Theory Building in applied disciplines

Theory building in applied disciplines book two authors are from academic fields. Richard Swanson is a professor emeritus of organizational leadership, policy, and development at the University of Minnesota from the year 1979-2005, he worked from 2006-2009 as a research professor at the University of Texas. Know h Richard is running his practice, Swanson & associates, in Minnesota as a principal consultant for performance improvement. Thomas Chermack is an associate professor of organizational performance and change, specializing in scenario planning at Colorado state university. In addition to his position as an assistant professor, he established his practice in 2001 Chermack scenarios as president and founder.

Building a sound theory is the goal of this book. Theory building is purely an academic subject to support research in any academic arena. Researchers and Ph.D. students benefit from this book because the book provides a new approach to building a theory, a research agenda to test a theory and its validity, and two case examples of previously built theories in learning organizational theory and scenario planning theory. Architects in research and practice benefit from the presented idea of the importance of integrating theory and experience, building quality indicators for the design process, and the theory of team building. Engineers in management fields benefit from the assessment criteria used in the theory-building process in practice for project management risk assessment. The two strategies in building the theory presented in this book and the case example of scenario planning theory benefit planners and strategic planners in professional practice. Statisticians benefit from the introduced data analysis methods and every method and its proper application. For example, a T-test is used if the research inquiry uses a pretest/posttest design.

As the authors say that the book has no rival or equivalent, this book is written to fill a void. The theory describes a specific realm of knowledge and explains how it works. Applied disciplines are all realms of study and practice including management, organizational development, public administration, marketing, highway engineering, leadership, and others. Applied discipline should meet the academic and practice standards. The writers introduce to the reader the foundation of theory building, the general method of theory building in applied disciplines, the five steps theory-building process, and case examples of previous theories. Throughout the book the reader finds how a theory builder should first; understand the problem and the external world where the problem lies. Second, the theoretical framework and theory building challenges. Third, tools and techniques to start the theory-building five-step process. Fourth, what research methods are used and how to test every phase outcome, and how to refine it. The book presents an important concept of the importance of theory in practice and the procedure of how to criticize other theories.

The writers give a clear message that the existence of bad theories destroys good practices. That means the books on theory building present bad processes and procedures to build a theory, most theory building methods are incomplete, inappropriate, and overwhelming. The five-step theory is meant to correct the defects in the bad theorie’s procedures and methods. Theory building in applied discipline is important because it affects the performance of many organizations and the reader as mentioned earlier can contribute to the development of his field of specialty. The book is purely for academic individuals, but many of the techniques and tools described in the book could be used in professional practice for assessment and quality identification of any activity. Theory building whether it’s for applied discipline, social science, science, or educational research enhances a student and researcher’s analysis, assessment, of any real-world problem. Adding to that it develops critical thinking that enhances the work quality not only in research but in professional practice too.

Richard and Thomas are specialist researchers and consultants, accordingly, they write clear and coherent content. In this book, they showed the strength and high quality in writing the book content and in simple English. The ideas in all chapters are connected in a smart way starting from the theory-building overview and background, theory concept, the related problem and external world it exists in, the strategies and framework to build the theory, what challenges you might face, how to use the five steps procedure, the tools and techniques to assess the outcomes of every phase and how to refine the results, the research methods involved in the whole process, and testing the theory in the real world. What makes the book content interesting to read is that every phase is supplied with graphs, descriptive tables, and diagrams to simplify the idea under discussion. The book presents relevant content in terms of tracking all theory-building methods to the day of publication.

The authors tailored the book title, its index, and the book content in a very cohesive way. The index gives a clear idea about every chapter and the content reflects the index accurately. Every chapter expands in content to describe sub-concepts about the main chapter concept. For example, in the conceptual phase, the authors expand to illustrate the involved research methods such as quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method.

The writers give a wealth of references relevant to the field of the book. References range from journal articles, academic linguistic dictionaries, research books from various relevant fields.

For readers who are looking to get an overview of theory building an applied discipline, the defects in the previous theories then this book is essential for them. Professionals who want to develop their academic research, assessment, analysis skills should read this book. Managers who want to enhance their workers and company work in terms of strategies then here is a good place to read. For anyone who wants to understand the importance of theory in life and the strong relationship between theory and experience in practice, this platform is a great place to explore.

You can refer to my book review of the same field for Robert Dubin, click here.