Workshop: Going Back to the Foundations of Theory

Date: 11 October 2024

Location: Uppsala University Building, Biskopsgatan 3, Uppsala

This workshop will answer the questions that many consider already answered: “What is Theory?” and “How do we know that we have one?”

Based on well-established works by theorists and scholars throughout history, going back to Aristotle, the workshop expands Bacharach’s oft-repeated definition of theory as “a statement of relations among concepts within a set of boundary assumptions and constraints” that do not distinguish theories from relational propositions. It cuts through the confusion surrounding the questions as to whether topologies and classifications are theories, or whether models and frameworks qualify as theories. It reframes the relationship of theory with practice and the notion of middle-range theories. It distinguishes theorizing from actually inventing theories and clarifies the productive functions and roles of theory in research. It highlights the poverty of relying on models and describes how truly engaging with theories opens up the landscape of research to endless opportunities.

Morning Session (10:15–12:00) – Room IX, Uppsala University Building

1. Distinguishing theory from other products of theorizing—why laws, models, frameworks, propositions, and empirical generalizations are not theories.
2. How theory is of practice—Nothing so practical as good theory and the notion of theories of the middle range.
3. How engaging with theory is not tinkering with models—characteristics of native theories and their functions in research.

Afternoon Session (13:15–15:00) – Room VIII, Uppsala University Building

This interactive session aims to solve research problems and issues using the principles from the morning session. The session also continues the morning session and fields questions from the audience.

Workshop Instructor Biography

Nik Rushdi Hassan is a Professor of Management Information Systems (MIS) and Business Analytics at the Labovitz School of Business and Economics (LSBE), University of Minnesota Duluth, USA, where he in 2020 established the first undergraduate major in Business Analytics in a school of business in Minnesota.

Dr Hassan is currently a senior editor at the Journal of Information Technology and DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems. He has served as President of the Association for Information Systems (AIS) Special Interest Group on Philosophy in Information Systems (SIGPhil) and was one of the editors of special issues in the European Journal of Information Systems on Philosophy and the Future of the Information Systems Field (2018) and Managing and Sustaining Digital Transformations (2023), as well as editor for the recent 2023 Journal of Information Technology’s Special Issue on Products of Theorizing—Towards Native Theories of Emerging Information Technologies.

Together with Leslie Willcocks and Suzanne Rivard, he has published two volumes of the Advancing Information Systems Theories series and working on Volume 3 focusing on native IS theories. His research areas include the philosophical foundations of the IS field, theorizing and theory building, IS development, business analytics, social network analysis, and complexity science.

He is featured in Routledge’s Companion to Management Information Systems and published in top journals in Information Systems including a best paper in the Journal of Information Technology and an editorial on theorizing in the Journal of the Association for Information Systems.

Practicalities

No pre-registration is required. The workshop is free of charge. You are welcome to attend just the morning session should your schedule not permit both sessions.

For questions, please contact Professor Pär Ågerfalk at par.agerfalk@im.uu.se