THEORY THROUGH ARGUMENT: APPLYING ARGUMENT MAPPING TO FACILITATE THEORY BUILDING

David Murungi and Rudy Hirschheim

European Journal of Information Systems, 2022, vol. 31, issue 4, 437-462

Abstract: This paper proposes an extension of Fletcher and Huff’s (1990) argument mapping technique, which focuses on an examination of individual arguments, to depict the broader argumentative terrain of a theoretical discourse. To illustrate the utility of argument mapping as a literature review technique, we demonstrate an application of this approach to the domain of Technology Frames of Reference (TFR) research. We then compare the insights derived from this approach to those derived from a more traditional literature review of this domain. Findings of this comparison suggest that an argument-centred approach could contribute the following new insights into a theoretical domain: (1) provide a means of weighting contributions to a theoretical discourse by depicting these contributions in terms of levels of argumentation; (2) identify new “types” of argument-centred gaps in the literature; (3) offer a structural and progressive view of theory development in a particular domain that could be used to could be used to link and compare insights derived from competing theoretical lenses; and (4) propose a closer linkage between theory testing and theory building by focusing the testing on “arguable” aspects of a theoretical claim.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0960085X.2020.1868952 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:tjisxx:v:31:y:2022:i:4:p:437-462

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/tjis20

DOI: 10.1080/0960085X.2020.1868952

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Information Systems is currently edited by Par Agerfalk

More articles in European Journal of Information Systems from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().