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jais-theory-development

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Use when building the theoretical engine of a Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS) manuscript — original theory for the Theory category, a behavioral mechanism, an economic mechanism, a design theory, or a pre-theoretical framing for a novel digital phenomenon. Adapts the form of "theory" to the category and tradition; it does not run the analysis (jais-data-analysis) or frame the contribution (jais-contribution-framing).

Journal-of-the-Association-for-Information-Systems-Skills/skills/jais-theory-development/SKILL.md

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# Theory Development (jais-theory-development)

## When to trigger

- Your claims are descriptive ("A is associated with B") with no IS mechanism
- You are targeting the **Theory** category and need a genuinely *new* construct or framework, not a relabeled import
- You built an IT artifact but cannot say what generalizable **design knowledge** it embodies
- A Senior Editor or reviewer says "the theoretical contribution is unclear" or "this is a borrowed-theory application"
- You have a novel digital phenomenon and need a disciplined pre-theoretical framing

## Why theory carries more weight at JAIS

JAIS is the AIS flagship and the Basket journal that treats **theory as a contribution in its own right** — it runs a standalone Theory category for "original theory" that proposes new concepts or integrates existing theories into novel frameworks. Even in empirical Research Articles, JAIS **discourages primary construct development** as the headline move — meaning a paper whose contribution *is* a new construct usually belongs in Theory, not as a bolt-on to a Research Article. This is the JAIS-specific discipline: name your theoretical genre, then build to that genre's bar.
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