The Case for Formal Theory

By Ron Adner, László Pólos, Michael D. Ryall, Olav Sorenson. 2009

123 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This special topic forum contains seven papers that illustrate many of the ways in which management researchers can use formal tools—mathematical methods, simulation, and formal logic—to develop management research. Here we offer an overview of these methods and their advantages as tools for theory building.

Subfields: Management Science and Operations Research, Sociology and Political Science, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c1315e4e79f1c57c01a781682d6a3cf0343a1bd2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Management Science and Operations Research

1. Olivier Chatain
2. Magda Osman
3. Peter Zemsky
4. Phanish Puranam
5. J. Edwards
6. M. Pillutla
7. Amanda J. C. Sharkey
8. Nils Stieglitz

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Magda Osman
2. Jesper Sørensen
3. James W. Berry
4. Phanish Puranam
5. J. Edwards
6. Amanda J. C. Sharkey
7. Rik Pieters
8. John K. Kruschke

In Strategy and Management

1. Olivier Chatain
2. Nils Stieglitz
3. Magda Osman
4. M. Pillutla
5. Peter Zemsky
6. James W. Berry
7. Phanish Puranam
8. J. Edwards

Citations in the corpus

• Value Creation and Value Capture with Frictions (2011, background): “2More generally, there has been a marked increase in interest in formal methods in management research in general (Adner et al., 2009) and in strategy in particular (Ghemewat and Cassiman, 2007).”
• Modelling Bounded Rationality in Organizations: Progress and Prospects† (2015, background): “By exposing this, we aim to increase the appreciation for formal models among organizations researchers, which as Adner et al. (2009) point out is still fairly limited.”
• Entrepreneurship as a Mobility Process (2014, background): “Our decision to adopt a more formal approach is driven largely by the desire to mathematically validate our key theoretical arguments despite the inherent difficulties in measuring many of the theoretical constructs in which we are most interested (Adner et al. 2009).”
• The Presence of Something or the Absence of Nothing: Increasing Theoretical Precision in Management Research (2010, background): “…(Adner, Polos, Ryall, & Sorenson, 2009; Freese, 1980; Land, 1971), which can be pursued by developing analytical models, conducting simulations, and applying formal logic (Adner et al., 2009; Davis, Eisenhardt, & Bingham, 2007; Harrison, Lin, Carroll, & Carley, 2007; Hulin & Ilgen, 2000).”