From the Editors Integrating Theories in Amj Articles

Theories play an important role in management research. As management scholars, we utilize insights from many different theories as we engage in research to better understand many different aspects of management. But many research questions can’t be fully addressed by drawing only upon a single theory. Just as two firms form alliances to accomplish more than either could individually, scholars may bring together two theories to address what neither theory could independently. Just as with alliances, however, many attempts to integrate theories fail to achieve the goals of those who brought them together. While some level of commonality is necessary for integrating two theories, it is how researchers handle the differences between the theories and what kind of filter is used to determine what to bring together from the theories that plays a significant role in determining the success of the endeavor. Our goal is to examine different approaches for integrating theories and discuss how to do it in a way that maximizes the chance that integration will provide novel insights that will influence future research and ultimately management practice. We believe that there are four approaches to successfully integrating theory. First, two theories can speak to the same phenomenon but from different perspectives (i.e., same dependent variable but different explanatory variables). Second, two seemingly disparate streams of research can be shown to actually not be so disparate after all (e.g., they may share implicit assumptions or some other nonobvious link). Third, two theories may primarily address different phenomena, but applying one theory to the domain of the other can generate new insights. Finally, two theories may address related phenomena but draw on a related or common set of explanatory factors.