Is Theory Blooming?

The snow has melted, birds are nesting, the grass is greening and growing, and depending on where you live, the crocuses/daffodils/tulips are coming up. Of course, we know what this means—It’s dissertation proposal defense season! Yes, it’s that time of year when fourth-year doctoral students are feverishly working on their proposals so that they can engage in, or accelerate, their data collection and analysis over the summer, and harried faculty advisors are editing and commenting on their drafts and urging them to be more precise, more detailed, and to write faster. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer of these dissertation proposals contain a major theory chapter or essay, which I think is both problematic for the field, and for the doctoral students’ development as scholars.

Ten years ago, outgoing Academy of Management Review editor Amy Hillman wrote her farewell Editor’s Comments column (Hillman, 2011)*. In it, she noted that submissions to AMR had plateaued at between 400 and 500 submissions a year, even as Academy of Management membership continued to grow, and AMR’s sister Academy journals, like AMJ, saw submissions continue to rise. Current AMR AEs tell me that annual submission rates are still at this level. Hillman and her editorial team were rightly concerned that even as our field grew, attention to developing novel theory didn’t seem to be keeping pace. She listed four possible reasons this might be so: (1) a perception that fewer journals will publish theory articles, making writing one a riskier proposition given journal acceptance rates; (2) a perception that writing theory is “harder” than writing empirical papers; (3) explicit doctoral training in research methods and methodologies, but little to none in theory; and (4) the growing popularity of “three paper” dissertations in lieu of one large project (Hillman, 2011: 606). While she noted that the first is a misperception, which I agree with (All the major journals in management except for AMJ accept theory papers), and opinions are divided on the second, she argued the third and fourth reasons were likely significant culprits. Again, I agree with her; and since it’s dissertation proposal season, I will focus on the fourth cause—the ascension of the three-essay dissertation, and demise of the “one big study” dissertation.

The dissertation is supposed to be a doctoral student’s evidence that they have become an expert in some domain, and have the skills to design and execute high-quality research. It is the capstone of their doctoral education, and leads to the conferral of their degree. Unlike journal articles, it doesn’t face any particular page limit (except perhaps that imposed by weary dissertation chairs who, other than the student, are likely to be the only people who read the entire thing). This affords students the opportunity to take a truly deep dive into a literature and question, develop new theoretical insights that don’t fit neatly into 10-12 double-spaced pages, and engage in extensive data collection and analyses that go beyond what would appear in the pages of a single journal article. In some fields, such as history, dissertations are intended to become books; in our field, they are carved up into journal articles. However, the act of developing and executing one big study provides learning opportunities that extend far beyond the single study; thus, even if they take longer to refashion into journal-length articles, to my mind the long-term benefits outweigh these short-term costs. Plus, the process of paring down and carving up a big study into more digestible journal articles provides its own skill development benefits. Finally, not all empirical studies work out, and if you’ve done a big study with a substantial theory chapter, you can always turn that chapter into a theory article.

This is the model my dissertation followed, and I did in fact turn my theory chapter into an AMR article, although the final product had limited resemblance to my dissertation chapter. Taking that chapter through the review process taught me how to write theory papers, though, and was one of the most valuable experiences of my career (Thanks AE Dev Jennings!).

However, given the increasing pressures young scholars face to generate multiple journal articles quickly, the last twenty years or so has seen a proliferation of three-essay dissertations, where each essay is written as a journal-length empirical study, sometimes with an introductory chapter slapped on the front, and maybe a discussion chapter that brings the three essays together on the back end. While this format can have some instrumental benefits, there are also some costs. First, I’ve heard some say that you can just take three articles you are working on, package them together, and call it your dissertation. This completely obviates a dissertation’s purpose. Second, I’ve rarely seen a good three-essay dissertation that didn’t ultimately take too long to do. If all three essays are quality studies, then the dissertation typically ends up being more work than it should, and takes longer than expected to complete. The more common alternative is that one of the essays is pretty crappy, and either gets folded into another essay before submitting to a journal, or is dropped entirely. This format also limits doctoral students’ opportunities to experience developing a really big theoretical idea, which can ultimately be published as a theory article.

So, I’m not a fan of the three-essay dissertation. I’ve let students do two-essay dissertations where both essays are empirical. However, I encourage them to think about writing a theory essay as an alternative, although some don’t, and I’ve also had students pursue the “one big study” model. As we enter dissertation proposal season, for the sake of our field, and for your, or your students’, sakes, I encourage you to look at options that will allow big theoretical ideas to flower.

*Hillman, A. 2011. Editor’s comments: What is the future of theory? Academy of Management Review, 36(4): 606-608.