Towards the Development of a Taxonomic Theory

Developing IS theories has been an important goal for many IS researchers. Towards that end, we discuss how taxonomic theory can be developed. According to Gregor, taxonomic theories are theories for analyzing, which she classifies as Type I Theory. More specifically, we show that some taxonomies, after meeting some conditions, can lead to taxonomic theory. Building upon a method for taxonomy development, we present a prescriptive framework for the development of taxonomic theory, which includes evaluation criteria for theorizing outcomes. To illustrate this, we present a taxonomy of an ISrelated phenomenon (mobile applications) and then show how the taxonomy satisfies taxonomic theory requirements. In addition, we show how the development of taxonomic theory helps to analyze IS-related phenomena and how it can form the basis for more comprehensive IS-related explanatory, predictive or design theories.