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Business & Information Systems Engineering

30-10-2024 | State of the Art

Practical Techniques for Theorizing from Literature Reviews

Authors: A. Ortiz de Guinea, Richard T. Watson

Published in: Business & Information Systems Engineering

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Abstract

There is a proliferation of IS articles on techniques and methods for performing literature reviews, such as searching and synthesizing. However, there is little understanding of literature driven theorizing and how it is achieved. This commentary suggests practical and creative ways to theorize and improve conceptual thinking in literature reviews. The paper first acknowledges inherent difficulties in novel theorizing, particularly in reviews that include a synthesis of the literature, and then, based on exemplars and a recent IS exemplary review, it explains the dual necessity of critically evaluating the current status quo and thinking differently. A range of theorizing objectives to purposely pursue both goals is suggested. Moreover, manual and algorithmic techniques for each objective to help researchers initiate and carry out theorizing are provided. Concrete examples and visualizations illustrate how these methods can be employed. The paper concludes by explaining how the theorizing objectives and associated manual and algorithmic techniques can be applied in a complementary and iterative way. Researchers could use these ideas and associated practical techniques to advance IS theory and applied knowledge.

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Footnotes
1
To review the management literature on theorizing, we searched the ABI/INFORM, Business Source Complete, and Web of Science databases.
 
2
To review the IS literature on theorizing as well as on algorithmic techniques, we searched the Senior Scholars’ List of Premier Journals in IS as well as the ABI/INFORM, Business Source Complete, and Web of Science databases.
 
3
To review the computer science literature, we searched the ACM Digital Library, IEE Xplore Digital Library, and Web of Science databases.
 
4
A tool for easily coding articles into a graph database is specified in Song et al. (2024) and available at: https://​theoryrex.​shinyapps.​io/​Codasaurus2/​. This tool can also be employed to transform a tabular database (i.e., concept matrix) into a graph one by entering the coded concepts and relations for each reviewed paper.
 
5
Fallacy of affirming the consequent: if A then B, therefore if B then A.
 
6
Jing et al. (2022) evaluate thirteen formal fallacies (e.g., faulty generalization) in sentences that contain climate change claims, while Habernal et al. (2017; 2018) implement an open source game for educational purposes that deals with five formal fallacies (e.g., hasty generalization) in everyday argumentation in German language.
 
7
Macagno (2022) proposes a ‘Codebook for Fallacy Analysis’ [CfFA] that follows a decision tree structure of questions to scrutinize formal fallacies in headlines and news.
 
8
When conceptualizations include the proposition (i.e., the expected effects of a concept), the proposition is true by definition and thus, cannot be tested, falsified, nor refuted (Popper 1963).
 
9
BERT is available along with 24 smaller BERT models at: https://​github.​com/​google-research/​bert
 
10
The advantage of a virtual database is that as the base database is updated, so is the virtual representation.
 
11
DAGitty is available for download at: https://​github.​com/​jtextor/​dagitty.
 
12
Loopy is available at: https://​ncase.​me/​loopy/​.
 
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Metadata
Title
Practical Techniques for Theorizing from Literature Reviews
Authors
A. Ortiz de Guinea
Richard T. Watson
Publication date
30-10-2024
Publisher
Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden
Published in
Business & Information Systems Engineering
Print ISSN: 2363-7005
Electronic ISSN: 1867-0202
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-024-00900-8

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