Splitting versus lumping : narrowing a theory’s scope may increase its value
Siponen, M., Klaavuniemi, T., & Xiao, Q. (2023). Splitting versus lumping : narrowing a theory’s scope may increase its value. European Journal of Information Systems, Early online. https://doi.org/10.1080/0960085x.2023.2208380
Published in
European Journal of Information SystemsDate
2023Discipline
Empirical Cyber Security and Software EngineeringTietojärjestelmätiedeEmpirical Cyber Security and Software EngineeringInformation Systems ScienceCopyright
© The Operational Research Society 2023
Specialisation, by seeking theoretically deeper explanations or more accurate predictions, is common in the sciences. It typically involves splitting, where one model is further divided into several or even hundreds of narrow-scope models. The Information Systems (IS) literature does not discuss such splitting. On the contrary, many seminal IS studies report that a narrow scope is less strong, less interesting, or less useful than a wider scope. In this commentary, we want to raise the awareness of the IS community that in modern scientific progress, specialisation – an activity that generally narrows the scope and decreases the generalisability of a hypothesis – is important. The philosophy of science discusses such positive developments as splitting and trading off a wide scope in favour of accuracy. Narrowing the scope may increase value, especially in sciences where practical applicability is valued. If the IS community generally prefers a wider scope, then we run the risk of not having the information necessary to understand IS phenomena in detail. IS research must understand splitting, how it results in narrowing the scope, and why it is performed for exploratory or predictive reasons in variance, process, and stage models.
...
Publisher
Taylor & FrancisISSN Search the Publication Forum
0960-085XKeywords
Publication in research information system
https://converis.jyu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/183074042
Metadata
Show full item recordCollections
Additional information about funding
The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71861014, 71863015].License
Related items
Showing items with similar title or keywords.
-
Narrowing the Theory’s or Study’s Scope May Increase Practical Relevance
Siponen, Mikko; Klaavuniemi, Tuula (University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2019)Numerous articles in top IS journals note as a limitation and lack of generalizability that their findings are specific to a certain type of technology, culture, and so on. We argue that this generalizability concern ... -
Grand theories or design guidelines? : Perspectives on the role of theory in computing education research
Tedre, Matti; Pajunen, John (Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2023)A rich body of empirically grounded results and a solid theory base have often been viewed as signs of a mature discipline. Many disciplines have frequently debated what they should accept as legitimate kinds of theories, ... -
Demokraattinen eetos : rajoista mahdollisuuksiin?
Hoffrén, Jari (University of Jyväskylä, 2000) -
Adorno's tragic vision
Nivalainen, Markku (University of Jyväskylä, 2018)This dissertation deals with the tragic vision that motivates certain key aspects of Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophy. While in the formative early work, the Dialectic of Enlightenment, co-written with Max Horkheimer, ... -
On the ontology of social pathologies
Hirvonen, Onni (University of Sussex, 2018)The recent years have seen a rehabilitation of the concept of social pathology in the critical social theory. However, several pertinent questions about how to understand social pathologies remain. One of the big issues ...