Insights on theory building and the nature of “theoretical contributions” are important for all areas of business, management and organizational research. The quality of “theory” is among the most important issue for top level publications. At the same time, current technological, economic and political developments require researchers to be able to attend to and consider the dynamics of what is commonly dubbed as “the digital age” in their work.

The aim of this seminar is to offer PhD students clear guidance for theorizing. Students will learn to define/discover constructs, think through relationships and processes that link constructs, and derive new theoretical explanations (or building on existing ones), particularly by considering the role of the digital.

The explicit aim of the course is to provide students with a deeper appreciation for theory building and theoretical contributions in order to help them in writing effective research papers and grant applications. Furthermore, this seminar provides hands-on tools for generating ideas and translating them into formal theories, accounting for traditional research approaches (interviews, surveys, experiments), as well as more recent ones (computationally supported research based on digital date).

Questions that we are tackling within this course are the following:

1. What is the role of theory?

2. How are “strong” theories constructed?

3. What is particular about “the digital” and how can should we theorize "the digital age"?  

4. How can constructs be linked and combined in novel ways in model building, especially for digital phenomena? 

5. What is a theoretical contribution?  How does a theoretical contribution build on "the digital age"?

This seminar is interdisciplinary. That is, we will cover a wide range of theories and their logics. Furthermore, it is the explicit goal of this course to allow the participants to work on “their” theories and their ideas regarding how their dissertation contributes to theory.

• Critically evaluate theories and theoretical contributions
  Students will be able to critically assess the role and quality of theory in business, management, and organization research, distinguish “strong” from “weak” theories, and identify different forms of theoretical contributions, including in work on digital phenomena.

• Design and articulate theoretical contributions 
  Students will be able to systematically build theoretical models by (a) defining and/or discovering constructs, (b) specifying relationships and underlying processes that link these constructs, and (c) combining them in novel ways to explain phenomena related to “the digital” and the dynamics of the digital age.

• Clarify theory-building in their own PhD projects
  Students will be able to build/refine theoretical contributions to advance their dissertation, including generating theoretically grounded research questions, translating ideas into theoretical models, and aligning these with suitable empirical approaches.

Minimum 80% presence is required. Below 80%, the course will be evaluated negatively.

• Lecture-based input
• Discussions
• Group work

• Group presentations on theoretical contributions in strategy and international business (25%, groups of 3)
• Group presentations on digital technology-related theorizing (25%; 15 minutes, groups of 2-3):   
• Written Assignment (25%; individual work):
• Participation (25%) in discussions and exercises

Please log in with your WU account to use all functionalities of read!t. For off-campus access to our licensed electronic resources, remember to activate your VPN connection connection. In case you encounter any technical problems or have questions regarding read!t, please feel free to contact the library at readinglists@wu.ac.at.

phillip.nell@wu.ac.at

thomas.grisold@wu.ac.at