SMR need the division of the theoretical contributors from
theoretical testers. Innovations and breakthroughs in strategic management theory are
arduous tasks and, if scholars do not focus on their theoretical contributions, they might
not be able to produce noteworthy results. Theoretical contributions and theoretical
tests require different skills, expertise and resources. Scholars who are talented in
theoretical contribution might have no resources to test their hypotheses; scholars with
good resources to test hypotheses might have no advantages in hypothesizing.
Therefore, it is overburdening scholars to require them to have good contributions to
theoretical development as well as to theoretical testing. This is why SMR scholars
always emphasize data availability as the premises for their research topic choices,
which causes so many good research topics to be waived because the data are not
available, and many good assumptions cannot be properly tested, and consequently are
rejected by publication outlets. Moreover, if the hypotheses are tested by the same
scholars or teams that propose them, it is not avoidable that the scholars act
opportunistically to protect their theories (Bettis, 2012).