INTRODUCTION TO SPECIAL TOPIC FORUM

WHERE ARE THE NEW THEORIES OFORGANIZATION?

ROY SUDDABYUniversity of Alberta

CYNTHIA HARDYUniversity of Melbourne

QUY NGUYEN HUYINSEAD

We summarize the manifest and latent content of the articles that make up the SpecialTopic Forum on Theory Development. Rather than offering new theories, however,most of the articles offer a series of critical accounts of current organizational theoryand a range of novel ideas about the process of theory construction. We conclude byspeculating about the institutional barriers to new theory creation and how thosebarriers might be changed.

This special topic forum (STF) was inspired bythe observation that most of the theories of or-ganization used by contemporary managementresearchers were formulated several decadesago, largely in the 1960s and 1970s, and thesetheories have persisted, mostly intact, since thattime. This is so despite massive growth andchange in the size, prevalence, and influence oforganizations in modern society. Organizationaltheory, as Davis has observed, can sometimesappear to be a “living museum of the 1970s”(2010: 691). Where, we asked, are the new theo-ries of organization?

Few of the manuscripts we received in re-sponse to our call actually offered new theoriesof organization. In retrospect, this was perhapsan overly ambitious expectation on our part. Thearticles that make up this special topic forum,however, offer an arguably more interesting in-terpretation of our call. Rather than generatingnew theories, they collectively make two uniquecontributions. First, they offer an implicit cri-tique of contemporary theories of organizations.Their critique has three main arguments: (1) as adiscipline, we have failed to develop our owntheories; (2) our theories fail to capture the richmanifestation of organizations in society; and (3)our research and theorizing is an inherently con-servative practice. Second, and more optimisti-

cally, the articles offer a clear direction forwardby identifying a powerful set of suggestions re-garding how we can generate new theory. Theycollectively point to a need to become more at-tentive and self-reflective regarding the processof theory creation.

CHALLENGES FACING CONTEMPORARYTHEORIZING

Foremost, the articles offer a collective andself-reflective critique of the current state of the-ory in management research. In fact, they offer asurprising degree of agreement on the chal-lenges that contemporary organizational theo-rists face.

Generating Indigenous Theory

Many of the authors in this STF make theobservation that management research hasfailed to cultivate any truly indigenous theoriesof management and organization. Oswick,Fleming, and Hanlon make this observationmost clearly, convincingly demonstrating thatmost (i.e., roughly two-thirds) of the researchconducted in management is rooted in theoriesborrowed from other disciplines. Their point isreinforced by both Shepherd and Sutcliffe and

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Sandberg and Tsoukas, who note that currentorganizational theory is inattentive to and dis-connected from contemporary managementpractices.

This line of argument is in sharp contrast toearlier observations that management theoryhad succeeded in establishing itself as an inde-pendent discipline. Pfeffer (1997), for example,argued that as early as the 1980s the study ofmanagement had successfully migrated fromthe core disciplines of engineering, psychology,and sociology to form its own category of schol-arship. Hinings similarly noted that as research-ers moved from psychology and sociology facul-ties to work in business schools, organizationtheory “developed as a discipline in its ownright with its own problematics, theoreticalstructures and methods” (1988: 2).

The articles that make up this STF, however,cast doubt on this conclusion. Instead, theypaint a picture of a discipline that has some-what awkwardly imported theories, researchquestions, and methods from foreign disciplineswithout fully adapting them to the new context.Rather than treating organizations as a subjectof inquiry in their own right, management theo-rists appear to have treated organizationsmerely as new empirical sites to test, prove, andtweak old theories.

The prevalence of retrofitting theories bor-rowed from outside disciplines within manage-ment research is well documented (e.g., seeFloyd, 2009; Suddaby, 2010; Whetten, Felin, &King, 2009). Less well understood are the prob-lems and long-term implications of doing this.While we have some sense that core constructsand methods borrowed from other disciplinesmay have to be adapted to accommodate theempirical context of organization, there is nowell-articulated understanding that theoriesgenerate both ways of seeing and ways of notseeing. When we import theories from psychol-ogy and sociology, we also import core ques-tions, assumptions, and metaphors, each ofwhich has the potential to create blind spots formanagement researchers.

Perhaps the most glaring consequence of alack of indigenous theory is the growing chasmbetween management research and manage-ment practice (Bartunek & Rynes, 2010; Pfeffer,2007; Rynes, 2007). Pferrer and Fong (2002) exam-ined the impact of management ideas on man-agement practice and concluded that most inno-

vative ideas in management practice come fromconsulting, from business journalism, and fromcompanies themselves, rather than from man-agement theorists. Numerous other studies andessays (i.e., Bartunek, 2007; Davenport & Prusak,2003; Mol & Birkinshaw, 2007) reinforce the basicunderstanding that since the emergence of or-ganization theory as a separate discipline ofresearch some fifty years ago, management the-ories have been divorced from managementpractice.

The critique that the articles in this issue offersuggests an answer to why this gap exists andhow it has managed to persist for so long. Theanswer, in short, is that management theory hasnot yet lost its colonial roots. We still look to the“founding fathers” for our fundamental ques-tions and our methods for answering them. Wecarry the historical baggage of their underlyingassumptions. And, like most colonial outposts,we retain a sentimental attachment to the tools,constructs, and limitations of our core disci-plines (Weick, 1996).

Collectively, thus, the articles in this STF havereformulated the original question in our call forpapers to ask not for new theories of organiza-tion but, instead, to ask, “Where are the indige-nous theories of organization?”

Capturing the Empirical Complexity ofContemporary Organizations

A related theme shared by the STF articles isthe critical observation that current manage-ment theories have failed to keep pace withchanges in the size, complexity, and influence ofmodern organizations. That is, as an extensionof the growing chasm between managementtheory and practice, there is a concomitant un-derestimation of the significance of organiza-tions in modern life and a lack of attention totheir complexity, influence, and power.

When management theory was in its earlystages of formation as a distinct discipline,there was an excited awareness and vigorousdiscussion about the growing significance of or-ganizations in contemporary society. These con-cerns were reflected in both the popular andacademic press. One of the most popular ac-counts of the phenomenon was William H.Whyte’s 1956 book, The Organization Man. Thebook described, with a mix of apprehension andawe, the growing impact of organizations on

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American life. Shortly thereafter, Robert Pres-thus, in a book called The Organizational Soci-ety (1963), documented the growing influence oforganizations on human behavior and personal-ity. Presthus noted that with the emergent dom-inance of large organizations after the SecondWorld War, there was a concomitant emergenceof a “bureaucratic personality,” characterized bya concern with careerism, a reduction in entre-preneurial behavior, and an increasing ten-dency to subordinate individual interests to thedemands of the workplace. These popular textsdrew from seminal research by organizationalscholars of the day, such as Selznick (1949),Gouldner (1954), and Michels (1959), that focusedattention on the rise of organizations as a dom-inant social institution. The books were part of agrowing fascination with organizations, both intheir own right and as a relatively novel andpotentially dangerous phenomenon.

Since that time, the phenomenon of organiza-tional dominance captured by Whyte and Pres-thus has significantly accelerated. Organiza-tions have become much larger and morecomplex than they were in the 1950s and 1960s.In 1955 General Motors was the largest corpora-tion in the world. It employed 624,000 individu-als and earned a profit of $1.2 billion, promptingthen President Charles Wilson to proclaim to theU.S. Congress that what was good for GM wasgood for the country. Today, the largest corpora-tion (Walmart) generates nearly $14 billion inprofit and employs 2.1 million people in over 15countries around the world.

Organizations have also become much morepowerful than they were when Whyte and Pres-thus wrote their books. Corporations now rivalcountries in terms of productivity. Of the 100largest “economies” in the world, 51 are corpo-rations (Korten, 2001). While corporations do notyet have the right to vote, they have acquiredsubstantial power to fund and influence the out-come of elections in the United States (Clawson& Neustadtl, 1989).

In sum, the world that Whyte and Presthuswere so concerned about seems to have becomereality. Yet this reality is not adequately re-flected in contemporary management theory.Writing in 1990, Richard Daft and Ari Lewin, theeditors of Organization Science, expressed con-cern about the inability of management re-search to keep pace with the modern complexityand power of organizations. Noting the “cata-

clysmic changes occurring in the environment oforganizations,” Daft and Lewin (1990: i) observedthat management research simply was notkeeping pace with those changes and con-cluded by expressing their concern “that orga-nization theory . . . [was] in danger of becomingisolated and irrelevant” to the empirical realityof organizational society.

This conclusion is shared by the contributorsto this special issue. Smith and Lewis premisetheir argument on the observation that extantmanagement theories are too simplistic andstatic to fully capture the dynamic changes inthe size and complexity of modern organiza-tions. Such complexity, Smith and Lewis argue,increasingly generates tensions, dualities, par-adoxes, or contradictions in organizations. Anumber of theorists have attempted to adaptexisting theories, such as contingency theory,institutional theory, or identity theory, as ameans of dealing with this phenomenon, withvarying degrees of success. Other theorists havegenerated new terms for this research, includingambidexterity research or exploration/exploita-tion theory. Smith and Lewis weave togetherthese somewhat disparate threads to create anorganizationally indigenous theoretical per-spective that they term paradox theory.

Sandberg and Tsoukas point to scientific ra-tionality as the primary reason that organiza-tional theory has become detached from thereality of organizational life. The slavish adher-ence to scientific rationality, these authorsargue, creates three wedges between manage-ment theory and organizational reality. First,science is reductionist, and in the process ofparticularizing organizational phenomena, iteliminates the gestalt of experience that ismeaningful to those engaged in organizations.Second, science seeks to generalize, and as aresult of aggregating phenomena to broad cat-egories, it eliminates the contextual reality oforganizational experience. Finally, science ab-stracts the subjective experience of time. Be-cause of this, Sandberg and Tsoukas observethat management theorists lose the holisticgrasp of organizations. Their advice is for man-agement theorists to replace scientific ratio-nality with a more practical rationality.

An alternative suggestion, raised by Kilduff,Mehra, and Dunn, is based on the observationthat science is a fairly broad category subject tomultiple ontological and epistemological inter-

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pretations that can generate a wide range oftypes of science, each of which holds differentimplications for organizing. The same should betrue for management theory. That is, if there aremultiple interpretations of science, then man-agement scholars should benefit by adopting aversion that offers a better fit between the em-pirical context and the philosophical assump-tions needed to theorize them.

Collectively, thus, the STF articles have alsoreformulated the central question in our call forpapers to ask not for new theories of organiza-tion but, instead, to ask, “Where are the organi-zations in our theories?”

Conquering Conservatism

Many of the STF articles indicate that orga-nizational theorizing is inherently cautious, notonly in researchers’ reluctance to adopt new the-ories but in the way they adopt them. So, forexample, Oswick and colleagues note the “do-mestication” of foreign theories when they areadopted by organizational scholars. This occursas the theories are taken up and consumedwithin organization and management theory(OMT)—a process that involves repeated recon-textualization as initial ideas articulated intexts produced outside the field are rearticu-lated in texts published in OMT journals andbooks. This process is repeated many times,with the ideas appearing in “seminal” OMTwork then being taken up by other organization-al researchers and appearing in subsequenttexts. As Maguire and Hardy (2009) point out, thisprocess, where original texts are successivelytaken up in subsequent texts, involves the trans-lation of meaning. Initial ideas intended by theoriginal author are not necessarily reproducedand are just as likely to be modified, trans-formed, or subverted. Thus, the conceptualiza-tion of metaphor imported from elsewhere (e.g.,Black, 1962; Ortony, 1975) was initially recontex-tualized in texts authored by OMT researcherssuch as Gareth Morgan, whose highly citedwork (e.g., Morgan, 1980) then appeared in arti-cles on organizational themes ranging frommanagement consultancy to improvisation andorganizational change. Oswick and colleaguesargue that, as a result of this process, theoreticalideas pertaining to metaphor were made moreseductive and instrumental, leading to a reifica-tion of the phenomenon itself.

Translation may be inevitable, but the inter-esting questions are “What makes domestica-tion as a particular form of translation so ubiq-uitous?” and “Why are meanings neutered andsanitized during their translation in OMT, ratherthan radicalized and extended?” The contribu-tors to this STF offer some suggestions.

One reason alluded to in some of the STFarticles may lie with the exacting pressures ofwork facing contemporary academics and thecognitive limits of researchers in processing thehuge amount of published work that now exists.As Shepherd and Sutcliffe point out, the bodiesof literature relevant to OMT are vast, diverse,and, with the growing number of journals in thefield, increasing rapidly. They go on to arguethat, consequently, preconceived notions aboutwhat is important stem from what is known andfamiliar. In addition, theorists may be drawn to“overworked localities in organizations, toready-made problems, to fashionable styles ofthinking” (Shepherd & Sutcliffe, this issue: 363).Individuals may not therefore have the time orintellectual resources to develop exciting, dis-ruptive, and challenging new theories. Alvessonand Sandberg suggest that most theorists haveno such aspirations anyway. They argue thatonly certain theories—social constructionism,postmodernism, feminism, and critical theory—are concerned with radicalizing ideas and un-dermining conventional wisdom. Most theoriz-ing has far more conservative aims. AsShepherd and Sutcliffe argue, “top-down” de-ductive theorizing—one of the common ways ofbuilding theory in our field—aims at discover-ing a problem in the literature, such as a ten-sion, opposition, or contradiction among diver-gent perspectives, and then sets out to find asolution. Alvesson and Sandberg refer to this as“gap-spotting,” rather than the more radical“problematizing” that they propose. Inductivetheorizing from the “bottom up”—another com-mon approach—is no better because, accordingto Shepherd and Sutcliffe, it tends to be limitedto rich descriptions of specific cases, rather thanproducing more abstract theories. Should wetherefore only expect to “inch” toward new andbetter theories, as suggested by these authors?

A second reason that may explain such con-servatism is associated with the widely ac-cepted practices of crafting journal articles thatdominate the field. As has been noted else-where, journals are produced by organizations

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that enact highly predictable and routinized bu-reaucratic processes, and academic communi-ties are institutionalized fields with widelyshared norms about publishing (Alvesson,Hardy, & Harley, 2008; Boxenbaum & Rouleau,this issue; Gabriel, 2010). The effects of bureau-cratization are compounded by the politics ofpublishing (Grey, 2010). Defining a gap in theexisting literature is supported by widelyshared institutionalized practices and is likelyto be more politically acceptable than proposingproblematizations that undermine its funda-mental assumptions; the exact nature of anygap will be the result of negotiations amongresearchers, editors, and reviewers (Bedeian,2003, 2004). Consequently, as Gabriel (2010: 761)notes in his sobering assessment of the field,“One of the most political processes in whichmost of today’s academics will ever become in-volved” is publishing an article. What gets pub-lished, what gets rejected, and everything thatgoes on in between are “barely concealed exer-cises in power and resistance” (Gabriel, 2010:761).

A third reason for conservatism has been ob-served by the contributors, who point out thatestablished theories in the field tend to beviewed as sacred canons, making it difficult orawkward to contradict them. In this regard, allresearchers are located within larger discoursesthat dominate our thinking, as noted in Kilduff etal.’s discussion of a range of rationalized logicsthat have developed within the discourses of thephilosophy of science, which not only affect re-search but are used by scientists to justify theirpractices publicly and privately. In our ownfield, dominant discourses also prevail. For ex-ample, Sandberg and Tsoukas show clearly howthe framework of modern scientific rationality—the scientific ideal of attaining objective andvalid knowledge about the world through de-tached observation and analysis— has domi-nated and continues to dominate the field. Afurther problem is that even when trying to re-sist these dominant discourses, our articlesserve to reproduce them. In order to resist them,we must engage with them, and, in doing so, wehelp to reproduce them: “The process of resis-tance also involves the reification and reproduc-tion of that which is being resisted, by legitimiz-ing and privileging it as an arena for politicalcontest” (Thomas & Davies, 2005: 700).

Accordingly, when we try to position our-selves as different from X, better than Y, andgoing beyond Z, we are helping to reinforce andlegitimate X, Y, and Z. Whether this is in theform of circumscribed gap-spotting or more rad-ical problematization, or whether it is throughthe use of more specific suggestions, such ascontrastive explanation (Tsang & Ellsaesser,this issue), paradox (Smith & Lewis, this issue),or practical rationality (Sandberg & Tsoukas,this issue), we cannot help but give legitimacyand visibility to the object of our critique. Even ifwe use bricolage conceptually, we use evolutionand differentiation rhetorically, thereby con-necting what is novel with what has gonebefore: evolution reemploys “categories andconcepts that are readily available to theresearcher,” while differentiation “requires jux-taposition with existing knowledge” (Boxen-baum & Rouleau, this issue: 282). In effect, this iswhat we are supposed to do. As McKinley, Mone,and Moon (1999) proposed, theories should dem-onstrate both novelty and continuity; they mustdiffer from and at the same time be connected tothe established literature in order to be seen asmeaningful (Alvesson & Sandberg, this issue).But in making the connection, can we also betruly novel?

The articles in this STF thus provide someinteresting answers to our initial question,“Where are the new theories of organization?”While sanguine about the prospects of new the-ories, the authors nonetheless offer suggestionsand solutions to some of these challenges, as wediscuss in the following section.

NEW WAYS OF THEORIZING

Authors in this STF have proposed a numberof approaches to develop more creative, insight-ful organizational theories. At the risk of over-simplifying, we classify these approaches alongtwo dimensions: (1) theorizing within one litera-ture (or knowledge domain) or across multiplebodies of literature and (2) theorizing with im-plicit assumptions or explicit constructs in thefocal literature. Figure 1 summarizes these var-ious approaches, which we briefly describe be-low.

The top right quadrant of Figure 1 is charac-terized by sweeping theorizing approaches thatfocus on combining implicit assumptions acrossmultiple bodies of literature. One approach in-

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volves combining multiple epistemological phi-losophies to produce a creative theory. A secondapproach highlights the importance of epis-temic scripts—that is, the implicit cognitivetemplates that underpin our collective under-standing of how new academic knowledge isproduced. We discuss each in turn.

Kilduff and colleagues propose that organiza-tional theorists should avoid entrenched knowl-edge silos and should instead adopt a broaderview of what we consider “science” by promot-ing and combining various epistemologies—that is, the fundamental logics that govern theproduction of new knowledge. These include thelogic of pure research, which emphasizes theenduring structural content of scientific theory(e.g., fundamental physics); the logic of induc-tion, which emphasizes the interpretation of pat-terns inherent in empirical data (e.g., looking fortrends in financial data); the logic of problemsolving, which emphasizes practical action andan open and interdisciplinary community of ex-

perts (e.g., stopping the oil flow at the Deepwa-ter Horizon drilling rig); strong-paradigm logic,which emphasizes the articulation of proce-dures to solve outstanding puzzles within para-digmatic communities (e.g., close organizationalculture or development centered on one propri-etary technology); and the logic of emancipa-tion, which emphasizes subversive challengesto prevailing knowledge assumptions (e.g.,green alternatives to standard technology).

Another approach combining implicit as-sumptions from multiple bodies of literature isproposed by Boxembaum and Rouleau and in-volves using the epistemic script of what can becalled “metaphorical bricolage.” Conceiving animaginative new theory often requires scholarsto follow the script of bricolage, in which theyselect and creatively assemble concepts, empir-ical material, and metaphors from a wide rangeof literature to create a new perspective on or-ganizational life. Metaphors are readily avail-able elements in the theory builders’ environ-

FIGURE 1Map of Different Theorizing Approaches

Theorizing within

one literature

Theorizing across

multiple bodies of literature

Theorizing

with implicit

assumptions of

the

literature

- Problematization - Combining epistemologies

- Metaphorical bricolage

Theorizing

with explicit

constructs of

the

literature

- Contrasting

- Practical rationality

- Inductive top-down theorizing

- Blending

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ment and are by themselves not novel toorganizational theory. Rather, it is the specificcombination of selective metaphors that acts asa catalyst for bringing a unique and coherentnew way of perceiving organizational life. Thepartial and ambiguous applicability of meta-phors stimulates theory builders to be creativein their interpretations and to generate new in-sights. Assembling multiple metaphors, espe-cially when these come from a wide range ofliterature, enables the expression of theoreticalcreativity. The authors illustrate how founda-tional texts on organizational institutionalismcontain an intricate bricolage of metaphors frommultiple knowledge domains, including culture,biology, construction, religion, theater, market,system, power, and hard sciences. In a sense,metaphors could be construed as implicit im-ages of or cognitions about our perceived reali-ties. Although formulating new theories re-quires scholars to follow, often implicitly, theepistemic scripts of metaphorical bricolage, ac-ademics generally resort to different epistemicscripts to present and gain legitimacy for theirnew theories, because metaphorical bricolagehas yet to become a legitimate knowledge pro-duction tool among the gatekeepers of presti-gious academic journals.

The top left quadrant of Figure 1 characterizesother theorizing approaches that still focus onthe implicit assumptions but within the bound-aries of a given literature. Alvesson and Sand-berg suggest that we can generate novel re-search questions through problematization,which involves challenging the implicit as-sumptions of an existing theory. They propose anumber of principles for researchers to follow:(1) identify a domain of literature where one canfocus on challenging its assumptions; (2) articu-late clearly the various kinds of assumptionsunderpinning existing theory; (3) identify limita-tions and problems of these assumptions; (4)develop new assumptions and formulate re-search questions; (5) relate the alternative as-sumption to a targeted academic audience andforesee the audience’s likely response to thisalternative; and (6) evaluate whether the alter-native assumptions are likely to generate a the-ory that will be perceived as interesting by thetarget audience. They illustrate how question-ing various implicit assumptions in a givenliterature—organizational identity—can allowscholars to generate novel research questions.

In contrast, the bottom left quadrant of Figure1characterizes theorizing approaches that focusmuch less on implicit assumptions and more onthe explicit constructs within a given literature.Tsang and Ellsaesser describe how scholars canchallenge a theory’s explicit constructs throughcontrastive explanation. The contrastive ap-proach focuses on comparing the explanatorypower of the current key constructs with alter-native constructs or explanations. With regardto transaction cost economics (TCE), for exam-ple, a contrastive question can be “Why do firmsform joint ventures in order to minimize the sumof production and transaction costs rather thanmaximizing profits through improving theircompetitive positions vis-a-vis rivals?” The ex-plicit construct of profit maximization throughcompetitive rivalry following “rather than” con-stitutes the alternative (i.e., contrasting foil) tothe traditional TCE focus on organizing for costminimization. The foil explicitly clarifies spe-cific aspects of the fact that researchers intendto focus on and, thus, makes the task of explain-ing more manageable. To illustrate, instead ofasking the very broad question “Why is there anorganization?” Coase’s (1937) article focusesmore narrowly on why some production activi-ties are organized in firms rather than marketsand makes his theorizing task more manage-able.

Contrastive questions can help broaden the-ory. For example, scholars seeking to expandthe scope of TCE can ask, “Why are productionactivities, rather than philanthropic activities,organized within firms?” or “Why are philan-thropic activities organized within firms ratherthan markets?” Contrastive questions can alsohelp develop deeper theories. To illustrate, thesingle focus of TCE on transaction costs leadssome scholars to ask the contrastive question“Why do firms economize on transaction costsrather than maximizing transaction value?” (Za-jac & Olsen, 1993). Tsang and Ellsaesser thenoffer some heuristic rules to help researchersapply the contrastive explanation approach toexpand or deepen existing theories.

A second approach that focuses on explicitconstructs within one literature involves practi-cal rationality. Sandberg and Tsoukas arguethat practical rationality can act as a comple-ment to traditional scientific rationality theo-ries, which construe the world as discrete enti-ties and maintain separation between the object

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of study and the researcher. To develop organi-zational theory that describes and explainsmore closely managerial practice and, thus, in-creasing research relevance, researchers shouldfocus explicitly on what practitioners actuallydo, which tools they use, how they interact withothers, and for what purposes. The aim is tocapture the logic of practice, which involves (1)entwinement instances in which people are ab-sorbed in their work, routinely act, and arelargely unreflexive about their actions, and (2)the temporary breakdowns (e.g., critical inci-dents) that signal nonroutine situations stimu-lating practitioners to detach from their rou-tines, reflect, and revise taken-for-grantedassumptions. Practical rationality incorporatesthe recursive patterns of explicitly articulatedwork interactions, human purposes and mo-tives, contextual richness, and connectionsamong events across time.

A third approach that focuses on explicit con-structs within one literature involves whatShepherd and Sutcliffe term inductive top-downtheorizing. Organizational theorists can developnew insights not through inductive analysis ofempirical data alone but by considering the cur-rent body of literature (including papers, books,presentations, working papers) as anothersource of explicit empirical data. By developinga gist (a holistic representation of the literature),researchers can then focus their attention onspecific aspects of the literature to identify atension, opposition, or contradiction, which rep-resents the starting point for novel theorizing.Researchers engage in conscious informationprocessing by performing constant comparison,which provides the raw material on which un-conscious processing can generate flashes ofinsight.

One exemplar of this inductive top-down the-orizing approach can be found in Smith andLewis’s development of a theory of paradox (thisissue). They reviewed 360 articles focused onorganizational paradox that were publishedacross 12 management journals in the past 20years. Their review reveals a lack of conceptualand theoretical coherence in this vast literature.This enables them to ask fundamental ques-tions, including “What is—and is not—a para-dox?” “How are paradoxes, tensions, and duali-ties as concepts different from one another?”“Can leaders and organizations resolve ten-sions, or must they accept their persistence?”

“How can leaders deal with paradoxes to impactorganizational outcomes?”

Addressing these questions helps them bringmore definitional clarity to various constructs inthis mushrooming literature and allows them tosynthesize various types of paradoxes into fourkinds, as well as to integrate the latter into adynamic model of organizing that emphasizestemporary yet cyclical responses to paradoxicaltensions so as to foster organizational adapta-tion in the short and long term. Exemplars ofother articles using inductive top-down theoriz-ing published in the Academy of ManagementReview include Van de Ven and Poole’s (1995), inwhich the authors reviewed and synthesized alarge number of academic articles on change atmultiple levels of analysis, and Huy’s (2001)article on temporal capability, in which Huyproposed various ideal types of various changeintervention approaches relying on data com-prising academic articles and case examples onorganizational change.

Finally, the bottom right quadrant of Figure 1characterizes a theorizing approach that focuseson explicit constructs and combines multiplebodies of literature. Oswick and colleagues pro-pose that blending explicit constructs from mul-tiple knowledge domains can produce creativeoutput, depending on the characteristics of theinput domains. The higher the similarity be-tween input domains, the less likely the result-ing theory will be perceived as radically new.For example, the idea of “organizational cul-ture” exhibits modest novelty because the twoinput concepts, “organization” and “culture,” arerelatively similar to each other. Both conceptsshare the same input frame— human socialgroups—such as the modern workgroup andtribal clans.

To generate radically new insights, blendingamong noncontiguous domains is suggested.Blending concepts that are very different from oreven clashing with one another exhibits highcreativity. For example, studying organizationsas special kinds of prisons represents a highlyimaginative and counterintuitive blend of do-main concepts that span freedom and empow-erment, as well as incarceration and control.

Four specific blending approaches can beused: (1) focusing on dissimilarities among sim-ilar domains (e.g., how is managing differentfrom leading?); (2) highlighting seemingly di-chotomous concepts that are, in fact, mutually

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implicated (e.g., organizational resistance couldbe a form of organizational compliance); (3) us-ing counterfactual reasoning, where the conven-tional logic is inverted (e.g., exploring how ac-tivists help organizations, whereas consultantswork against organizations); or (4) using anom-alous reasoning, comparing disparate and un-related domains on the basis of similarity (e.g.,organizations versus slavery). Obviously, thisblending process is both challenging and riskyin that it requires a high degree of imaginationand has low odds of producing new creativeinsights that underpin radically new theories.

Many authors do caution, however, that theirsuggested approaches might help but cannotguarantee success in creative theorizing. Apply-ing any methodology systematically does notguarantee a creative outcome. A host of otherfactors are important, such as imagination, re-flexivity, scope of knowledge mastered, and abroad understanding of different metatheoreti-cal perspectives. Moreover, direct application ofone literature to another is seldom a rewardingapproach. When we borrow from existing theo-ries, we also have to return “dividends” to thesource. For example, if organization theoristsborrow from psychology to develop the idea of“organizational memory,” they should returnfresh insights to the original source idea ofmemory itself. A creative contribution reflects atwo-way exchange of new insights.

CONCLUSION

So, are we delusional in seeking or expectingnovel new theories, and, if not delusional, arewe—in this STF—closer to or farther away fromfinding novelty and innovation? Have thingschanged since the last special issue on theory inthis journal, which Weick characterized as “asafe rather than bold set of articles” (1999: 803)?The editors of that issue did not disagree butargued that this was because the bold work hadalready taken place: the battles had been foughtand won, and the special issue represented amore measured approach to consolidate thosegains.

In 1989, the notion that skilled organizational the-orists are not just objective scientists, but alsogood storytellers who weave convincing tales ofcause and effect, was unknown in many cornersof the field and ridiculed in most others. It is nowaccepted by a large proportion of organizational

theorists and is often used as an argument—evenby some of the most traditional, quantitative, andpositivistic researchers we know—about whygood theory requires using many of the samemethods as good literature. In 1989, the notionthat a good theory could be developed thatlacked independent and dependent variableswas new and controversial; it is now viewed as atrivial truth by many of the same people whofound this idea to be absurd. We could name atleast fifteen respected organizational theoristswho would have rejected process theories as “un-scientific” in 1989 but find such theories to be auseful and important way of describing and ex-plaining events in 1999. Finally, in 1989, the no-tion that there is no objective means of assessingthe value of a theory would have been viewed asheresy in many of the same corners that it is nowaccepted as given truth, or at least a plausibleand troubling possibility (Elsbach, Sutton, &Whetten, 1999: 633).

These gains have certainly not been lost in thelast decade—but perhaps it is now time for lessconsolidation and more provocation once again.If we truly want exciting new theories, we mustbrace ourselves for a return to the senselesslandscape and “the insane pursuit of original-ity” noted by Weick (1999: 803). Taking such adirection requires us to reflect on the nature ofthe task, as well as the ways in which existingpractices that may make this task more difficulthave become institutionalized.

One question that must be asked, therefore, iswhether we should try to find bold new theoriz-ing in “top-tier” U.S. journals, such as the Acad-emy of Management Review. U.S. journals havebeen criticized for their self-referentiality (Grey,2010; Meyer & Boxenbaum, 2010; Usdiken &Pasadeos 1995; Wasti, Poell, & Cakar, 2008). If, asOswick and colleagues suggest, the tendency isto rely on finding novel ideas from outside thefield and if, for the reasons above, we cannotdefeat domestication, then should we look tonon-U.S. journals to provide intellectual innova-tion because of their predilection for citing morewidely than their U.S. counterparts and for be-ing more likely to cite philosophers, sociolo-gists, and other influential intellectuals fromdifferent linguistic communities (Meyer & Box-enbaum, 2010)? Or, perhaps, do we need a moreradical overhaul of publication procedures, suchas that advocated by Tsang and Frey (2007),where papers should be accepted “as is” on thebasis of a one-time review?

Another question concerns whether we shouldrely on journals at all to find bold new theoriz-

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ing. Certainly, the place of journals as outletsfor our work has been consolidated with theadvent of business school rankings, league ta-bles, and research assessment exercises. How-ever, the growth in journals has been at theexpense of research monographs.

A recent visit to London’s largest historical book-shop revealed a mere four short shelves of bookson organizational theory (rather less than theshelf space in sociology occupied by authors be-tween Bauman and Bourdieu), nearly all of themtextbooks. Instead of writing or reading books,there are now more academics each seeking topublish more papers in a larger number of jour-nals (Gabriel, 2010: 762).

Is this perhaps another reason why there are nonew and exciting theories? Do we need books toprovide the space within which we can be noveland where we do not have to pay such expen-sive homage to those who have gone before?Have recent changes in the field compromisedour ability to innovate theoretically? And, if so,can we do anything about it? Can we maneuverbetween the institutional constraints, or can weact in ways that release constraints? Is it, asWeick (1999: 803) intimated in the last specialissue, that there is nothing bold left to say, or isit, with the long-standing drive to publish, notperish, coupled with the more recent rush todominate the rankings and league tables, thatthere is no longer any place left in which to sayit?

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Roy Suddaby (roy.suddaby@ualberta.ca) is the Eric Geddes Professor of Business atthe University of Alberta, Director of the Canadian Centre for Corporate Sustainabilityand Social Entrepreneurship, and a visiting professor at Uppsala University. Hereceived his Ph.D. in organizational analysis from the University of Alberta. Hisresearch focuses on processes of organizational and institutional change, with acurrent focus on the diffusion of corporate art collections and the role of corporatehistorians within Fortune 500 corporations.

Cynthia Hardy (chardy@unimelb.edu.au) is a professor of management at the Univer-sity of Melbourne, codirector of the International Centre for Research on Organiza-tional Discourse, Strategy & Change, and honorary professor at Cardiff BusinessSchool. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Warwick. Her research interestsinclude a discursive perspective on institutional entrepreneurship and institutionalchange, power and politics in organizations, organizational discourse theory, andcritical discourse analysis.

Quy Nguyen Huy (quy.huy@insead.edu) is associate professor of strategic manage-ment at INSEAD and area coordinator (chair) of the Strategy group. He obtained hisPh.D. in strategy from McGill University. His research focuses on linking micro socialemotional behavior to macro strategic processes, such as strategic change, strategyexecution, and founding of new organizations.

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