Management and Organizational Research: Structural Topic Modeling for a Better Understanding of Theory Application

Rohit Bhuvaneshwar Mishra and Hongbing Jiang
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Rohit Bhuvaneshwar Mishra: School of Management Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China
Hongbing Jiang: School of Management Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: In management and organization research, theory development is often linked with developing a new theory. However, regardless of the number of existing theories, most theories remain empirically untested, and the progress in understanding the application of theories has been scarce. This article discusses how theories are applied in existing management and organization research studies. This study applies the Structural Topic Model to 4636 research papers from the S2ORC dataset. The results reveal twelve research themes, establish correlations, and document the evolution of themes over time. The findings of this study reveal that the theoretical application is not consistent across research themes, theories are primarily used for descriptive and communicative properties, and most research themes in management and organization research are more concerned with discovering phenomena rather than with understanding and forecasting them.

Keywords: management and organization theory; management science; theory research; structural topic modeling; data and text analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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