Examines the differences in borrowed theories from their parent to their appropriated disciplines, specifically related to qualitative vs. quantitative use and changes in their applications over time, via text mining of peer-reviewed journal articles.

1. “Borrowed Theory” in Original
vs. New Disciplines
Stephen Downing
10 Jan. 2014

2. Content
Brief Literature Review
Research Questions
Data & Analysis
Results
Conclusions
2

3. Brief Literature Review

4. Borrowed Theory Examples
Borrowed Theory
Application
Social Exchange
explore motivational factors of knowledge sharing in
large, information-intensive organizations
Hall, 2003
Evolutionary
interpret how firms renew organizational
competencies
Burgelman, 1991
Ecosystem
explain firm competition and cooperation with
internationally interconnected and interdependent
supply chains, customers, complementors, etc.
Moore, 1993
4

5. Classifications of Borrowed Theories
Cross-level
(vertical)
Cross-Context
(horizontal)
Borrowing theories
that were developed
at different levels of
analysis
Paradigmatic
Theories
Propositional
Arguments
Borrowing theories
developed for study
of phenomena in
other social contexts
Broad theory used to
explain phenomena
One concept used to
explain another concept
Example:
Example:
Example:
Example:
social involvement
literature from
sociology (Davis et al,
2004) used for
organizational research
Keystone effect from
ecology to management
science (to be addressed
later)
behavioral theory
(March and Simon,
1958) and equity theory
(Mowday, 1991) to
explain differences in
employee motivation
level of environmental
uncertainty (Lawrence and
Lorsch, 1967) to explain
the levels of integration
and differentiation among
organizational units
Source: Whetten, Felin, & King,
2009
Source: Prabhakar, 2010
5

6. Limitation of Theory Borrowing:
Between Disciplines:
Application
Origination
Within Discipline:
6

7. Example of Misused Borrowed Theory
• Freudian theories applied
to motivational research
for marketing purposes in
1940’s and 1950’s.
• Proved ineffective and
inappropriate; eventually
discontinued.
• Murray and Evers argue
it’s due to three aspects of
borrowed theory.
Motivation
Research
Freudian Theories
Helping Disturbed
Patients
Superstructure
Explaining Typical
Behavior
Interpretive
Type of Science
Logical Empirical
Psychoanalysis:
19th Century Vienna
Social Context
Consumer Behavior:
1950’s America
Source: Murray & Evers, 1989
7

8. Trade-offs of Theory Borrowing
Usefulness Debate
Appropriateness Debate
Benefits
Costs
Pro
Con
Essential for
interdisciplinary fields
(e.g., marketing)
Has led to dead-ends
Sacrifice goal of developing
management science as
legitimate academic field
Has led to creative and
illuminating issues of
theory
Wasted time of
researchers
Borrowing Theories has
helped organizational studies
develop credibility and
legitimacy (Agarwal and
Hetker, 2007)
Opportunities in three types:
1. Application/replication
2. Extension (focal domain)
3. Transformation (parent
domain)
Theories should be built
within focal domain
Efficient to use available Wasted resources of
resources for research
academic institutions
Source: Murray & Evers, 1989;
Murray, Evers, & Janda, 1995
Source: Floyd, 2009; Zahra & Newey,
2009; Markoczy & Deeds, 2009
8

9. Research Questions

10. • The type of research usually
depends on the level of
uncertainty and the timeframe.
Qualitative
Quantitative
• How does the application of
borrowed theory compare in the
original and new disciplines?
Level of Uncertainty
Methodological Implications
Suitable Research Type for Context
Exploratory
Descriptive
Causal
Time from Awareness of Problem
10

11. Research Questions
• 1. Does application of the borrowed theory differ from original to new
discipline?  How?
• Qualitative vs. quantitative
• Exploratory (or descriptive) vs causal
• 2. Does the research methodology of applying the borrowed theory
change over time?  How?
• Early, middle, vs. late periods after theory introduced (borrowed)
• 3. Does that change over time differ between the original and new
disciplines? How?
11

12. Focal Study:
keystone
species
Parent Discipline
New Focal Discipline
“Keystone
Species”
Concept
Context
Ecological ecosystem
Business ecosystem
General Actor
Organism
Firm
Health
Evaluation
Metrics
1.Productivity,
2.Robustness,
3.Niche Creation
1.Firm ROI,
2.Surviving Firms
3.New firms/tech
Borrowed
from Ecology
Specific Roles
Food web hierarchical
roles (predator, prey, etc.)
Keystone, dominator,
landlord, niche
for Mgmt.
Science
Identification
Metrics
Biomass density/diversity,
trophic position,
Food web links
Firm size & growth,
Contracts and supply chain
links
Analysis
Methodology
Experimental removal,
Network visualization
Network visualization,
(though mostly qualitative)
12

13. Focal Study: “Keystone Species”
“keystone species”
originated in ecology
(Paine, 1966)
“ecosystem”
borrowed for
business context
(Moore, 1993)
“keystone
species”
borrowed for
business
ecosystem
strategy
(Iansiti &
Levien, 2004)
?
13
Graph Source: Google Ngrams Viewer, smoothing factor = 3, case insensitive

14. “Keystone Species”:
Summary of Prevalence in the literature
197
17
keystone
strategy
“keystone species”
Citations
21,600
“keystone effect”
983
“keystone strategy”
keystone species
21,600
Search
197
“keystone species” and “keystone
effect”
65
keystone
effect
65
“keystone species and keystone
effect”
17
983
Sources: Google Scholar and 國立交通大學(NCTU)
Library e-database peer-reviewed citations
14

15. Data and Analysis

16. Text Analysis Corpus
• 163 total journal articles
involving “keystone species”
• New Discipline: Mgmt. Science
• Context: business ecosystem
• 2004 – 2013 timeframe (n = 103)
• Original Field: Ecology
• Context: ecological ecosystem
• 1965 – 2013 timeframe (n = 59)
All analyses performed using RapidMiner 5.
16

17. Text Corpus Divisions by Time Periods
Sample Citations per
Period in Ecology
Sample Citations per
Period in Mgmt. Science
25
50
20
40
15
30
10
20
5
10
0
0
Early: 1966 1993
Middle: 1994 2001
Late: 2002 2013
Early: 2004 2007
Middle: 2008 2010
Late: 2011 2013
17

18. Text Analysis: Group and Period Simulated
Probabilities via Naïve Bayes Classifier
• Application of Bayes’ theorem
• 𝑝 𝐺 𝑖 𝐹1 … 𝐹 𝑛 =
𝑝 𝐺 𝑖 ∙𝑝(𝐹1 …𝐹 𝑛 |𝐺 𝑖 )
𝑝(𝐹1 …𝐹 𝑛 )
• Produces posterior probability (p) of group
classification (𝐺 𝑖 ), given certain evidence
(F1…Fn)
• Strong independence assumptions
• Articles analyzed for probability of
indicator tokens by term frequencyinverse document frequency (TF-IDF) in
sample corpus by
• academic field
• time period
• Tokens := n-grams (words) of n=1,2,3
18

19. Results
19

20. Q1: Does application of the borrowed theory
differ from original to new discipline?
Mgmt. Science: More Qualitative
“qualitative research”
Mgmt. Science vs. Ecology
Ecology: More Quantitative
“quantify”
Mgmt. Science vs. Ecology
20

21. Q1: Does application of the borrowed theory
differ from original to new discipline?
Mgmt. Science: More Exploratory
“exploratory”
Mgmt. Science vs. Ecology
Ecology: More Causal
“experiment”
Mgmt. Science vs. Ecology
21

22. A1: Yes, application of the borrowed theory
differs from original to new discipline.
Most Frequent
Word stems:
Ecology
Exploratory
Causal
√
√
Qualitative
Quantitative
Business
√
√
22

23. Q2: Does the research methodology of applying
the borrowed theory change over time?
Early Period: Exploratory
“business ecosystem concept”
Management Science
Middle Period: Exploratory
“business ecosystem development”
Management Science
23

24. Q2: Does the research methodology of applying
the borrowed theory change over time?
Middle Period: Qualitative
“qualitative analysis”
Management Science
Late Period: Quantitative
“quantitative analysis”
Management Science
24

25. Q2: Does the research methodology of applying
the borrowed theory change over time?
Late Period: Exploratory
“exploratory research”
Management Science
Late Period: Exploratory & Causal
“exploratory analysis”
Management Science
25

26. A2: Yes, the research methodology of applying
the borrowed theory changes over time.
Mgmt. Science
Exploratory
Early
Middle
Late
√
√
√
Causal
Qualitative
Quantitative
√
√
√
√
√
26

27. Q3: Does that change over time differ between
the original and new disciplines?
Early:
Early:
“business ecosystem concept”
Management Science
“data collection”
Ecology
27

28. Q3: Does that change over time differ between
the original and new disciplines?
Middle:
Middle:
“qualitative analysis”
Management Science
“
experiment”
Ecology
28

29. Q3: Does that change over time differ between
the original and new disciplines?
Late:
Late:
“data collection analysis”
Management Science
“
quantify”
Ecology
29

30. A3: Yes, that change over time differs between
the original and new disciplines.
Mgmt. Science
Exploratory
Early
Middle
Late
√
√
√
√
Causal
Qualitative
Quantitative
√
√
Early
Middle
Exploratory
√
√
Causal
√
√
√
Qualitative
√
√
Ecology
Late
√
Quantitative
√
√
√
30

31. Conclusions
31

32. Borrowed Theory in Parent vs. New Discipline
Majority Classification
by Discipline:
Original:
Ecology
New:
Mgmt. Science
Methodology Progression
over Time
Standard:
Exploratory  Confirmatory
Stalled:
Exploratory  Exploratory
Certainty
Ambiguity
Causal
Exploratory
(Descriptive)
Quantitative
Qualitative
Clarity of Phenomena
Research Purpose
Approach
32

33. Takeaways
• Authors using borrowed theory (“keystone species”) described their own work as
exploratory in relatively later periods and to greater extent than authors do in
the originating field
• Certainty and authoritativeness suffer from borrowed theory in later stages
• Borrowed theories are ready-made, provide timeliness, cost benefit in the short
run, but the benefit decreases faster than theories originated in the discipline
• Except in the case of being the first one to borrow a theory with good cause, or
applying a borrowed theory in a novel way, or when facing strict
temporal/monetary constraints, then originating theory through research may
allow more certainty and consistency applying the theory within original
discipline.

34. Managerial Implications
Given substantial research costs in time and resources:
• large firms may benefit from propriety research originating theory (i.e.,
developing theories related to their specific business problem)
• Small firms may find it more cost effective to apply insight from
borrowed theory to arrive at faster, cheaper conclusion (i.e., essentially
buying a copy of a research report instead of investing in propriety
research).

35. References
•
Burgelman, R. a. (1991). Intraorganizational Ecology of Strategy Making and •
Organizational Adaptation: Theory and Field Research. Organization Science,
2(3), 239–262. doi:10.1287/orsc.2.3.239
Murray, J., Evers, D., & Janda, S. (1995). Marketing, theory borrowing, and
critical reflection. Journal of Macromarketing, (Fall), 92–106. Retrieved from
http://jmk.sagepub.com/content/15/2/92.short
•
Floyd, S. W. (2009). “ Borrowing ” Theory : What Does This Mean and When
Does It Make Sense in Management Scholarship? Journal of Management
Studies, 46(6), 1057–1058. doi:0022-2380
•
Paine, R. T. (1966). Food web complexity and species diversity. The American
Naturalist, 100(910), 65–75. doi:10.1086/282400
•
Hall, H. (2003). Borrowed theory. Library & Information Science Research,
25(3), 287–306. doi:10.1016/S0740-8188(03)00031-8
•
Paine, R. T. (1969). The Pisaster-Tegula interaction: prey patches, predator
food preference, and intertidal community structure. Ecology, 50(6), 950–961.
doi:10.2307/1936888
•
Iansiti, M., & Levien, R. (2004). Strategy as Ecology. Harvard Business
•
Review, 82(3), 68–78. Retrieved from
http://ezproxy.lib.nctu.edu.tw:2088/ContentServer.asp?T=P&P=AN&K=12383
702&S=R&D=bth&EbscoContent=dGJyMNHr7ESep7E4zOX0OLCmr0meprN
Sr6+4SreWxWXS&ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGstEqurrNOuePfgeyx44Dt6fJJ
Prabhakar, K. (2010). Borrowing Theory from other disciplines to
Management. methodspace.com. Retrieved November 12, 2013, from
http://www.methodspace.com/group/crossingboundaries/forum/topics/borrowin
g-theory-from-other
•
Markóczy, L., & Deeds, D. L. (2009). Theory Building at the Intersection :
Recipe for Impact or Road to Nowhere ? Journal of Management Studies,
46(6), 1076–1088.
•
Moore, J. (1993). Predators and Prey: A New Ecology of Competition. Harvard
Business Review, 71(3), 75–86. Retrieved from
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jim/files/2010/04/Predators-and-Prey.pdf
•
Murray, J. B., & Evers, D. J. (1989). Theory Borrowing and Reflectivity in
Interdisciplinary Fields. Advances in Consumer Research, 16, 647–652.
•
Whetten, D. a., Felin, T., & King, B. G. (2009). The Practice of Theory
Borrowing in Organizational Studies: Current Issues and Future Directions.
Journal of Management, 35(3), 537–563. doi:10.1177/0149206308330556
•
Zahra, S. A., & Newey, L. R. (2009). Maximizing the Impact of Organization
Science : Theory-Building at the Intersection of Disciplines and / or Fields.
Journal of Management Studies, 46(6), 1059–1075.
List of articles in text analysis sample corpus omitted for brevity; available upon request.
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