The Ongoing Quest for Theory-Building Research Methods Articles (original) (raw)

2010, Human Resource Development Review

We cannot overemphasize the importance of the need for HRD scholars to contribute to the development of theory-building research methods in the social sciences. Without an understanding of how and why such methods support theory building and how to apply them productively, we risk stagnating as a field. In particular, we need more scholarly discourse about how to creatively apply quantitative (Wacker, 2004), qualitative (Dirkx, 2008), and mixed research (Creswell & Creswell, 2005) methods to build theory. Lynham's (2002) monograph The General Method of Theory-Building Research in Applied Disciplines and Torraco's (2005a) chapter on research methods for theory development are excellent examples of work generated by HRD scholars, but they remain among the few. Lamenting over the first seven issues of Human Resource Development Review, Holton (2003) noted that but one article addressing methods for theory building was published during that time. Holton called for more scholarship that proposes and tests new research methodologies, adapts other existing methods from other fields to HRD (e.g., sociology), and investigates the field's research methods as possible means for generating more study in this area. Little seems to have changed, however, as we continue to see scant interest in this essential type of article at the Journal. One useful venue for stimulating more thinking about developing these research methods may be one of the HRDR's features, the Instructor's Corner. The Instructor's Corner, albeit nonrefereed, may be one productive means of addressing the how-to of theory building. We would like to see articles where specific research methods are linked to theory-building efforts. For example, there is a burgeoning literature where case studies (an example of a mixed method) have been used to develop theories addressing topics ranging from group process (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007) to cognitive development (Piaget, 1950). However, with few notable exceptions (e.g., Dooley, 2002; Ellinger, Watkins, & Marsick, 2005), there is little clear direction as to how to actually go about building theory from cases. The same argument could be used to support a number of additional quantitative, qualitative, and mixed method approaches to theory building. From the quantitative realm, we would be most interested in contributions covering issues such as how exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and other types of multivariate analytic approaches could be used to build theory and why. Again, care must be taken to justify why such an approach to theory building might be warranted over other approaches. Discussion about how issues related to quantitative research, such as effect sizes and confidence intervals, statistical versus practical significance, common method variance, and nonresponse bias, could affect theory building would be informative. In the next