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The purpose of this paper is to reflect on how to apply the abductive research process for developing a theoretical explanation in studies on performance management and management control systems. This is important because theoretically ambitious research tends to require explanatory study outcomes, but prior research frameworks provide little guidance in this regard, potentially facilitating ill-defined research designs and a lack of common vocabulary and criteria for evaluating studies.

The authors introduce a methodological framework that distinguishes three interwoven theoretical abstraction levels: descriptive, analytical and explanatory. They use a recently published qualitative field study to illustrate an application of the framework.

The framework and its illustrated application make the systematic logic of the abductive research process visible and accessible to researchers. The authors explain how the framework supports moving from empirical description to theoretical explanation during the research process and where the three levels might open spaces for the positioning of novel practices and conceptual and theoretical innovations.

The framework provides guidance for an explanatory research design and theory-building purpose and has been developed in response to recent criticism in the field that highlights the wide gap between leading-edge practice and the lagging state of theory. It offers interdisciplinary vocabulary and evaluation criteria that can be applied by any accounting and management researcher regardless of whether they pursue critical, interpretive or positivist research and whether they primarily use qualitative or quantitative research methods.

In this chapter, the authors critique dominant technocratic conceptions of rigor in management research and elaborate an alternative account of rigor that is rooted in methodology and involves a concern with the quality of scientific reasoning rather than a narrower focus on methods or measurement issues per se. Based on the proposed redefinition, the authors conceptualize how rigor, as an essential quality of reasoning, may be defined and the authors in turn qualify alternative methodological criteria for how they might assess the rigor of any particular piece of research. In short, with this chapter the authors’ overall aim is to shift the basis of rigor to an altogether more legitimate and commensurable notion that squarely puts the focus on reasoning and scientific inference for quantitative and qualitative research alike. The authors highlight some of the benefits that such an alternative and unified view of rigor may potentially provide toward fostering the quality and progress of management research.

The article argues for the necessity of theory within sociology, in general, and metatheory, in particular. It explores how theoretical, metatheoretical, and philosophical background conditions affect sociological research. It makes the case for why attending to background conditions is important for both the sociologist as an individual and also sociology as a collective and a discipline. In this context, it makes the case for critical realism as a useful program of metatheoretical reflexivity that focuses upon the more philosophical dimensions of sociology including the place of ontology and even how theory itself should be understood.

This paper aims to demonstrating that the former new institutional theory of isomorphism and decoupling cannot be extended, modified or refuted as it is a closed theory. By analyzing the structure of this former version of institutional theory and its numerous modern competitors (institutional entrepreneurship, institutional work and institutional logics theories) it is argued that these alternative theories demonstrate even less explanatory and predictive power and do not refute or extend their predecessor. The rise of new organizational theories can have no other effect on classic institutional theory than to limit the domain of its applicability. In turn, there are a number of principles and conditions that future theories should meet to be accepted as progressive advancements.

The paper provides a review of relevant organizational and philosophical literature on theory construction and scientific progress in organizational research and offers a set of principles and demands for those new theories that seek to challenge new institutionalism.

The authors show that the former institutional theory satisfies two main criteria that any scientific theory should conform with following it is useful and falsifiable in term of giving explanations and predictions while, at the same time, clearly specifying what can be observed and what cannot; what can happen and what is not likely to occur. Modern institutional theories cannot demonstrate this quality and they do not satisfy these criteria. Moreover, institutional isomorphism theory is a closed theory, which means it cannot be intervened with changes and modifications and all future theories should develop their theoretical propositions for other domains of applications while they should account for all empirical phenomena that institutional theory successfully explains.

Adopting instrumental view on organizational theories allowed reconstructing the logic and trajectory of organizational research evolution and defends its rationality and progressive nature. It is also outlined how existing dominant theory should be treated and how new theories should challenge its limitations and blind spots and which philosophical and methodological criteria should be met.

According to a widely accepted view, the Methodenstreit between the historical and Austrian school was the result of misunderstandings. Argues that it was rather the outcome of different solutions to genuine philosophical and methodological problems, in particular to a demarcation problem. Presents a reconstruction of the position of Roscher. Argues that Roscher sought to solve a demarcation problem and therefore triggered a problem situation which was of fundamental importance for further discussion. Contrasts the views of Roscher and Menger. Argues that Menger′s views constitute a direct response to Roscher′s problem situation.

This study aims to explain the value of using critical realist case research in supply chain management (SCM). While positivist case research focuses on generalizable law-like rules, and interpretivist research explores social meaning, critical realist case research seeks to make objective explanations that are bound by the case context. This study demonstrates how a critical realist synthesis of causal reasoning and contextual complexity allows for stronger theorizing in SCM.

This study highlights the possibilities of conducting critical realist case research in SCM by investigating philosophical perspectives in existing literature.

Based on existing literature, this study identifies which parts of contemporary SCM research will benefit from the critical realist perspective. This study also contends that supply chain scholars can use critical realist case research to develop new types of contextualized middle-range theories.

This study proposes to complement the qualitative SCM toolbox with critical realist case research to further refine the development of novel theories. This will benefit not only researchers but also managers, as it opens the doors to new and inspiring research.

This study takes an important step toward establishing critical realist case studies as a key methodology in SCM. While other scholars have introduced critical realism as a paradigmatic approach in SCM, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first article that develops a qualitative critical realist case research approach.

Price deals are typically presented in “save” terms. However, prospect theory predicts that people will be more willing to waive a monetary gain than to lose the same amount of money. This study seeks to examine whether consumers would show more purchase intentions of a product offered in a price deal framed negatively (“lose if you don't purchase”) relative to the conventional positive frame (“save if you purchase”).

The purchase intentions of 189 participants, randomly assigned to either a positively or a negatively framed message, were examined. The participants' perceived monetary gain in the deal and their involvement in the issue were also measured.

Presented with a negative relative to positive frame, participants showed more purchase intentions of a product offered in a price deal, and perceived their monetary gain as higher. Highly involved and lowly involved participants exhibited similar framing effects.

The findings regarding lowly involved participants are inconsistent with previous findings. Future research is needed to clarify whether the message framing effect interacts with involvement in predicting purchase intentions of a product offered in a price deal.

The theoretical explanation of the phenomenon presented in this study predicts that negative framing of messages will also be more effective in other consumer behaviour contexts.

This study is the first empirical demonstration of the effect of message framing on the effectiveness of price deal offers, suggesting that retailers should re‐examine their conventional presentation of price deal offers in terms of gains, and consider rephrasing them in terms of loss.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how different strategy theories complement each other with respect to understanding competitive advantage of a single firm that utilizes interfirm cooperation.

The paper provides an analytical review of three schools of strategy research in order to highlight their contributions, shortcomings, and interrelations with respect to sustainable competitive advantage and to clarify their explanations of competitive advantage in interfirm cooperation. On the basis of this analysis, an integrated perspective that captures industry, organization, and relationship attributes is proposed.

The paper suggests that old and new paradigms in strategic management (industrial organization economics, resource‐based theories, and the relational view) are applicable alongside each other when analyzing how a single firm gains competitive advantage by utilizing interfirm cooperation. It is argued here that no paradigm can be used to substitute others and thus an integrated perspective is needed. The paper provides a discussion and implications on how each paradigm complements others and illustrate this by sketching a refined strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis framework.

The paper gives a practical implication for managers who utilize traditional SWOT analysis in their decision making. By including relationship potential and limitations to the conceptual toolbox of thinking strategy through SWOT, managers can gain additional insight into internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats analysis.

The study increases understanding on how prevailing perspectives on competitive advantage can be used in analyzing interfirm cooperation.

Recent decades have witnessed great interest in Leon Trotsky’s idea of uneven and combined development (UCD) by Marxist scholars of International Relations (IR). A burgeoning literature has argued that one interpretation, Justin Rosenberg’s U&CD, resolves the question of ‘the international’ by offering a single, non-Realist theory capable of uniting both sociological and geopolitical factors in the explanation of social change across history. Evaluating this claim, this paper argues that the transhistorical ways in which U&CD has been developed reproduce, reaffirm and reinforce some of the more important shortcomings of Realist IR. I develop my argument through an internal critique of Rosenberg’s conception of U&CD, which, I argue, is illustrative of larger shortcomings within the literature. I conclude that the political and geopolitical economy of UCD and their dynamics must be grasped through the specific social and historical relations in which they are immersed.

The purpose of this paper is to draw on the direct experience of a practitioner undertaking real-time research in his organization to offer insights into the dual role of practical insider and theoretical outsider. The duality helps the researcher to live “in” and think “out” of the research context to develop a theory for practice and then transpose it to a practice for theory through the collaboration of an external theoretical insider.

This is a theoretical account of the reflexive experience of the practitioner reintroducing relational ethnography, where the researcher regards processes and spaces as the objects of analysis rather than bounded groups and places. It emphasizes the relational significance of the researcher, researched, and theoretical insider in exploring the structures of relations and meanings in the field of professional practice.

The paper argues that understanding the complementariness and paradoxes of the dual role helps the researcher to identify knowledge gaps and contest commonsense knowledge in search of critical knowledge and theoretical insights. The transition between the bounded (restrained) and unbounded (unrestrained) selves occurs in the holding space of research, influencing the position from which the researcher views himself, his subjects, and his social world.

The paper extends the dimension of ethnographic research, which de-centers the authority and control of the researcher to that of the relationship between the researcher and informants, by focusing on the relational significance between the researcher, researched, and theoretical insider. This perspective gives rise to a deeper understanding of relational ethnography, seen largely in sociological research, as relevant to organizational research, where structures of relations and actions explored in real time could account for the configuration, conflict, and coordination of work practices.