The purpose of our study was threefold. First, we
created a taxonomy that can be used to capture
many of the facets of an empirical article’s theoretical
contribution. That taxonomy includes two dimensions:
the extent to which an article builds new
theory and the extent to which an article tests existing
theory. Second, we used that taxonomy to
examine trends in theoretical contributions over
time, to see if the contributions offered by contemporary
management articles differ from the contributions
offered by management articles from decades
past. Third, we examined whether an article’s position on our taxonomy is predictive of
the article’s impact on the literature, as judged using
citation rates.