Insights on theory building and the nature of “theoretical contributions” are universally important for all areas of business and management and the quality of “theory” is among the most important issues for top level publications.

The aim of this seminar is to offer PhD students clear guidance for defining/discovering constructs, thinking through relationships and processes that link constructs, and deriving new theoretical models (or building on existing ones) based on those relationships. 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, both deductively and inductively.

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

1. What is the role of theory?

2. How are theories constructed?

3. What constitutes a “strong” theory?

3. How can constructs be linked and combined in novel ways in model building?

4. What is a theoretical contribution?

This seminar is explicitly 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.

This PhD seminar suits PhD students from all departments. We think that fit is best for the following departments:

-    Department of Global Business and Trade

-    Department of Management

-    Department of Marketing

-    Department of Strategy and Innovation

Understand what theory is

Understand the role and importance of theoretical mechanisms

Evaluate theoretical contributions

Formulate theoretical contributions in own research

Develop theory ...

... through thinking about assumptions

... through connecting research from other disciplines

... through grounded theory methods

-    The course is taught using a combination of lectures, class discussions, and presentations.

-    The sessions will be conducted in a highly interactive manner where PhD students will prepare short memos or presentations on papers or their own research and lead discussions.

This seminar is explicitly 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.

This PhD seminar suits PhD students from all departments. We think that fit is best for the following departments:

-    Department of Global Business and Trade

-    Department of Management

-    Department of Marketing

-    Department of Strategy and Innovation

Evaluation:

Participation: 25% (individual)

Presentation: 25% (individual or group – depending on size of the PhD seminar)

Final seminar paper: 50% (individual or group – depending on size of the PhD seminar)

Regarding the seminar paper: Participants can choose between three options:

a)    You write a critique of a key paper that is interesting to you

b)    You write a critique of a key theory of your choice

c)    You write your own theory paper (deductive or inductive)

The seminar paper should be written as if it is a real paper. The following papers might help “writing” this paper:

-    Rindova, V. 2008. Publishing theory when you are new to the game. Academy of Management Review, 33: 300-303.

-    Kilduff, M. (2006). Editor's comments: Publishing theory. Academy of Management Review, 31(2), 252-255.

-   Suddaby, R. (2006). From the editors: What grounded theory is not. Academy of Management Journal, 49, 633-642. 

-    Ragins, B. (2012). Reflections on the craft of clear writing. Academy of Management Review, 37(4), 493-501.