The Interlinking Theorization of Management Concepts: Cohesion and Semantic Equivalence in Management Knowledge

Abstract

This article develops the idea of 'interlinking theorization' in the context of management knowledge. We explain how management concepts are theorized through their direct co-occurrence with other management concepts, on the one hand, and their embeddedness in general business vocabulary, on the other. Conceptually, we extend a semantic network approach to vocabularies and suggest both cohesion between management concepts (i.e. a clustering in bundles) and their semantic equivalence (i.e. similar patterns of connectivity to general business vocabulary indicating specific types) as core dimensions of interlinking theorization. Empirically, we illustrate and further develop our conceptual model with data collected from magazines targeting management practitioners in the Austrian public sector. Our article contributes to existing literature by extending theorization to include different kinds of relationships between management concepts and focusing on direct and indirect relations across populations of management concepts as characteristics of the overall 'architecture' of management knowledge.Theorization, in its initial definition by Strang and Meyer (1993, p. 492), entails 'the self-conscious development and specification of abstract categories and the formulation of patterned relationships such as chains of cause and effect'. It creates generalized models constituted through language.

“What is going on in the ‘big tent’?” Current developments in (new) institutional theory and performance measurement and management research

“…A second observation relates to the fact that management concepts are seldom introduced in isolation but diffuse and are theorised in relation to other ideas and instruments in an institutional environment (such as an institutional field, Höllerer et al , 2020; Polzer et al , 2016). Thus, additions to PMM systems always have to be regarded in the light of existing and simultaneously introduced PMM instruments (Strang and Soule, 1998) leading to an “ecology of concepts” (Abrahamson and Fairchild, 1999).…”

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“…The article aims to challenge strategic management literature assumptions by moving beyond a focus on organizational resources and firms’ environments as given and detached entities within firms’ relationships and quasi-universal fixed causal laws that apply across time and space ( Rabetino et al, 2021 ). Moreover, the theoretical development in the article challenges key assumptions ( Alvesson and Sandberg, 2011 ; Cornelissen et al, 2021 ) in firm strategies and deviates ( Höllerer et al, 2020 ) from the existing strategic management literature toward continual turbulent transformation in the social environment ( Teece, 2020 ) that has not been adequately addressed within firm strategies. Hence, scholars and practitioners underestimate the contributions of employee social strategies in firm strategies.…”

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“…Resources may be 'given' by the existing literature around a topic, effectively providing researchers with a readily available set of concepts and vocabularies that they can draw on and mobilize to conceptualize the topic. But it is also possible for researchers to look elsewhere and to deviate from the existing vocabulary structure around a topic (Höllerer, Jancsary, Barberio, & Meyer, 2020). Researchers may conceptualize a topic in a new or different way; for example, by using their own (first principles) reasoning to induce a different theoretical framing or by drawing in concepts and theoretical discourses as novel resources from other domains and literatures (Cornelissen & Durand, 2014).…”