DETERMINANTS AND DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOLS IN … · theoretical frameworks or schools of thought. In a seminal work Burrell and Morgan (1979) de-scribed a taxonomy of sociological theories

® Academy ol Management Review1999, Vol. 24, No. 4, 634-648.

DETERMINANTS AND DEVELOPMENT OFSCHOOLS IN ORGANIZATION THEORY

WILLIAM MCKINLEYSouthern Illinois University at Carbondale

MARK A. MONEUniversity of Wisconsin at Milwaukee

GYEWAN MOONKyungpook National University

This article focuses on "schooling" in organization theory: the process through whichnew schools of thought become established as distinct, legitimate theoretical frame-works. We argue that evolving schools of thought must display a combination ofnovelty, continuity, and scope to achieve school status. We describe these attributesand discuss their role in promoting the detection and assimilation of a school'sintellectual products, as well as the creation of a stream of empirical research. Wederive eight testable propositions from our theoretical model and discuss implicationsfor future research.

Even a brief review of contemporary organi-zation theory suggests that the discipline iscomposed of multiple, largely incommensurabletheoretical frameworks or schools of thought. Ina seminal work Burrell and Morgan (1979) de-scribed a taxonomy of sociological theories thatinfluenced much discussion of organization the-ory frameworks. Subsequently, Astley and Vande Ven (1983) identified a number of schools,including population ecology, contingency the-ory, and systems theory, classifying them interms of their degree of environmental deter-minism and the level of analysis to which theyrefer. Donaldson's (1995) later description of sev-eral distinct "paradigms" within organizationtheory demonstrates considerable overlap withthe schools described by Astley and Van de Ven(1983). A large body of literature (e.g., Gioia &Pitre, 1990; Jackson & Carter, 1991; McKinley &Mone, 1998; Scherer, 1998; Schultz & Hatch, 1996)also calls attention to multiple, conflicting per-spectives in organization studies, emphasizing

We presented earlier versions of this article at the annualmeeting of the Academy of Management, in 1994, and atKyungpook National University, in 1998. We thank FrancesHauge, Shelby Hunt, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Andreas Scherer, KrisSetzekorn, Mark Terry, and several anonymous reviewers fortheir helpful comments. We are also indebted to John Ed-wards and Kathy Rust for research assistance. All authorscontributed equally to this article.

the lack of an agreed-upon reference frameworkby which logical or normative inconsistenciesbetween the perspectives could be reconciled(McKinley, 1995; Scherer & Dowling, 1995).

Partially as a result of these divergent per-spectives, organization theorists appear to befocusing greater attention on the way we "dobusiness"—specifically, the processes that areused in generating organizational knowledge.Astley and Zammuto (1992), for example, havecharacterized the production of organizationalknowledge as a "language game," while Moneand McKinley (1993) have suggested that thatproduction is dominated by a "uniqueness val-ue," and Locke and Golden-Biddle (1997) haveanalyzed the rhetorical devices that organiza-tional scholars use to construct "opportunitiesfor contribution" in their writing.

Sensemaking about theory construction isalso becoming common, as witnessed by a re-cent Administrative Science Quarterly forum onwhat theory is (or is not; see DiMaggio, 1995;Sutton & Staw, 1995; Weick, 1995a). The determi-nants and desirability of paradigm evolution inorganization theory have also been actively de-bated in several outlets (e.g., Cannella & Paet-zold, 1994; Pfeffer, 1993; Van Maanen, 1995). Fi-nally, the journal review process in organizationstudies is being subjected to increasing empiri-cal scrutiny (e.g., Beyer, Chanove, & Fox, 1995;

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1999 McKinley, Mone, and Moon 635

Jauch & Wall, 1989), with important implicationsfor the business of scholarly publishing.

The increased attention to knowledge gener-ation in organization theory does not mean,however, that we have well-developed knowl-edge of how the extant multischool structurearose. The purpose of this article is to partiallyrectify that knowledge gap by focusing on theprocesses by which new schools of thought be-come established as legitimate frameworks inorganization theory. In this article we define aschool of thought as an integrated theoreticalframework that provides a distinct viewpoint onorganizations and that is associated with anactive stream of empirical research. This defini-tion is roughly consistent with the definitions of"research schools" used in the history of scienceliterature (Olesko, 1993; Servos, 1993) and withMullins' (1973) description of theoretical schoolsin sociology. Our definition of school of thoughtalso parallels Mintzberg's (1990) use of the termin his analysis of the closely related field ofstrategic management. Commonly acknowl-edged schools of thought in organization theoryinclude transaction cost theory, population ecol-ogy, neoinstitutional theory, resource depen-dence theory, structural contingency theory, andagency theory (Donaldson, 1995).

In contrast to Kuhn's (1970) broader emphasison paradigmatic revolutions, our concern is thedynamics of school evolution in a discipline thatis in a preparadigm stage (Zammuto & Connolly,1984). Kuhn (1970) devoted some attention to thefeatures of preparadigm disciplines, but hismain emphasis was on the process that unfoldsafter scientific fields have received their firstparadigm. This series of events begins with thehegemony of a unified paradigm ("normal sci-ence"), followed eventually by a period of crisisin which empirical anomalies accumulate, andthen a Gestaltlike shift to a new unified para-digm. Organization theory, by contrast, proba-bly has never had a unified paradigm andshows evidence of movement toward more di-versity rather than less (Bartunek, Bobko, & Ven-katraman, 1993; Pfeffer, 1993). Therefore, the in-traschool dynamics that we concentrate on arean atypical phase in Kuhn's (1970) model butappear to be the norm for organization theory, atleast in the present and the near future.

The perspective we develop here is importantfor several reasons. First, schools of thought areone of the most salient features of contemporary

organization theory, providing the basic intel-lectual structure within which ongoing theoret-ical and empirical work take place. Thus, it iscritical to understand how this structure devel-oped, beginning with the process by which in-dividual schools evolve into recognition and le-gitimacy. Second, the perspective we discussmay provide clues to the future of organizationtheory, illuminating such issues as whether thecurrent trend toward fragmentation and incom-mensurability (McKinley & Mone, 1998; Scherer,1998; Scherer & Dowling, 1995) will continue, andwhether the oft-lamented recycling of old ideasin new terminological garb is here to stay. Third,and perhaps of highest priority, this article rep-resents an attempt to consolidate some of theideas in current literature into a coherent theo-retical framework for the sociology of organiza-tion science. It is evident, of course, that such aframework cannot be fully specified, or evenproperly launched, in a single conceptual arti-cle. However, this article is intended to lay thegroundwork for a series of studies in the sociol-ogy of organization science, including futureempirical research on the schooling phenome-non.

Schools under the rubric of organization the-ory draw largely from sociology, economics, andpsychology. Given the preparadigmatic natureof many of those foundational disciplines, it isclear that any discussion of school developmentwithin organization theory is subject to thelarger development processes of those disci-plines, as discussed in the broader sociology ofscience literature (e.g., Davis, 1971; Kuhn, 1970;Merton, 1968). Indeed, we acknowledge the par-allels between organization theory and thelarger fields from which its schools haveevolved.

However, the paradigm development prob-lems that we identify are distinct and arguablymore severe in organization theory. We submitthat the difficulties facing organization theoryare more complex because of the integration oflarger fields that vary in their own levels ofdevelopment and agreement on issues such asconstructs, operational definitions, causality,methodology, and falsification. As such, organi-zation theories are distinct both in their substan-tive, integrative nature and their potentiallyunique developmental processes; therefore,they warrant a focus separate from the broaderdisciplines from which they were derived.

636 Academy of Management Review October

TWO CORE ASSUMPTIONS

In this section we delineate two assumptionsabout the field of organization theory today thatare preliminary to the specification of ourschooling model. The first assumption is thatempiricaJ validity is only one of severaJ deter-minants of the attractiveness of current organi-zation theory schools of thought. This assump-tion rests strongly on Weick's (1995b) distinctionbetween plausibility and accuracy and on hissuggestion that, in sensemaking, plausibilitytrumps accuracy because of the role plausibilityplays as a platform for action. Weick (1995b)intended this argument to apply to the "realworld" of everyday sensemaking, and particu-larly to the cognitive universes of managers,but we believe the principle also characterizessensemaking by organization theorists. Plausi-ble schools of thought in organization theory arethose that are coherent and believable, and theyhave the important attribute of energizing theaction that organization theorists are primarilyconcerned with: the conduct of research and itsreporting in published journal articles. Althoughempirical validity may be the goal of such ac-tion, it is not a necessary precondition for en-gaging in the action. Thus, we believe that em-pirical validity tends to recede into thebackground as a determinant of where organi-zation theorists place their scholarly alle-giances.

Evidence for the secondary role of empiricalvalidity in allocating scholarly allegiance toschools of thought comes from the literature de-voted to understanding and evaluating organi-zation theory. For example, Bacharach (1989) hasargued that many of the constructs used by or-ganization theorists have low construct validity,yet it is clear that this has not prevented theiruse in the everyday discourse of key organiza-tion theory schools of thought (e.g.. Young, 1988).Furthermore, Mone and McKinley (1993) havepointed out that organization studies today havea low incidence of replication. This condition,among others, makes it hard to evaluate the"truth" of a particular theory or to judge conclu-sively which of several competing hypothesesdescribes reality better.

Additionally, Davis (1971) has maintained thatthe truth value of a theory is less important indetermining its impact than how "interesting" itis. Interesting theories are those that deny the

taken-for-granted assumptions of their scholarlyaudiences. Critics such as Astley (1985) haveeven denied the possibility that organizationtheory can ever capture objective truth, becauseall empirical knowledge about organizations issocially constructed through the lens of pre-existing theoretical frameworks. This view im-plies that the purpose of organization theory isnot to discover truth but to generate theoreticallanguage that can be used to give meaning tosocial constructions and to impel organizationalaction (Astley & Zammuto, 1992).

Finally, rather dramatic substantiation of theindependence between a school of thought'spopularity and its validity was provided by Min-er's (1984) study of thirty-two organization sci-ence theories. Miner found little evidence of acorrelation between organizational scholars'ratings of the importance of a theory and thetheory's estimated validity. This is consistentwith the positions taken by Davis (1971) andAstley (1985), and it casts further doubt on thenotion that empirical accuracy plays the domi-nant role in determining the allegiance of organ-ization theorists to particular schools.

Our second assumption is that organizationtheorists are experiencing increasing informa-tion overload. Information overload has beendefined as occurring when the time demands forprocessing information exceed the supply oftime available (Schick, Gordon, & Haka, 1990).Due, in part, to the theoretical diversity that cur-rently characterizes organization theory, thegrowth in the number of research outlets andpublications, and a growing number of schoolsof thought, we believe that the information-processing demands on individual organizationtheory scholars are increasing.

Although schools of thought can act as cate-gorization schemes, increasing the efficiency ofinformation processing, their variety encour-ages research on a wide array of constructs andvariables and reduces standardization of defini-tions and measures (Mone & McKinley, 1993).This increases the information-processing de-mands on scholars seeking to communicate orunderstand research findings. Since resourcesappear increasingly constrained in contempo-rary academic institutions, it is doubtful that thesupply of time available to organization theo-rists is expanding in proportion to the informa-tion-processing demands imposed by their dis-cipline. Time limitations also prevent scholars


from exploring related fields and disciplines—clearly an important part of scholarly inquiryand development. The result of these dynamics,at least for those who seek to remain abreast ofthe literature, is information overload.

Additional evidence of information overloadin organization theory comes from severalsources. For instance, Jermier recently remarkedthat "the organizational social science literaturehas become oppressive—burdensome in sheerquantity, onerous in expense, overwhelming tocatholic readers" (1992: 210). Field makes a sim-ilar observation, pointing out that "the numberof papers published [is] overwhelming anyone'sability to read or even keep track of them all"(1993: 323). Mowday (1993), discussing his expe-riences as Editor of the Academy of Manage-ment Journal, reported that 1,401 new manu-scripts were submitted to the journal during his3-year tenure. He described the huge informa-tion-processing demands represented by thismanuscript flow, for both himself and the re-viewers.

The information-processing burden posed bythe journal publishing enterprise is com-pounded by the high rejection rates in organiza-tion studies journals, which mean that manymanuscripts must be revised several times be-fore appearing in print (Pfeffer, 1993). Recenttrends also suggest that the information-processing demands on reviewers and consum-ers of organization studies research will con-tinue to expand. In 1993 the Academy ofManagement Journal published 50 percent moreissues and articles than in 1991, and new manu-script submissions and the demand for review-ers have both remained strong (Tsui, 1998). Thus,unless individual scholars have been able toincrease available time for reviewing, reading,and writing, information overload seems a safeconclusion.

Our two assumptions establish a context forthe development of a theory of "schooling": theprocess by which new schools of thought be-come established in the discipline of organiza-tion theory. It is a combination of novelty andcontinuity, we suggest, that serves to get anevolving schoors intellectual products (pub-lished articles and books) noticed, while simul-taneously investing those products with mean-ing by linking them to theoretical frameworksalready familiar to the audience of organization-al scholars. Concurrently, broad scope en-

hances opportunities for empirical research bywidening the array of empirical phenomenathat can be nested within the content domain ofthe school's constructs. These dynamics contrib-ute to the successful establishment of a newschool as a recognizable intellectual entity. Al-though we do not claim that novelty, continuity,and scope are the only independent variablesthat influence establishment and legitimation ofschools, we believe that they are among themost critical drivers of that process.

THE SCHOOLING OF ORGANIZATIONTHEORY

Novelty and Continuity

The theoretical context established abovesuggests that one of the first problems a devel-oping school of thought must surmount is gain-ing the attention of organization theory scholars.In order to obtain legitimacy and followers, aschool must get scholars to read and encode itsintellectual products. This is a significant prob-lem in a discipline characterized by informationoverload and a wide variety of competing theo-retical perspectives.

However, we argue that the problem is atten-uated if the school displays sufficient levels ofboth novelty and continuity. In this article wedefine novelty as the property of being new,unique, or different, particularly relative to the-oretical frameworks that have been central to adiscipline in the past. Continuity, however, is aproperty of affinity: it means a linkage with in-tellectual frameworks that are already familiarto a scholar. In discussing schools of thought inorganization theory, we note that the continuityexhibited by an evolving school may be withintellectual schemas inside the discipline orthose outside it (e.g., Darwinian biology).

Our central thesis concerning novelty andcontinuity is that although there exists tensionbetween them, adequate levels of each are nec-essary for school development. This suggeststhat the challenge for emerging schools ofthought is to balance the two by first maintain-ing enough novelty to warrant interest to fuelscholarship. At the same time, evolving schoolscannot stray too far from existing conceptions of,for example, how the world of organizationsworks, how research questions are approached,or how controversies are resolved. As such, the


development and successful establishment of aschool require dynamic tension and interplaybetween novelty and continuity. Tipping thebalance too far to either side can result in rejec-tion or dismissal as an oddity if novelty thresh-olds are exceeded or, conversely, can result inan assessment of a school as "old hat" if conti-nuity dominates too much. With the followingmaterial we develop both sides of this argu-ment.

Human information-processing theory (Kiesler& Sproull, 1982; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Taylor &Crocker, 1980) suggests that information will benoticed and remembered if it is salient, but alsocapable of integration into pre-existing cogni-tive schemas. If information is not salient anddiscrepant, it will tend to be ignored, especiallywhen individuals are operating under informa-tion overload. Particularly under the conditionsof information overload described above, it isespecially important to link with scholars' exist-ing research, if for no other reason than to get onthe "to be read" pile. However, if discrepant in-formation cannot be linked to some establishedcognitive framework, it will be difficult for anindividual to recall the information and attachmeaning to it (Taylor & Crocker, 1980).

Applying these basic cognitive principles tothe field of organization theory, we argue thatdeveloping schools of thought in the field must,paradoxically, offer potential consumers ablend of the novel and the continuous. The the-oretical perspective of a budding school must benovel enough to get the school noticed and tocapture the attention of overloaded scholars. Atthe same time, the evolving school must estab-lish a link with existing intellectual frameworksthat are familiar to a critical mass of organiza-tional scholars. If the new school of thought failsto accomplish the latter, its meaning will bedifficult to interpret, and it will be in danger ofbeing dismissed as a passing fad. Expressedsomewhat differently, continuity enfolds noveltywith meaning, establishing a context withinwhich the novel claims of an evolving schoolcan be understood. The result is effective detec-tion and assimilation of the school's intellectualproducts by scholars who are observers andpossible disciples of the school.

The role of the novelty-continuity combinationcan be illustrated with examples of some of theearly intellectual output of schools of thoughtthat are vying for legitimacy and domain in the

organization theory arena today. One of themost aggressive (see, for example, Carroll, 1988)of these schools is the population ecology per-spective. As articulated in the foundationalwork of Hannan and Freeman (1977), populationecologists based their claim to intellectual ter-ritory on the novelty of their framework. Theecological approach was explicitly presented asan alternative to the dominant adaptation per-spective, and selection—especially the selec-tion of highly inertial organizations—was of-fered as a novel explanation for organizationalchange (Hannan & Freeman, 1977, 1984). Theseideas were new for much of the field of organi-zation theory, particularly the part influenced bythe strategic choice approach (Child, 1972), andthey violated taken-for-granted assumptionsthat change and innovation contribute to highorganizational performance.

At the same time, proponents of the ecologicalperspective have been careful to emphasize thecontinuity of the school with pre-existing theo-retical schemas. For example, Hannan and Free-man (1977) stressed the link between their ideasand Hawley's earlier work (1950, 1968) on humanecology. Likewise, although Hawley's ecologymodels were familiar primarily to sociologists,the population ecology school also benefitedfrom the continuity it exhibited with Darwinianprinciples in population biology.

The idea of Darwinian selection was probablyknown, at least in general terms, to many organ-ization theory scholars who had never heard ofHawley. This linkage arguably helped organiza-tion theorists attach meaning to novel ideas,such as organizational change through selec-tion, and provided the evolving population ecol-ogy school an aura of legitimacy it might nothave had otherwise. The growth of populationecology research (see Baum's 1996 review), forexample, would probably not have been possi-ble without the mix of novelty and continuitythat allowed the school to present a salient,meaningful theoretical schema to a core groupof disciples in its early days.

The population ecology illustration demon-strates also that what is novel in one field maynot be seen that way in another. Rather, it is theapplication of the idea or theory to organiza-tions that is novel.

Another example of the blending of noveltyand continuity in a developing organization the-ory school of thought is provided by neoinstitu-


tional theory. In introducing neoinstitutionaltheory to organization studies, Meyer andRowan (1977) contrasted the concept of institu-tional "myths" with the then-dominant idea thatorganizational structure is a product of techni-cal and efficiency constraints. In many organi-zations, they argued, formal structure is de-coupled from everyday activities. Thus, its roleis not coordination of work at the technical coreso much as enhancement of legitimacy througha display of conformity with institutionalized,taken-for-granted management practices.

Furthermore, according to Meyer and Rowan(1977), structures that reflect and incorporate in-stitutional myths may actually interfere with ef-ficiency, which suggests that efficiency is notalways the dominant decision criterion that con-tingency theory and strategic choice modelssuggest it to be. These ideas were novel in thelate 1970s, and served to get neoinstitutionaltheory noticed, but they were also made mean-ingful for organization theorists by multiple con-tinuity linkages with established work in organ-ization theory. Meyer and Rowan (1977) linkedtheir decoupling concept to well-known litera-ture on loose coupling (March & Cohen, 1976;Weick, 1976), and they anchored their claimabout institutionalized structures with a refer-ence to Weberian concepts of legitimacy. Thisblend of novelty and continuity facilitated "see-ing" the new perspective as a distinct and un-derstandable framework.

The mixture of novelty and continuity is alsowell illustrated in the introductory chapter ofPowell and DiMaggio's (1991) edited book onneoinstitutional theory. In the opening lines ofthe chapter, DiMaggio and Powell explicitlyevoke both novelty and continuity: "Institutionaltheory presents a paradox. Institutional analy-sis is as old as Emile Durkheim's exhortation to'study social facts as things,' yet sufficientlynovel to be preceded by new in much of thecontemporary literature" (1991: 1).

Later in the chapter, DiMaggio and Powelldiscuss, at length, the cognitive turn in sociolog-ical theory (1991: 26-27). At this point the noveltyrepresented by neoinstitutional theory is mademore comprehensible by enfolding it in continu-ity with larger shifts in social theory that willlikely, given their comprehensiveness, resonatewith many organizational scholars. Neoinstitu-tional theory, thus, is invested with additionalmeaning, salvaging it from the possibility of

being interpreted as an intellectual anomaly,and placing it more squarely in the organizationtheory "game." Consistent with the discussionpresented above, we offer the following propo-sition:

Proposition 1: The more that both nov-elty and continuity are displayed by adeveloping organization theory schoolof thought, the more likely detectionand assimilation of the school's intel-lectual products by organizationalscholars will be.

Low Levels of Novelty

Our emphasis on the importance of both nov-elty and continuity makes it incumbent upon usto consider what happens when a school-in-formation displays low levels of novelty or con-tinuity. We first consider likely consequenceswhen the level of novelty is low and then turnour attention to the effects of low continuity.

Human information-processing theoristsmaintain that low levels of novelty in informa-tion reduce the information's salience, thus de-creasing the chances that it will be detected byinformation processors (Kiesler & Sproull, 1982).Analogously, we predict that low novelty in anevolving theoretical framework will make it lessvisible to organizational scholars, even if theframework has continuity with theoretical sche-mas already entrenched in those scholars' cog-nitions.

A possible example of this "salience gap" inorganization theory is neostructural contin-gency theory, or the SARFIT model (Donaldson,1995). Donaldson's (1995) attempt to establishstructural contingency theory as the central par-adigm in organization theory is arguably vul-nerable to labeling as non-novel, because itseems to deal with the "same old" structuralrelationships and the "same old" contingencylogic. Unfortunately, this lack of perceived nov-elty may keep neostructural contingency theoryoff the cognitive radar screens of many organi-zation theorists, reducing opportunities for en-actment as a definable school of thought. Par-enthetically, we note that the SARFIT modelmay be suffering, as of this writing, from its ownrelative infancy in the field of organization the-ory. We emphasize that our argument says noth-ing about the empirical validity of Donaldson's


(1995) framework and does not constitute a judg-ment on the potential contribution of this frame-work to our knowledge about organizations. Ourmodel is concerned primarily with the socialconstruction of schools of thought in organiza-tion theory—not the empirical accuracy of thoseschools. The preceding discussion suggests thefollowing proposition:

Proposition 2: The less novel a devel-oping school is, the less visible theschool's intellectual products will beto organizational scholars, and theless likely the assimilation of those in-tellectual products will be.

Note that Proposition 2 is not just the reverseof Proposition 1, for Proposition 2 asserts thatlow levels of novelty aione are enough to inter-fere with the process that eventuates in the en-actment of a distinct school of thought.

Low Levels of Continuity

The opposite problem occurs when a develop-ing school lacks continuity with intellectualschemas that provide a context within which theschool's intellectual products can be inter-preted. In that case, even if the intellectual pro-duction is novel, it will face barriers to assimi-lation by enough organization theorists to makeschooling possible. An illustration of this situa-tion is arguably provided by postmodern per-spectives on organizations (see Hassard &Parker, 1993, and Kilduff & Mehra, 1997, for de-scriptions of postmodernism in organizationalanalysis).

Postmodernism, a field new to most organiza-tion scholars, is generally acknowledged to be anovel approach to organizations and organiza-tional theorizing (Hassard, 1993). However, manyof its claims—that there is no absolute truth,that localism dominates over generalism, andthat scientific theory constitutes a "totalizingmetanarrative"—stretch the limits of continuityfor Western (and particularly American) organi-zation theorists. Kilduff and Mehra's (1997) arti-cle, which inventories these claims, can be readas an attempt to bolster the weak continuitylinkages that may be preventing wider assimi-lation of postmodernism into mainstream organ-ization theory. After stdting that postmodernismhas been poorly understood or even "dismissed"by organizational scholars, Kilduff and Mehra

set themselves the task of challenging "the con-ventional wisdom that postmodernism is incom-patible with research about the world, . . . [and]presenting the case for the relevance of post-modernism for organizational research" (1997:454).

Whether this attempt to establish continuitywith mainstream organization theory will bearfruit remains to be seen, but it represents aninteresting initiative nonetheless. Based on thisargument, we propose:

Proposition 3; The less continuity dis-played by a developing school, themore difficult the school's intellectualproducts will be to interpret, and theless likely the assimilation of those in-tellectual products will be.

We do not state a proposition about what willhappen to incipient schools characterized bylow novelty and low continuity, because we be-lieve such a proposition could not be tested. Lowlevels of novelty and continuity would turn anevolving school into a "ghost," simultaneouslyundetectable and uninterpretable. In fact, it isdoubtful that an incipient school lacking bothnovelty and continuity could even be said towarrant the label schooi-in-formafion.

Scope

The third attribute that we argue is essentialfor the development of schools of thought inorganization theory is scope. As with noveltyand continuity, we conceptualize scope here asa characteristic of a developing school and thatschool's intellectual products. We adopt Bacha-rach's definition of scope: "the range of phenom-ena encompassed by the theory" (1989: 509).

As stressed by Astley and Zammuto (1992),scope is correlated with ambiguity, which canbe defined as "the property of words or sen-tences of admitting more than one interpreta-tion" (Levine, 1985; cited in Weick, 1995b: 92).Ironically, particularly for those concerned withsharpening the precision of empirical research(e.g., McKinley & Mone, 1998), broad, ambiguousconstructs can be argued to expand opportuni-ties for research. As such, more explanatory powermay be imputed toward an incipient school, po-tentially increasing its detection and assimilation.

This perspective is consistent with Weick's(1995b); he suggests that ambiguity provides an


opportunity for sensemaking by opening up anarray of possible interpretations that require as-sessment by organizational participants and, byextension, organizational scholars. Based onthis foundation, we advance the claim thatbroad scope in a developing school's intellec-tual products will directly stimulate detectionand assimilation. This suggests the followingproposition:

Proposition 4: The greater the scope ofa developing school and its intellec-tual products, the greater the detec-tion and assimilation of those prod-ucts will be.

It can also be argued that scope and associ-ated ambiguity fuel scholarly empirical activity.This is confirmed by Astley and Zammuto, whostate that "linguistic ambiguity increases thepotential number of empirical tests conductedon a theory, [while reducing] the chance thatthose tests can amount to a refutation of thetheory" (1992: 446). Thus, we advance the claimthat broad scope in a developing school's intel-lectual products will also be a stimulus for em-pirical research.

This argument entails a revision in traditionalinterpretations of the role of ambiguity in organ-izational research. Whereas scholars tradition-ally have viewed ambiguity as something to beavoided (St. Clair & Ouinn, 1997), in recent treat-ments of the subject (e.g., Astley & Zammuto,1992; Weick, 1995b) researchers leave ambiguityopen to a different assessment. For example, amajor part of the effect forecast in Proposition 5below rests on the assumption that broad, ambig-uous constructs will encourage multiple operation-alizations and measures of the phenomena cap-tured by the constructs (Astley & Zammuto, 1992).

These multiple operationalizations expandthe array of empiricai cases that can be used astesting grounds for a theory and as deploymentsites for its key concepts. For example, a broadconstruct, such as efficiency (Williamson, 1981),facilitates the extension of transaction cost the-ory to both profit and not-for-profit organiza-tions, especially because Williamson (1981) doesnot restrict efficiency to a financial definition.Again, this widens opportunities for a diversearray of empirical research projects nestedwithin the theoretical framework of a develop-ing school. Our argument can be summarizedwith the following proposition:

Proposition 5: The greater the scope ofa developing school and its intellec-tual products, the greater the likeli-hood that a coherent stream of school-based empirical research will beestablished.

It also follows that the more visible a school'sintellectual products and the wider their assim-ilation, the more likely that adherents will en-gage in empirical examinations of them. This isakin to Kuhn's (1970) model of normal science, inthat puzzles are identified that attract a criticalmass of scholars pursuing similar lines of in-quiry. The distinction between organization the-ory and Kuhn's view of normal science rests,however, on fundamental differences in para-digm development. In paradigmatic researchscholars typically concur readily upon whatquestions remain unresolved and how to under-take empirical investigations. Witness, for ex-ample, how in the physical sciences researcherscoalesced around the "discovery" of cold fusionin April of 1989 {Business Week. 1989). At thattime literally thousands of physicists and chem-ists attempted (unsuccessfully) to replicate theoriginal cold fusion trial.

However, in a preparadigm field, such as or-ganization theory, there are starkly different lev-els of agreement as to what questions should beexamined and how to examine them. Despitethese differences in paradigm development, agreater awareness and assimilation of scholarlyproducts will lead to more chances of empiricalinquiry. And, despite differences in agreementabout which questions should be examined andhow they should be examined, more controversyand provocation will likely be provided by highlevels of detection and assimilation of a school'sintellectual products. This suggests the follow-ing proposition:

Proposition 6; The greater the detec-tion and assimilation of a school's in-tellectual products, the greater thelikelihood that a coherent stream ofschool-based empirical research willbe established.

Finally, we argue that the detection and as-similation of a developing school's intellectualproducts by organizational scholars contain theseeds of an enactment process that is essentialfor the intellectual articulation of the school.


Those who are initially exposed to the output ofthe school, and view its ideas as meaningful,form a conduit for discussing the ideas and com-municating them to other scholars. Some ofthose scholars, in turn, read the founding contri-butions of the school's mothers and fathers, talkto still more scholars (including doctoral stu-dents), and engage in further theoretical andempirical research. As such work is published,wider readership, discussion, and legitimationoccur. Eventually, if reading, discussion, and in-teraction continue, the developing intellectualstructure comes to attain the formal status of aschool—to achieve, in our terms, schooling. Thisprocess is consistent with Astley's (1985) ideathat administrative science is a socially con-structed product enacted and maintained byscholars who downplay their own part in theconstruction process, believing that theoreticalframeworks are merely representations of anexternal organizational reality.

Combining the effects postulated in Proposi-tions 1 through 4, we suggest that novelty, con-tinuity, and scope in an evolving school facili-tate noticing and encoding of the school'sintellectual output by overloaded scholars. Inturn, the latter process sets into motion self-fulfilling and self-reinforcing sociocognitive dy-namics that increase the probability that theschool will be reified (Berger & Luckmann, 1967)as a distinct intellectual entity. The presence ofnovelty, continuity, or scope alone is not enoughto guarantee the unfolding of this causal se-quence, but adequate levels of novelty, continu-ity, and scope make the sequence much moreprobable than it would be were any of themabsent. This argument can be summarized in aseventh proposition:

Proposifion 7; Detection and assimila-tion of a developing school's intellec-tual products by organizational schol-ars encourage a dissemination andlegitimation process that increasesthe likelihood of schooling.

We also hypothesize a relationship betweenthe growth of school-based empirical researchand the legitimation of the school as a distinctintellectual entity. Conducting empirical re-search within the theoretical boundaries of aschool legitimizes the school's existence,thereby increasing the chances that it will be

viewed as a serious contender for intellectualmarket share. We believe that this effect restsless on the production of validated theory thanon the activity of theory testing itself: to build onWeick's (1995b) work, organization theorists en-gage in retrospective sensemaking about aschool's existence partly on the basis of whetherit has an associated stream of research. Theattainment of empirically validated knowledgeis less important; in Weick's words, "accuracy isnice, but not necessary" (1995b: 56).

Although not all bodies of empirical researchrepresent schools of thought (e.g., consider earlywork on organizational decline scattered acrossvarious disciplines), we believe that empiricalresearch is a necessary adjunct to the detectionand assimilation processes described above.Thus, cumulative growth of empirical researchincreases the chances that a body of intellectualoutput will come to be seen as a legitimateschool of thought. We state this formally:

Proposifion 8; The development of em-pirical research based on an evoivingschooi's theories triggers a legitima-tion process that is critical for school-ing.

Combining the effects predicted in Proposi-tions 5 and 8, we maintain that broad scope inan evolving school's theories and constructs hasan indirect positive effect on schooling, medi-ated by the growth of school-based empiricalresearch. Although broad constructs reduce thelikelihood of generating falsifiable measures(Bacharach, 1989) and of empirically disconfirm-ing theories (Astley & Zammuto, 1992; McKinley& Mone, 1998), they also enhance the variety ofpossible empirical projects. At the risk of sound-ing cynical, we believe the creation of a viableschool of thought is more likely when empiricalresearch does no* result in conclusive empiricaltesting, and broad scope is helpful here. Conclu-sive testing, even of the confirmatory variety,would imply a reduction of emphasis on theresearch stream that had generated the testsand that, in turn, would be a threat to activity-based constructions of a school's existence andlegitimacy. To paraphrase Weick (1995b), howcan we know it's a school unless we keep seeingits research?


DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

In this article we have proposed a model toexplain the process through which schools ofthought evolve and become institutionalized inthe field of organization theory. We present asummary of the proposed relations in Figure 1.Although there are surely many influences onthe schooling process not included in our theo-retical model, we believe that three key at-tributes—novelty, continuity, and scope—repre-sent some of the more important independentvariables. In the following sections We describeimplications for organization theory and sug-gest possibilities for future research.

Implications for Organization Theory

In our argument we have implied that organi-zation theory evolves differently from other sci-entific fields. Although there are some parallelswith other areas of scientific inquiry, we thinkthat organization theory operates uniquely, withpotential for both positive and negative conse-quences. Kuhn's (1970) model of normal sciencespecifies that fields develop around core puzzles

or questions that spawn much scientific inquiry.In normal science scholars are attracted by thechallenge of solving puzzles, and competitionfor puzzle solving drives paradigm develop-ment. Within advanced paradigms there isagreement concerning concepts, definitions, ap-proaches toward falsification, and, ultimately,the scientific worth of particular areas of in-quiry. Advanced paradigms rarely fizzle outthrough natural evolution but are, instead, usu-ally jolted by an empirical finding that over-turns and sometimes replaces an existing para-digm.

In contrast, our perspective suggests how adynamic tension must exist between noveltyand continuity in evolving organizatiori theoryschools—and the school must also be of suffi-cient scope—for school-based empirical re-search to be established. In organization theoryschools can fade away, seemingly independentof empirical validity, especially if they appear tohold little of novel value for scholars. And pro-found revolutions are not typical; rather, schoolsgradually become more articulated. Finally,within schools there is not the same level of

FIGURE 1The Schooling of Organization Theory

Attributes of anevolving school

Interveningprocesses Outcome

Novelty

Continuity

Scope

/

P1,P2,P3

P4 x /

P5

Detection andassimilation of a

school's intellectualproducts by

scholars

P6

School-basedempiricalresearch

P7School

disseminlegitimadistinct

of the

>

P8

ng: thecition andtion of aschool

644 Academy of Management fleview October

agreerrient concerning causal relations, appro-priate methods, and empirical falsification as istypical of advanced-paradigm disciplines. Inaggregate, we think these differences spell outdifferent consequences for organization theoryfrom what is usual in the normal science model.

On the positive side, novelty and diversityspark creative approaches that are probablynecessary for the creation of new knowledge.This is of fundamental importance, because or-ganizations are in a continuous process of trans-formation. High levels of novelty also keep in-terest high, which serves to attract new scholarsto the field and keep current ones involved withinteresting issues. The downside of high levelsof novelty, and the resulting negative impact onthe field, is that the search for novelty can sup-press interest in replication (Mone & McKinley,1993). Replication is important because it is theonly way that scientific inquiry can progress.Without repeated operationalizations differingin terms of methodologies, samples, and con-texts, neither internal nor external validationcan be achieved (Popper, 1968). Hence, theboundary conditions and generalizability of atheory and the broader school of thought inwhich it resides will remain questionable. At ahigher level, then, organization theory risks lim-ited evolution toward paradigm status, becausenovelty may function as an obstacle to para-digm development (McKinley & Mone, 1998).

A second consideration from our argumentconcerns the level of scientific inquiry in spe-cific organization theory schools, especially theforces for conservatism. Many commentators(e.g.. Daft & Lewin, 1990; Martin, 1992) have crit-icized the conservatism of organization theorytoday, and it seems unlikely that this conserva-tism will entirely disappear. Some continuitywith past theoretical traditions and normal sci-ence models—either inside organization theoryor in other disciplines—seems to be the onlyway that organization theorists can attachmeaning to novel concepts and findings. Unlessconsumers of research can relate novel materialto cognitive frameworks they are familiar with,it is not likely that the new information will beeffectively coded or retrieved (Kiesler & Sproull,1982). Consequently, our field may be lockedinto repetitive cycles of bottling new wine in oldbottles, simply because this novelty/continuitypackage is required for human information pro-cessing and recall.

Conversely, the presence of broadly definedconstructs at the core of current organizationtheory schools of thought can be expected tofoster a continuing production of innovation.Constructs such as population, niche, efficiency,transaction, power, resource, institution, compe-tition, legitimacy, and the like are so broad andabstract that they are rife with ambiguity, andthis ambiguity means that the constructs aresubject to multiple interpretations (Weick,1995b). The multiple interpretations allow schoolfounders and promoters to link a continuing se-ries of novel empirical phenomena to the con-tent domain of a given construct, dazzling over-loaded scholars with the innovative variety ofissues and relationships being explained.

Unless the feedback effect of empirical re-search narrows construct boundaries, this "inno-vation show" can potentially continue indefi-nitely. This does not bode well for efforts tomake organization theory constructs more falsi-fiable (Bacharach, 1989), or to resolve incommen-surability among organization theory schools ofthought through empirical testing (McKinley &Mone, 1998). But it does suggest that the produc-tion of innovation will continue to balance anyconservative tendencies identified by commen-tators and that organization theory runs littlerisk of becoming a boring place to hang one'sscholarly hat.

A precautionary thought is that althoughbroad scope can potentially encourage the de-tection, assimilation, and schooling of intellec-tual products, the ambiguity connected withbroad scope also can have detrimental long-term consequences. Preparadigmatic fields areassociated with diffusion of diversity andwidely dispersed efforts across manifold issues.Ironically, as processes unfold that reinforcethis diverse behavior, incommensurability ofdefinitions and empirical operationalizationscan limit a school of thought (cf. Mone & Mc-Kinley, 1993). Ultimately, if scope is unchecked,there is likely to be no agreement on concepts,definitions, and other ingredients necessary toadvance empirical research.

Consider the differences in advances in thefield of organizational culture versus the organ-izational behavior specialty of, say, goal setting.In the latter area a well-known research "exem-plar" (Frost & Stablein, 1992) is the series ofexperiments that resolved a controversy overparticipation in goal setting (Latham, Erez, &


Locke, 1988). In Latham et al.'s (1988) work, theself-proclaimed antagonists designed crucialexperiments, akin to Platt's strong inferencetests, that allowed the determination and reso-lution of previously irreconcilable issues. Whilethe dispute under consideration concerned theeffects of participation on goal setting, it wasevident that there were also high levels ofagreement on definitions, research methodol-ogy, and comparison of findings across otherwork in the goal-setting field. In contrast, giventhe ambiguity associated with definitions andoperationaiizations of organizational culture,we doubt if such reconciliations are likely in theforeseeable future.

We have confined our article to attributes oftheories or schools of thought. This focus is con-sistent with the identification of paradigmaticcharacteristics that induce or deflect the devel-opment of new or existing schools. Yet, indepen-dent of the identified attributes, we would beremiss if we did not acknowledge the role ofenvironmental and contextual factors that mayalso influence a school's development.

For example, as Barley, Meyer, and Gash(1988) demonstrated, definitions of organization-al culture reported in the popular press pre-ceded by several years the academic writingson this topic. A similar theme has surfaced inother management theory development re-search, such that not only organizationalchange but societal, political, and economicconsiderations are posited as determinants ofwhat is acceptable or desirable for publication.Consider, for instance, the influence of the 1960sand 1970s Vietnam War on Staw's work on com-mitment escalation (e.g., Staw, 1976, 1981), orhow difficulties facing the U.S. automobile in-dustry in the early 1970s provided a context fa-vorable to a body of research on organizationaldecline and downsizing.

These forces, collectively, seem to influencewhat can be called "managerial receptiveness"to new schools and theories. Although manage-rial receptiveness is separate from the at-tributes of a particular school or theory, we sug-gest that it does contain significant moderatingpotential for the development of a school. Assuch, managerial receptiveness can help deter-mine which theories emerge and the extent oftheir diffusion.

Implications for Future Theory and Research

Future theorizing may be advanced by consid-ering feedback or second-order effects amongour proposed relationships. For example, in ad-dition to affecting its detection, assimilation,and the growth of empirical research, we sus-pect that the scope of constructs and theoriesembedded within the intellectual framework ofa developing school may also influence theschool's ability to generate continuity and nov-elty. Broadly defined constructs are open endedand flexible and, therefore, can be stretched toencapsulate ideas from neighboring, better-established schools of thought. This strengthensthe continuity dimension, creating intellectuallinkages that can bolster the meaningfulness ofthe developing school. Likewise, a broadly ar-ticulated construct without clear boundarieseasily can be extended to cover new empiricalcases and to frame diverse "real-world" phe-.nomena within the parameters of the construct.This permits a continuous process of noveltyproduction. In a field characterized by informa-tion overload, such as organization theory, thislatter process is essential for maintaining thesalience of an evolving school's intellectualproducts.

In future theory researchers might also ex-plore a feedback loop from empirical research tothe scope of a field's intellectual products. Acore argument could be that in the process ofconducting empirical research projects, scholarsoperationalize (loosely) loosely defined con-structs, collect and analyze data, and obtain re-sults. The empirical product is typically a set ofstatistical findings that have sensemaking im-plications for the constructs that produced thefindings. In other words, empirical researchersoften begin to interpret the constructs in terms oftheir measures, deriving the meaning of a con-struct as much from its measure as from theoriginal definition. The outcome of this retro-spective sensemaking can be a narrowing of thedomain covered by the construct.

As noted at the outset, an important mission inthis article was to set the theoretical stage for aprogram of empirical research in the sociologyof organization science. In brief, one of the firsttasks of such a program would be to developoperationaiizations of the constructs of novelty,continuity, and scope and to create databasesthat could yield measures of those constructs.


Founding statements (e.g., Hannan & Freeman,1977; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Williamson, 1981) ofactive organization theory schools of thoughtcould be content analyzed by multiple coders,using sets of items designed to tap the degree ofnovelty, continuity, and scope exhibited by eachof these intellectual products.

Current assessments of the schools of thoughtthat grew out of these founding statementscould then be conducted to see whether the nov-elty, continuity, and scope of the founding state-ments bear any relationship to the degree ofinstitutionalization and credibility of theschools today. Such empirical tests would allowan opportunity to separate out actual levels ofnovelty, continuity, and scope from rhetoricalassertions of current school disciples. Measuresof the dependent variables (e.g., institutionaliza-tion and credibility) could be obtained from sur-veys of organization theory scholars, and thoseinstruments might also generate indicators ofthe intervening detection, assimilation, and re-search promotion dynamics postulated in Fig-ure 1. The overall goal would be to evaluate thevalidity of the propositions presented in this ar-ticle, but the research program might have toproceed through a stage of qualitative compar-ison of individual cases (schools) before a mul-tivariate, quantitative database could be com-piled and analyzed using statistical methods.

Beyond the retrospective testing of the propo-sitions specified above, the schooling modelcould be examined prospectively. Specifically,researchers could assess the novelty, continuity,and scope of intellectual frameworks or state-ments that appear to be evolving toward schoolstatus. Based on those inspections, the research-ers could make predictions about the frame-works' chances of achieving full schooling. Wehave not attempted such predictions in this ar-ticle, but the potential for them is certainly im-plicit in our theory. The evolution of the intellec-tual frameworks in question could then betracked and compared with the predictions, asan alternative method of testing schooling the-ory. A model to anchor the empirical componentof such research is contained in articles by Bar-ley (1990), Leonard-Barton (1990), Pettigrew(1990), and Van de Ven and Poole (1990), in whichthe authors describe different varieties of longi-tudinal field research for studying organization-al change. Eventually, sociologists of organiza-tion science might refine their predictive skills

enough to permit fairly accurate forecasts ofwhich budding intellectual frameworks orschools-in-formation will evolve into completelyreified and legitimized schools of thought.

In. conclusion, we hope that this article hasclarified the process through which new schoolsof thought in organization theory develop to-ward legitimation and institutionalization. Webelieve that understanding this process is im-portant, because it helps explain the currentmultischool structure of the discipline. Whetherthe future of organization theory is character-ized by further intellectual differentiation or byan intellectual consolidation wave, the presentmultischool structure is certain to have a criticalinfluence on the outcome, and, therefore, on ourability to decipher the functioning of organiza-tions.

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William McKinley is an associate pr.ofessor of management in the College of Businessand Administration, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He received his Ph.D.in organizational sociology from Columbia University. His current research interestsare the sociology and philosophy of organization science, organizational downsizingand restructuring, organizational decline and innovation, and organizational change.

Mark A. Mone is a professor of management in the School of Business Administration,University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. He received his Ph.D. in organizational behav-ior and organization theory from Washington State University. His research interestsinclude self-regulatory processes; organizational decline, innovation, and downsiz-ing; philosophy of organization science; and research methods.

Gyewan Moon is an assistant professor of management in the School of Business andAdministration, Kyungpook National University, in Korea. He received his DBA inmanagement from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. His current researchinterests include organizational decline and turnaround, strategic leadership, strate-gic management of technology, and corporate restructuring.

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DETERMINANTS AND DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOLS IN … · theoretical frameworks or schools of thought. In a seminal work Burrell and Morgan (1979) de-scribed a taxonomy of sociological theories