how positivist and interpretive philosophies translate into different research approaches by reviewing an extant positivist qualitative study that uses grounded theory and then detailing how an interpretive researcher would approach the same phenomenon using the hermeneutic method.

This research expands the boundaries and impact of the field by broadening the set of questions research can address. It contributes a detailed illustration of the interpretive research process, as well as applications for the interpretive approach in future research, particularly theory elaboration, middle-range theorizing, and emerging domains such as the farm-to-fork supply chain and the consumer-based supply chain.

The development of alternative ways of seeking knowledge enhances the potential for creativity, expansion, and progress in the field.

Practical implications of this research include enabling researchers to elaborate theory and develop middle-range theories through an alternative philosophical paradigm. This paradigm facilitates practical insights that are directly relevant to particular domains and move beyond general theories seeking generalizability.

Social implications of this research are much more indirect in nature. This research encourages supply chain management (SCM) scholars to look at phenomena (including those with social implications) from a different philosophical perspective, which can reveal new insights.

This research contributes a rationale for expanding the methodological toolbox of the field to include interpretive research methods and also contributes a methodological operationalization of the interpretive approach. By reflecting on the nature of science and method in SCM, the study opens the door for creativity and progress to expand the boundaries and impact of the field.