What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution in the Business and Society Field?

What Is Theory?

There are countless ways the term theory is used. The Oxford Dictionary defines theory as “a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained” (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/theory). Such a definition highlights two aspects which are important when differentiating what a “theory” or a “theoretical contribution” could be.

First, theories have the potential to explain a phenomenon. This puts theoretical work squarely ahead of mere descriptive or survey work, which just states phenomena as they are. In particular, in working with empirical studies on business and society issues, we often see fascinating data that describe certain phenomena, but that lack a clear explanation as to why they occur, or that fail to dig deep enough into interpretation to reveal the underlying dynamics, stages, or contextual contingencies, such as may be found in process models or “thick description” (Geertz, 1994). There is, however, some controversy around this, and we would argue that there is indeed a broad range of ways as to how the explanatory element of theoretical work manifests itself in scholarly work in the field of business and society. On one end of the spectrum, there is empirical work where such an explanation may emerge from the empirical analysis of the data and where the establishment of causal relationship is an outcome of the analytical engagement with data, often manifest in statistical correlations or other formal ways of evidencing the “why” of empirical phenomena. On the other end of the spectrum, in particular if we consider conceptual contributions, the explanatory element is based on plausibility, which in many ways is much more open to contestation and debate.

Second, the above definition refers to “general principles” as a core part of what constitutes theory. Ideally then, whatever explanations are provided in a piece of research, good theorizing would aim at explanations that are in some way generalizable. In other words, the more an explanation has the potential to not just explain a single incident, an isolated case, or some context-specific phenomenon, but rather has some potential to serve as a general way of providing insight into a wider class of phenomena, the more it would be considered theoretically robust. In its extreme, this would amount to the often-rehearsed demand for theories to have some predictive potential, to provide explanations that have a wider explanatory value than just the specific empirical or conceptual context in which they are developed.

Such a contribution to theory, however, occurs at different levels and in different forms and approaches. In the following, we would like to differentiate three basic groups of theory work that have contributed to the debate in Business & Society in the past and for which we are eager to see the journal be a continued forum of debate: theory testing and refinement, theory application, and theory generation.

Theory Testing and Refinement

The relatively new and still emerging empirical setting of the business and society field has provided a rich backdrop for testing existing management theory and to add refinements to the theoretical body of work in management academia. Interestingly, quite a lot of work in this regard has taken place in the context of societies beyond the initial, often Anglo-American context of inception—something we commented on in an earlier editorial (Crane, Henriques, Husted, & Matten, 2016). Certainly, an early domination of empirical work on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in mainstream management journals is an indicator that the field served quite extensively as a laboratory for theory testing (Lockett, Moon, & Visser, 2006). A good early example of theory refinement is the work by Mahon and Waddock (1992) which, in applying life cycle analysis to business and society relations, suggested an “integrated systems issue model” as a further refinement of what used to be a theory mainly applied to research in operations management and marketing.

Theory Application

Arguably, the largest amount of work in the business and society field has used theory in a somewhat opposite way to testing and refining. Rather than leveraging the uniqueness of our field to make a contribution to management theory, many scholars choose to simply apply extant theory to new business and society phenomena. Such work elects not to make a direct contribution to theory, but more to apply existing theory to a phenomenon that has yet to be adequately understood and explained theoretically.

Theory application work is often empirical, where theory is used to systematize and explain empirical data, or to make sense of phenomena in conceptualizing them. Be it contingency theory (Husted, 2000), the resource-based view (Hart, 1995), social movements theory (King, 2007), or, more recently, institutional theory (Brammer, Jackson, & Matten, 2012), the application of existing theories to the business and society literature is probably still the most substantive contribution to the field to date (De Bakker, Groenewegen, & Den Hond, 2005).

In terms of submitting a manuscript that adopts this approach to making a theoretical contribution, three points are especially worth remarking on. First, there is a considerable challenge in convincing reviewers and editors that the mere application of theory is a sufficient enough contribution. The potential of such a paper will therefore hinge substantially on the way theory is brought into the paper. When introduced upfront, such discussion (often labeled “theoretical framework”) should be predicated on a critical analysis of the relevant literature and on a selective highlighting of those particular elements that help illuminate the phenomenon in question in the paper—but without weakening the core basis of the theory with too many selective exclusions of core principles and relationships. Thus, rather than just rehearsing an existing debate, such manuscripts need to make a critical engagement with theory, subject to the specific research questions addressed in the paper. As the manuscript unfolds, it is also necessary to do more than just confirm that the theory fits the phenomenon. Too many papers simply conclude that a business and society phenomenon can indeed be described or analyzed in terms of the theory of choice. However, the critical element in building a theoretical contribution here would be to show how the theory enables us to be better understand and explain the phenomenon compared with how we could before.

The second point to note is that theory application papers do not necessarily have to be too long. Quite a number of such contributions in Business & Society have been research notes, a recent example being Ratcliff and Doshi’s (2016) application of Bass Theory to base of the pyramid research. The point here is that manuscripts based on theory application need to have an appropriate length-to-contribution ratio. Where the contribution is quite limited—for example, demonstrating the appropriateness of a particular theory for investigating a business and society phenomenon, but not going beyond this—a shorter length research note may be more apposite than a full-length paper.

Third, a potentially rewarding but often more challenging subsection of theory application work will involve the import of theories from other social sciences beyond the management discipline. Given that our field is concerned with social issues and sectors often studied in other disciplines, there is a need not only to better theorize “our” phenomena from a business angle but also to apply theoretical perspectives from disciplines that have a long-standing interest in theorizing the societal element of the research area. A good early example of such work is Boddewyn’s (2003) introduction of the “Nonmarket” concept to the study of business and society research which draws on a rich engagement with theoretical work in economics, sociology, and political science. More recently, our 2014 special issue on “The Business Firm as a Political Actor: A New Theory of the Firm for a Globalized World” (Scherer, Palazzo, & Matten, 2014) included articles drawing on a variety of theoretical perspectives from outside management, especially from political science and philosophy. Some authors may even import beyond these more usual suspects. For instance, Friedrich and Wüstenhagen (2015) drew on a psychological model of grief derived from studies of terminally ill patients to explain the grieving of energy company managers in response to the nuclear phase-out in Germany. The point is that, whatever the source, there is rich potential for theoretical contributions in drawing from outside our discipline.

Theory Generation

The final arena of theoretical work, and arguably the most ambitious, comprises the generation of new theory in the field of business and society relations. Probably the most well-known theory specific to the field is stakeholder theory, which could not only be deemed as one of the main theoretical frameworks generated by business and society research but could also be regarded as one of those theories that has gained most attention beyond our field in other management disciplines. Other theories have evolved over time around the definition of core concepts, such as corporate social responsibility (Carroll, 1999; Frederick, 1994) or corporate political action (CPA; Getz, 1997). As the latter papers illustrate, much of such work has emerged in the context of critical literature reviews (see also Kolk, Rivera-Santos, & Rufín, 2014, on the base of the pyramid concept).

Going forward, it would not be surprising, given the heightened scrutiny of the social and political responsibilities of business in society, to expect more theoretical work to appear that—similar to stakeholder theory—not only addresses larger questions of what the theory of the firm should be (e.g., Donaldson & Walsh, 2015) but also scrutinizes the wider purpose of the firm (Sundaram & Inkpen, 2004) or identifies new ways of theorizing the contemporary role of the firm (e.g., Scherer et al., 2014). We would certainly welcome a more profound theoretical discussion in the pages of the journal that may ultimately inform core debates in the management discipline.

Of course, not all theory generation will have such ambitions. Business & Society publishes much new theory that seeks to provide somewhat more modest new insights in existing fields of business and society research. For example, Schrempf (2014) developed a new “social connections” theory of corporate social responsibility for the fast food industry while Shumate and O’Connor (2010) generated a “symbiotic sustainability model” to explain business-NGO alliances. The key lesson here for prospective authors is that whatever the scale or ambitions of their theorizing, the challenge is to marshal sufficiently rigorous conceptual or empirical insight to develop genuinely new theoretical arguments that open up space for new or alternative conversations in our field.

Explanatory or Normative Theory?

One specific challenge of theoretical work in the business and society field is the unique status of normative theory. In other words, theorizing the role of business in society in many areas will lead to insights that (a) are either in themselves based on strong normative assumptions or (b) have immediate normative implications. A common example for the first aspect is what is sometimes referred to as normative stakeholder theory (Donaldson & Preston, 1995). Such a theory of stakeholder relations is based on a certain set of normative assumptions about how humans should be treated. Such a normative dimension will be particularly evident in research that engages with the ethical dimensions of business and society relations. In this context, the set up (“theoretical framework”) of such papers is crucial, in particular the necessity to make the underlying normative assumptions and criteria explicit. As to the second aspect, there are many studies in the field that, based on theorizing a phenomenon, come up with some normative implications for business. For instance, Schrempf’s (2014) social connection theory of social responsibility mentioned above argues that companies are assigned responsibility for the ethical implications of their product uses beyond their immediate sphere of influence. The normative implication, that companies have to assume responsibility to manage these issues, directly flows from the theoretical model that is delineated from case analysis. In other words, the question of what a company “should” do is based on theorizing its behavior. Thus, the normative implications of theory ideally become evident as a direct conclusion from the theoretical analysis.

What Is “Good” Theoretical Work?

Along with an assessment of different types of theoretical contributions, there is, of course, the question as to how to assess the quality of theoretical work. We would suggest that two main criteria are probably the most pertinent (Corley & Gioia, 2011). First, there is the issue of originality of a contribution, or in other words, how far a particular manuscript provides a new insight that has not been hitherto discussed before. Ideally, one would want to go as far as expecting that theoretical work “is of no use unless it initially surprises—that is, changes perceptions” (Mintzberg, 2005, p. 361). That is admittedly placing the bar rather high, even though we may all recall certain articles that have indeed opened up an entirely new world of conceptual insight. More realistically, we may be looking more at incremental extensions of our knowledge, at filling smaller gaps in the literature. However, the criterion of originality implies that certain areas of business and society research, such as the relationship between corporate financial and social performance, or yet another application or refinement of stakeholder theory, may find it harder to trigger that “Aha!” moment in the reader than venturing out into less explored and thus far under-theorized subjects of scholarly interest in our field.

Finally, a second feature of a meaningful theoretical contribution is its utility. Or, as Whetten (1989) put it in his seminal piece on what constitutes a theoretical contribution, we may simply ask “Who cares?” In an academic journal, this criterion will often predominantly focus on the value of a theoretical contribution for the wider academic debate. Such scientific utility will lead to questions such as who will ever care to cite a certain paper, and what is the potential of the paper to inform further debate and research. But in a world where governments, funding bodies, university leadership, and the wider public increasingly raise the question of the practical utility of academic work beyond the confines of the ivory tower, potential impact outside academia becomes of growing relevance as an evaluative criterion too. In today’s social media world, another way of evaluating a manuscript might be to ask if the theoretical insights of a paper can be turned into a shorter blog entry, or indeed a 140-character tweet.

Although the idea of a “theory as tweet” will no doubt be far too reductionist for some, the core issue is that in a field such as business and society, which has such profound societal relevance, good theory is oftentimes judged on its potential to influence practice—and indeed many believe we, in fact, have a duty to make an active contribution to enhance practice. To do that, good theory therefore also needs to be translatable to relevant audiences. So prospective authors should consider how they are communicating their theoretical contribution, and whether, for example, it is possible to create figures, tables, and other exhibits that help summarize their contribution in a readily digestible way. In the words of Kurt Lewin (1951), “there is nothing quite so practical as a good theory.” However, making good theory practical requires that we think about its potential to impact beyond academia long before it rolls off the production line at the journal presses.