Individual skill

misq-theory-development

Use when building the theoretical engine of a MIS Quarterly manuscript — a behavioral mechanism and hypotheses, a design theory and testable design propositions for a design-science artifact, an economic mechanism for an economics-of-IS study, or an organizational process theory. Adapts the form of "theory" to the paper's IS tradition; does not run the analysis (misq-data-analysis) or frame the contribution (misq-contribution-framing).

MIS-Quarterly-Skills/skills/misq-theory-development/SKILL.md

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# Theory Development (misq-theory-development)

## When to trigger

- Your claims are descriptive ("A is associated with B") with no IS mechanism
- You built an IT artifact but cannot say what *design knowledge* it embodies
- A Senior Editor or reviewer says "the theoretical contribution is unclear" or "this is a technical exercise"
- You need hypotheses or design propositions derived *before* you look at results

## Theory takes a different shape in each MISQ tradition

MISQ is pluralistic, so "develop theory" means different things. Pick the row that matches your tradition.

| Tradition | What "theory" means here | What you must produce |
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