Do Theories of Organizations Progress?

Abstract

This article analyzes the prospects for cumulative theory development in organization theory. Organization theory generally takes organizations (business corporations, nonprofits, hospitals, universities, etc.) as discrete and meaningful units of analysis. The revolution in information and communication technologies (ICTs) over the past two decades has made comprehensive time-series data on millions of organizations widely available to scholars around the world. Yet, it is not obvious that organization theory has become more precise, more general, or more accurate as a result. The author argues that this is due to three difficulties that additional data cannot fully resolve: (a) researchers lack experimental control, limiting their ability to draw causal inferences, and are largely inattentive to the standards for valid quasi-experimental design; (b) organizations are more appropriately construed as tools rather than as natural objects susceptible to ‘‘laws;’’ and (c) the regularities underlying organizational dynamics change over time such that empirical generalizations that are true during one period may be false in a different period. I conclude by suggesting improvements to research practice that would enable organization theory to progress toward greater insights.