getting the reader to i get it!: clarification ...

GETTING THE READER TO ‘‘I GET IT!’’: CLARIFICATION, DIFFERENTIATION AND ILLUSTRATION PAUL F. SKILTON Washington State University

This essay discusses the process of developing theory during the review process for conceptual articles. Because conceptual work proceeds from a logic of generation rather than verification, authors and reviewers of conceptual articles face unfamiliar challenges when they are more accustomed to writing or reviewing empirical research. Keywords: theory development; grounded theory; influence.

Theories gain favor because of their conceptual appeal, their logical structure, or their psychological plausibility. Internal coherence, parsimony, formal elegance, and so on prevail over empirical accuracy in determining a theory’s impact. Published theoretical works generally attract greater attention than purely empirical studies because of their ability to excite these essentially aesthetic sensibilities (Astley 1985, p. 503).

INTRODUCTION Seen in a purely instrumental light, the proposition quoted above provides an incentive for journal editors to seek out conceptual work and for authors to write it. This essay stems from the recognition that the way we train scholars and editors in management domains is at often odds with the production of conceptual work. Our training tends to favor empirical research that seeks to verify existing theory. As a result it is easier for authors to write, reviewers to comment on and editors to publish articles that use established empirical methods to test minor variants of established theory, even though such articles often have minimal impact. If the goal of research is to have impact rather than to simply be published, then all three kinds of actors have to adopt a different way of thinking as they write and review articles whose primary contribution is new theoretical language. The goal of this essay is to expand on the process of developing theory during the review process for conceptual articles. There are things that authors and reviewers of conceptual articles should think about that differ from what we think about when we write or review empirical research. Most prominent among these is the idea that successful conceptual research is not concerned with a logic of verification. Instead attention and interest flow to generative conceptual research that presents new and inter-

22

esting theory without empirical adornment. Astley and others (Kuhn 1962; Glaser and Strauss 1967; Davis 1971; Astley 1985; Weick 1989; Hirsch and Levin 1999; Abbott 2001, 2004; Alvesson and Ka¨rreman 2007; Van Maanen, Srenson and Mitchell 2007; Rindova 2008) provide examples of influential conceptual articles whose appeal has been strong and long-lasting, despite numerous critics who complain that the minimal propositions offered in such theories are not falsifiable. Although it may not be apparent, generative conceptual articles are also highly influential in supply chain management research. By any measure the most influential supply chain management article has been Lee, Padmanabhan and Seungjin’s (2004) article on the bullwhip effect — an article that develops theory without attempting to falsify hypotheses. Because most journals that publish supply chain research require a quantitative component, many influential conceptual articles take the form of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967), in which theory is derived from observation or framed with data. Examples of these include Pagell and Wu (2009) on sustainability and the purchasing portfolio, Salvador, Forza and Rungtusanatham (2002) on modularity, Kleindorfer and Saad (2005) on supply chain disruption, and Choi, Dooley and Rungtusanatham (2001) on complex adaptive systems. Given the preference of many OM and SCM journals for at least the appearance of empiricism, verification is the dominant logic among SCM scholars. The challenge for this essay is to describe categories of action that will help reviewers and authors develop generative theory that will excite two responses from readers. The strength of these responses (which can be labeled ‘‘I get it!’’ and ‘‘That’s interesting!’’) tells us about an article’s potential for influence. As its title indicates, this essay is primarily oriented toward provoking the ‘‘I get it!’’ response that signifies comprehension. This is probably the less important of

Volume 47, Number 2

Getting the Reader to ‘‘I Get It!’’

the two, but since ‘‘That’s interesting!’’ depends almost entirely on the author’s insight into his or her subject, I address the outcome reviewers can influence, and assume that the author has an interesting idea. I also concentrate on comprehension because if the reader fails to understand an idea it is unlikely to be seen as interesting. Both responses are necessary for influence, but commenting on both would lead me away from my intended purpose. Three categories of action are central to the development of influential conceptual articles. These are clarification, differentiation and illustration. Clarification is the process of developing theoretical language with desirable rhetorical, aesthetic and logical characteristics. Differentiation is the process of developing concepts and relationships that embody a challenge to the status quo ante of established theory and belief. Illustration is the process of connecting new theory with the reader’s experience of the world while preserving conceptual abstraction. All of these categories have been proposed by previous writers on the topic of theory development, but seldom in this combination. Prescriptions concerning them are usually aimed solely at authors, where my objective is to present them for both authors and reviewers.

WHAT IS A CONCEPTUAL ARTICLE? A conceptual article is one in which the objective is to generate and present theory, defined as a system of abstract concepts and the relationships between them (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Cook and Campbell 1979; Bacharach 1989), without presenting a measurement model based on specific operationalization of those concepts and relationships. My focus on conceptual articles should not be taken to devalue articles that present measurement models in addition to theory development. Much of what I say applies equally to such work. It is selfevident that empirical method can be a powerful tool in the service of theory development (Van Maanen et al. 2007). The difference is that in a purely conceptual article, neither the author nor reviewers can take refuge in the comfortable domain of measurement we are trained for. Doing without data is often an uncomfortable process. My attention is also given primarily to conceptual articles in the propositional social science tradition, rather than to formal models following economic tradition. Much of what I propose applies to formal models as well. Glaser and Strauss (1967) frame the difference between conceptual and empirical as a contrast between a logic of verification in which testing established theory is paramount and a logic of generation in which new concepts, new relationships between concepts or both are shaped into new theories. They put the generative first, since only generative work can produce an integrating framework that is general enough that ‘‘anyone who uses the integrated theory can start at a more general level and focusing on a specific area within the theory, work down to

data, still guided by hypotheses for specific limited situations’’ (p. 41). This resonates with Astley’s position (1985) that the most important product of social science research is theoretical language, rather than verification of theory, because interpretations of theoretical language, implicit or explicit, guide data collection and interpretation. The goal of a conceptual article is generation without verification. The measure of success for a conceptual article is whether it stimulates subsequent attempts at verification. Specifying these performance criteria forces us to recognize that most published conceptual articles are dead ends. To be successful, a conceptual article has to ‘‘excite these essentially aesthetic sensibilities’’ in the author or in other scholars to such an extent that they set about the process of falsification, and thereby extend the life of the theory.

CLARIFICATION AND CONCEPTUAL APPEAL The first developmental process for authors and reviewers is clarification. Theory generation requires definitions of new concepts and relationships, or redefinition or realignment of existing ones, organized in a parsimonious logical structure. Suddaby (2010) describes meeting this requirement as a problem of construct clarity. For Suddaby, construct clarity is achieved by creating precise definitions of constructs, articulating coherent systems of semantic relationships between them, and specifying the level of analysis and scope to which the theory applies. An emphasis on construct clarity forces authors and reviewers to treat theory as a clearly articulated system of constructs in relation to each other, clearly bounded (Bacharach 1989). Achieving construct clarity can solve many of the problems of internal coherence, parsimony and logical structure, and thus make it easier for ideas to be appealing or plausible. Suddaby (2010) discusses definitions that are vague or self-referential or poorly organized or all three. Because the primary product of a conceptual article is theoretical language, concepts and relationships should be clearly articulated and abstract. Glaser and Strauss (1967, p. 35) use the term analytic to describe this characteristic of theory. Definitions of concepts and the relationships between them should be ‘‘sufficiently generalized to designate characteristics of concrete entities, not the entities themselves.’’ The job of the theorist and reviewer is to create definitions that say what the concept is and what it is not, and how it relates to the other concepts in the theory. An important element in this is the definition of the construct set. New theories are frequently over or under specified, including concepts and relationships that may not be necessary for a coherent description, or missing concepts and relationships that the author has assumed are self-evident. The level and scope of theory in an article are often unspecified or ambiguous. Level and scope can be ad-

April 2011

23

Journal of Supply Chain Management

dressed by attending to the distinction made by Glaser and Strauss (1967) between substantive theory, grounded in a specific practical, organizational, temporal or geographic domain (such as ‘‘contemporary offshore sourcing’’), and formal theory that applies across settings, such as transaction cost economics. Substantive and formal theory differ in degree only, since the mode of discovery is comparison within domain for substantive theory and across domains for formal theory. The fact that the difference is one of degree does not excuse authors and reviewers from being explicit about the level and scope of theory. Reviewers need to be especially careful that appeals from the formal to the substantive and vice versa are explicit and carefully controlled. The fact that definitions, level and scope are often problematic suggests that one of the key issues for reviewers handling initial submissions of conceptual research is to attend to construct clarity first, rather than the specifics of content. This is a very different assignment than the job of challenging methods and analytic choices in empirical work. Reviewers of conceptual articles should focus their initial constructive comments on definitions and specification of the level and scope to which the theory applies. The risk of focusing on content when concepts, relationships and level are not clear is that the reviewer will offer misdirected constructive criticism based on what they think the authors intend. It is possible that the authors do not know what they intend, (in which case reviewers’ comments may steer the direction of the paper) but most of the time I think that when authors are not clear they are pursuing an imperfectly articulated theory-in-use that makes sense to them. Making suggestions that do not conform to the authors’ theory-in-use can send a message that constructs need to be clarified — but the same message could be sent more directly by focusing on construct clarity and structure.

DIFFERENTIATION: CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO It has been argued so often that differentiation, the process of presenting a challenge to the status quo of theory, is necessary for an article to be conceptually interesting that it seems a truism (Kuhn 1962; Davis 1971; Astley 1985; Weick 1989; Abbott 2001, 2004; Van Maanen et al. 2007; Alvesson and Ka¨rreman 2007; Rindova 2008). Within this truism, scholars have been divided on the question of how extensive differentiation must be for conceptual research to be influential. Astley (1985), Davis (1971) and Rindova (2008) emphasize their belief that conceptual work should not challenge readers’ expectations too completely. In this ideal, a new concept or theory should flow naturally from the status quo. This implies a developmental process that involves grafting new concepts onto the existing structure of theory in a way that shifts attention to new opportunities with-

24

out overtly challenging entrenched positions. This type of contribution is characteristic of substantive theory. An example of this in supply chain management is the Pagell and Wu (2009) article that reshapes purchasing portfolio theory through a grounded theory process. Lee et al. (2004) on the bullwhip effect is also substantive. In contrast to this reviewer friendly approach Kilduff (2006) and others (Kuhn 1962; Astley 1985; Van Maanen et al. 2007) propose that interesting conceptual theory is often characterized by more discontinuous breaks with established theory. One could argue that the domain of supply chain management as we know it comes from three roughly contemporaneous conceptual studies that profoundly changed the boundaries of management and operations domains. Kraljic’s (1983) Harvard Business Review article redrew the boundaries of what were then purchasing and logistics domains. Wernerfelt (1984) provided an additional conceptual discontinuity when he proposed the resource based view of the firm (and challenged the basis of Kraljic’s article in Porter’s ideas 1980). Williamson (1981) on transactions cost economics profoundly altered views on interorganizational exchange. These are formal theories that provide general, domain spanning, integrating frameworks. No matter whether differentiation is substantive or formal there is wide agreement that achieving conceptual appeal depends on articulating the generally held beliefs of the audience, and then presenting a structured proposition that denies some element of those beliefs. Davis (1971, p. 311) writes, ‘‘An audience will consider any particular proposition to be worth saying only if it denies the truth of some part of their routinely held assumption-ground. If it does not challenge but merely confirms one of their taken-for-granted beliefs, they will respond to it by rejecting its value while affirming its truth.’’ This is why a dissertation literature review is unlikely to develop new theory (Rindova 2008), and why interesting concepts are unlikely to be discovered as ‘‘gaps in the literature’’ (Kilduff 2006). Dissertation chapters and ‘‘gap’’ studies typically affirm known ideas, and hence usually make for uninteresting conceptual research. Many formal models also affirm accepted ideas, which detracts from their potential to create interest. LePine and King (2010) make a case for differentiation through literature reviews when an author enacts a challenge to the status quo by pointing out inconsistencies, boundary problems, conflicts with other theories and the like. There are three components to reviewing for differentiation. The first is to evaluate whether or not the status quo is actually being challenged. This is only fully possible when the constructs have been clearly defined and the level and scope of the theory specified. Only then can the reviewer be certain that the author is not renaming an existing idea or misreading the way existing ideas fit together. When a reviewer arrives at the conclusion that the author is not actually doing something new,

Volume 47, Number 2

Getting the Reader to ‘‘I Get It!’’

the developmental path is to challenge the authors’ assertions of novelty. It seems reasonable to ask authors to do things like include additional or alternative constructs and relationships in the proposed theory, to shift the level of analysis, or to change the scope of the theory in order to actually challenge the theoretical status quo. The second component of reviewing for differentiation is historical. While there may be one dominant logic that defines normal science in a domain at any given time, it is seldom the case that only one logic has ever operated (Kuhn 1962; Abbott 2004; Dunn and Jones 2010). Particularly when reviewing for inexperienced authors, reviewers can provide developmental support for differentiation by pointing authors toward earlier scholars who have proposed related ideas, or related domains where the novel concept or a cognate is already in use. After all, most new ideas are really rediscoveries (Merton 1961). Conceptual appeal and psychological plausibility are both enhanced by showing that a new theory follows from the work of earlier, neglected scholars — for example, it seems apparent that some of the plausibility of the resource based view of the firm comes from Wernerfelt’s (1984) identification of Edith Penrose’s work as a precursor. The final piece of differentiation is being assertive about contribution. If the theory and constructs actually challenge the way we understand prior research, does the author lead the domain toward new and interesting possibilities by showing how prior research can be reinterpreted (Astley 1985; LePine and King 2010)? In conversations about reviewing, a frequent comment about ‘‘good’’ conceptual articles is that authors sometimes fail to see the potential their ideas have for disrupting a domain or are timid in asserting that potential. Reviewers can help develop this by feeding back to authors what they (the reviewers) think the contribution is, or has the potential to be. My experience as an author and reviewer leads me to believe that while differentiation from the existing theoretical structure and construct clarity can never be wholly separated because they both contribute to logical structure, it is much easier to make progress on the content of differentiation after concepts are made clear by refining definitions, level and scope. I have found that following this sequence has been successful in developing conceptual appeal (‘‘That’s interesting!’’) and enhancing psychological plausibility and comprehension (‘‘I get it!’’) in the review process.

ILLUSTRATION AND AMBIGUITY Eliciting an ‘‘I get it!’’ response also depends on illustration. It seems obvious from the observations of the many scholars who have commented on what makes good theory that differentiation is most often the product of encounters of prepared minds with data or observation

(Abbott 2001; Glaser and Strauss 1967; Van Maanen et al. 2007). While the author’s mind may be prepared, good theory development requires that the readers’ minds be prepared also. The risk of focusing only on construct clarity is that a theory will become too far removed from the beliefs and observations of readers. The final process for authors and reviewers to attend to is therefore illustration. One way we illustrate management research of all kinds is by including abstract figures and equations, which are typically the only illustrations given in purely formal models. Formal elegance, achieved by reducing a theory to a few constructs and formal relations between them that can be depicted in geometric form or specified as a system of equations can be highly influential, as witness the impact of Lee et al. (2004) theorizing the bullwhip effect. If authors do not provide illustrative figures or equations for theoretical models, reviewers are nearly certain to ask for them — if they are unclear, reviewers usually take notice. A more subtle problem in illustration is ‘‘exampling’’ through verbal description of events or cases. I deliberately use the neologism ‘‘exampling’’ to recall the pejorative sense in which it was applied by Glaser and Strauss (1967) to the development of ‘‘armchair’’ theory. ‘‘A researcher can easily find examples for dreamed up, speculative or logically deduced theory after the idea has occurred. But since the idea has not been derived from the example, seldom can the example correct or change [the idea] (even if the author is willing) since the example was selectively chosen for its confirming power. Therefore one receives the image of a proof when there is none and the theory earns a richness of detail that it did not earn’’ (Glaser and Strauss 1967, p. 5). This is a rejection of attempts to mask flawed theory with appeals to a logic of verification dressed up as illustration. The risk of exampling is that it can lead the theory, authors and reviewers away from construct clarity. A theory’s construct set, relationships, level and scope should not be defined ostensively by pointing to an example. The relationships proposed in a theory should be free from the constraints of confirmatory examples. To illustrate, a co-author and I were revising a conceptual paper whose scope was limited to the level of the team. One of the challenges of this process was that a reviewer continued to present examples of external influences on team behavior, examples that appealed to us because they had been present in the original anomaly. The temptation we faced was to expand the scope of the theory, to add constructs and to thereby undermine the contribution we hoped to make. Because exampling is often plausible it should be carefully guarded against. Reviewers should be very cautious about recommending specific examples, and authors should be careful in choosing them. Given their resistance to exampling, it is interesting that in the next chapter of their book, Glaser and Strauss

April 2011

25

Journal of Supply Chain Management

argue that in addition to being analytic, concepts should be ‘‘sensitizing — yield a meaningful picture, abetted by apt illustrations that enable one to grasp the reference in terms of one’s own experience’’ (pp. 38–39). For Glaser and Strauss, sensitizing illustrations emerge from the engagement of the prepared mind with the world. In their parlance, illustrations emerge from interaction with the environment in which theory is grounded. I tend to think that limiting a theorist to emergent examples leaves him or her vulnerable to slipping into verification logic. Instead I believe that illustrations should primarily inform readers about differentiation — the anomaly that provoked the new theory, the conflicting predictions of competing theories, or the abductive leap that brought disparate concepts together. The value of limiting sensitizing illustration to differentiation is that it helps authors and reviewers maintain an ambiguous relationship to data. In making this claim we draw on Astley’s (1985, p. 501) claim that linguistic ambiguity is a basic characteristic of influential conceptual scholarship: ‘‘Not only is language, rather than objective fact, the chief product of research, but ambiguous, empirically imprecise language enhances a theory’s conceptual appeal by widening its potential applicability. The very generality of ambiguous constructs assures their widespread importance in the discipline, since a great number and variety of more specific propositions can be included within their overarching frame of reference. The more general and abstract theories, the ones farthest removed from empirical reality, exert a disproportionate influence on the field by virtue of their sheer ubiquity as umbrella concepts to which a multiplicity of more explicit hypotheses can be attached.’’ What Astley means by ambiguity is that a general, abstract concept is ‘‘capable of being understood in two or more possible senses or ways’’ (Merriam-Webster 2010). A theory can exhibit construct clarity and still be subject to competing interpretations, without being ambiguous in the sense of being ‘‘doubtful or uncertain especially from obscurity or indistinctness’’ (Merriam-Webster 2010). The fact that theory can be subject to multiple interpretive stances is one reason why conceptual theory building and theory development is so influential. Theory that is analytic can be enhanced by sensitizing illustrations that heighten differentiation without reducing ambiguity by binding the theory to a particular instance or setting. Such illustrations preserve the analytic character of theory and simultaneously create multiple starting points for subsequent interpreters. Moving beyond illustrative examples, ambiguous illustration is also possible through rhetorical devices such as metaphor and analogy. To argue for the benefit of developing ‘‘umbrella’’ concepts, as Astley did, or to propose that ‘‘umbrella’’ constructs are opposed by the ‘‘validity police’’ as Hirsch and Levin did (1999) illuminates the ideas without constraining them. Names like

26

competency trap, triple bottom line or purchasing portfolio tell the reader what to expect from a construct, but do not limit the ways in which it can be interpreted. This suggests that reviewers and authors should be receptive to this type of figurative language, while continuing to strive for clarity. I do not mean to advocate for baroque language, where ornament obscures structural form, but for language that sheds light on the constructs and relationships the author is developing. Illustration that sensitizes readers to differentiation is a critical tool for authors and reviewers because it connects the reader to the development process. This is as true for formal as it is for substantive theory. Authors can draw their readers in by presenting the anomaly that sparked the idea or providing illustrative examples of anomalies derived through formal analysis. Reviewers can provoke construct clarity and improve plausibility by challenging authors with counter examples. In doing so, reviewers should be careful not to push authors of conceptual work into verification mode by demanding that authors explain how these counter examples conform to the theory.

CONCLUSION To summarize, clarification, differentiation and illustration should be major concerns for authors and reviewers developing conceptual research. They are design processes whose outcomes are characteristics that include conceptual appeal, logical structure, psychological plausibility, internal coherence, parsimony and formal elegance. By making sure that the elements of theory are carefully crafted, that the differentiation of the new theory from old is forcefully established, and by drawing the reader in through sensitizing illustrations, authors and reviewers can position conceptual articles to have greater influence. As previously noted, the processes I describe in this essay are useful in getting the reader to the state of ‘‘I get it!.’’ Getting to this point is a prerequisite for finding an article interesting, but it is not sufficient. I do not propose that attending to these processes will necessarily produce influential articles. This is because the prescriptions I advocate for in this article omit ‘‘the vital factor of judgment about what to observe and what to pay attention to’’ (Feynman 1966). ‘‘That’s interesting!’’ is an aesthetic response to successful judgments about which ideas may prove interesting. Ideas can be fleshed out through clarification, differentiation and illustration, but influence is only likely to follow if the idea itself has merit. Because arriving at judgments of what to pay attention to is an idiosyncratic process, I have consigned judgment and the ideas it produces to the black box of ‘‘a prepared mind engaging the world.’’ The most I can say is that clarification, differentiation and illustration of a trivial idea are unlikely to produce influence by themselves — but that they can make an interesting idea more

Volume 47, Number 2

Getting the Reader to ‘‘I Get It!’’

accessible. Getting the reader to ‘‘I get it!’’ is an essential stage in the process of being interesting. One implication of these ideas is that authors of conceptual articles should resist the temptation to offer detailed systems of formal propositions as much as they can. Glaser and Strauss (1967) advocate for a ‘‘discussional’’ form in conceptual articles. They think that detailed propositions make theory less complex, dense and rich. Too many or too detailed propositions risk ‘‘freezing’’ the theory, rather than leaving it open to further elaboration through verification oriented research. Thus conceptual clarity (and reviewers) should demand only a few core propositions concerning relationships. This should be less critical for substantive than for formal theories, since substantive theory derives more nearly from a specific domain. Even so, detailed propositions lead the theorist away from generation toward verification. Finally, this essay should not be taken as a call for a mass exodus to purely conceptual research in supply chain management. I believe that the field will be more influential if the community of supply chain scholars achieves a greater acceptance of the idea that purely conceptual research is of equal value with work that both develops and tests theory. Both kinds of research should be seen as more valuable than work that is simply empirical, dreamed up as ex cathedra arm-chair prescription, or cobbled together on the basis of imperfect borrowing of theory from other domains. What I advocate for is a greater attention to the processes of theory development, including the processes I have outlined here, in all kinds of supply chain research.

REFERENCES Abbott, A. Chaos of Disciplines, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2001. Abbott, A. Methods of Discovery: Heuristics for the Social Sciences, W.W. Norton, New York, 2004. Alvesson, M. and D. Ka¨rreman. ‘‘Constructing Mystery: Empirical Matters in Theory Development,’’ Academy of Management Review, (32), 2007, pp. 1265-1281. Astley, W.G. ‘‘Administrative Science as Socially Constructed Truth,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly, (30), 1985, pp. 497-513. Bacharach, S.B. ‘‘Organizational Theories: Some Criteria for Evaluation,’’ Academy of Management Review, (14), 1989, pp. 496-515. Choi, T.Y., K.J. Dooley and M. Rungtusanatham. ‘‘Supply Networks and Complex Adaptive Systems: Control versus Emergence,’’ Journal of Operations Management, (19), 2001, pp. 351-366. Cook, T.D. and D.T. Campbell. Quasi-Experimentation. Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings, HoughtonMifflin, New York, 1979. Davis, M.S. ‘‘That’s Interesting! Towards a Phenomenology of Sociology and a Sociology of Phenomenology,’’ Philosophy of the Social Sciences, (1), 1971, pp. 309-344.

Dunn, M.B. and C. Jones. ‘‘Institutional Logics and Institutional Pluralism: The Contestation of Care and Science Logics in Medical Education, 1967– 2005,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly, (55), 2010, pp. 114-149. Feynman, R. What Is Science? Presented at the fifteenth annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association, New York City, 1966. Glaser, B.G. and A. Strauss. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Aldine, New York, 1967. Hirsch, P.M. and D.Z. Levin. ‘‘Umbrella Advocates versus Validity Police: A Life-Cycle Model,’’ Organization Science, (10), 1999, pp. 199-212. Kilduff, M. ‘‘Editor’s Comments: Publishing Theory,’’ Academy of Management Review, (31), 2006, pp. 252-255. Kleindorfer, P.R. and G.H. Saad. ‘‘Managing Disruption Risks in Supply Chains,’’ Production and Operations Management, (14), 2005, pp. 53-68. Kraljic, P. ‘‘Purchasing Must Become Supply Management,’’ Harvard Business Review, (61:5), 1983, pp. 109-117. Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago, Chicago, 1962. Lee, H.L., V. Padmanabhan and W. Seungjin. ‘‘Information Distortion in a Supply Chain: The Bullwhip Effect,’’ Management Science, (50), 2004, pp. 1875-1886. LePine, J.A. and A.W. King. ‘‘Editors’ Comment: Developing Novel Theoretical Insights from Reviews of Existing Theory and Research,’’ Academy of Management Review, (35), 2010, pp. 506-509. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Available at: http:// www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ambiguous (accessed September 24, 2010). Merton, R.K. ‘‘Singletons and Multiples in Scientific Discovery: A Chapter in the Sociology of Science,’’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, (105), 1961, pp. 470-486. Pagell, M. and Z. Wu. ‘‘Building a More Complete Theory of Sustainable Supply Chain Management Using Case Studies of 10 Exemplars,’’ Journal of Supply Chain Management, (45), 2009, pp. 37-56. Porter, M.E. Competitive Strategy, The Free Press, New York, 1980. Rindova, V. ‘‘Editor’s Comments: Publishing Theory When you are New to the Game,’’ Academy of Management Review, (33), 2008, pp. 300-303. Salvador, F., C. Forza and M. Rungtusanatham. ‘‘Modularity, Product Variety, Production Volume, and Component Sourcing: Theorizing Beyond Generic Prescriptions,’’ Journal of Operations Management, (20), 2002, pp. 549-575. Suddaby, R. ‘‘Editor’s Comments: Construct Clarity in Theories of Management and Organization,’’ Academy of Management Review, (35), 2010, pp. 346-357. Van Maanen, J., J.B. Srenson and T.R. Mitchell. ‘‘The Interplay Between Theory and Method,’’ Academy of Management Review, (32), 2007, pp. 1145-1154.

April 2011

27

Journal of Supply Chain Management

Weick, K. ‘‘Theory Construction as Disciplined Imagination,’’ Academy of Management Review, (14), 1989, pp. 516-531. Wernerfelt, B. ‘‘A Resource-Based View of the Firm,’’ Strategic Management Journal, (5:2), 1984, pp. 171180. Williamson, O.E. ‘‘The Modern Corporation: Origins, Evolution, Attributes,’’ Journal of Economic Literature, (19), 1981, pp. 1537-1568.

28

Paul F. Skilton (Ph.D. Arizona State University) is Assistant Professor of Management in the College of Business at Washington State University (TriCities) in Richland, Washington. His research currently is focused on complex supply chains, inter-organizational connections, and the effects of interdependency on sustainability and performance. Dr. Skilton serves as a member of the Review Boards for the Journal of Supply Chain Management and for the Journal of Operations Management, and his research has been published in outlets that include the Academy of Management Review.

Volume 47, Number 2