THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTION: TRENDS AN

THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTION: TRENDS AND IMPACT

Having described a tool for capturing the theoretical contribution made by empirical articles, we now focus our attention on how that contribution might evolve over time and how it might shape the scholarly impact of an article. Turning first to trends over time, we asked, How have the theoretical contributions offered by AMJ articles changed over the past five decades? Some predictions can be derived from the literatures on scientific paradigmsand schools of thought (e.g., Cole, 1983; Glick, Miller, & Cardinal, 2007; Kuhn, 1963; Lodahl & Gordon, 1972; McKinley, Mone, & Moon, 1999; Pfeffer, 1993). Scholars in this area have noted that scientific disciplines vary in their levels of paradigm development, as reflected in the degree of agreement about research questions, theory, and methodology in a given discipline (Lodahl & Gor don, 1972). Disciplines in which consensus exists enjoy a number of potential benefits, including more efficient communication among scholars and decreased barriers to collaboration (Pfeffer, 1993). Both communication and collaboration are critical ingredients for testing a theory, as such efforts re quire learning about existing theory and framing tests within the larger stream of work on that theory.

Disciplines with consensus on paradigms are also more likely to allow editorial teams to empha size conceptual and methodological rigor over author characteristics when judging journal submis sions (Pfeffer, 1993). That emphasis on rigor suggests that such disciplines will generate higher expectations regarding the theory present in empir ical articles. Indeed, Cole (1983) suggested that consensus on paradigms results in an increased level of theory testing in a literature, and an in creased rate of obsolescence as new theories re place flawed predecessors. Popper emphasized the importance of such obsolescence in writing: “It is not the accumulation of observations which I have in mind when I speak of the growth of scientific knowledge, but the repeated overthrow of scientific theories and their replacement by better or more satisfactory ones” (1965: 215). DiMaggio (1995) echoed such sentiments in noting that the primary contribution of a particular theory may be serving as a place holder until it inspires a more valid or useful one. In Kuhn’s (1963) terms, shared para digms provide the context for “convergent think ing.” Such thinking is demonstrated when scientists conduct incremental research that tests and extends existing theory.

The arguments described above suggest that lev els of theory testing should increase as manage ment research attains strong consensus in its theoretical paradigms. Although scholars acknowledge that management has much more dissensus in par adigms than the hard sciences (Glick et al., 2007; Pfeffer, 1993), partially because management is in- terdisciplinary in nature (Rousseau, 2007), the crit ical question for our purposes concerns whether that fragmentation has decreased over the past five decades. Clearly the fact that Miner’s (2003) review of scientific validity included 73 theories repre senting the management domain reveals a certain