Answer:
The building of theory occurs in two major stages – the descriptive stage and the
normative stage. Within each of these stages, theory builders proceed through three steps. The
the theory-building process iterates through these stages again and again.1
In the past,
management researchers have quite carelessly applied the term theory to research activities that
pertain to only one of these steps. Terms such “utility theory” in economics, and “contingency
theory” in organization design, for example, actually refer only to an individual stage in the
theory-building process in their respective fields. We propose that it is more useful to think of the
term “theory” as a body of understanding that researchers build cumulatively as they work
through each of the three steps in the descriptive and normative stages. In many ways, the term
“theory” might better be framed as a verb, as much as it is a noun – because the body of
understanding is continuously changing as scholars who follow this process work to improve it.