GENERATING THEORY BY ABDUCTION

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Saetre, Alf Steiner; van de Ven, Andrew
• 署名单位: Norwegian University of Science & Technology (NTNU); University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities
• 刊物名称: ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0363-7425
• DOI: 10.5465/amr.2019.0233
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 684-701
• 关键词: COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE; creativity; KNOWLEDGE; DECISION; management; BEHAVIOR; PARADOX; product; activation; INTUITION

摘要

The need to understand how new ideas and hunches are created that may subsequently lead to new theories or models has never been greater for academics and practitioners. Abduction provides a mode of reasoning for achieving this. It is a form of generative reasoning that begins with observing and confirming an anomaly, and generating and evaluating hunches that may explain the anomaly, for subsequent deductive constructing and inductive testing. Although abductive reasoning is being recognized in the management literature, it requires more systematic development to be useful for theory creation. We argue that abduction can inform management scholars in creating theories in three important ways: First, we propose four key steps in abductive reasoning of observing and confirming anomalies and generating and evaluating hunches. Second, we go beyond individual reasoning to examine collective social-psychological processes of generating new theories. Third, we propose specific ways for disciplined imagination in abductive reasoning.