Discovering a not yet known concept

concept A “cause” for a known concept B {define the concept} or finding a dependent concept B “effect” for a known concept A {define the concept} and, next, by specifying the relation between concepts A and B. We think that most theory-building research takes this form, in which a cause must be found in order to explain a desired or undesired effect or an effect must be found for a given cause.

8.1.3 Discovering concepts and their relation

A theory-building study might also start from the probably quite rare situation in which there is no known concept see Figure 8.4. The research objective of such a theory-building study can be fur- ther specified as follows: The objective of this study is to contribute to the development of theory regarding topic T {specify the object of study} by discovering and explaining a phenomenon of interest {specify the phenomenon}. On first sight, this appears to be a nonsensical aim. How could one begin to conduct an empirical study with the aim of finding something concepts and a relation between them without having any idea of what one is searching for? But actually this is a quite common situation in academic research, which is stimulated by the implicit or explicit aim of “being original”, meaning that it is a good thing to discover and describe a phenomenon that no one has seen before. This is one of the implicit aims of Grounded Theory see 9.1.4. ??? Independent Dependent Concept A ??? Figure 8.3 Conceptual model with not yet known effects ??? Independent Dependent ??? ??? Figure 8.4 Conceptual model that is entirely empty A theory-building study might start from a strictly descriptive aim of discovering and describing concepts that might later become relevant for a theory see Figure 8.5. Often the objective of such a study is to build and describe a typol- ogy of a phenomenon of interest in order to get more insight into how the phenomenon looks in different situations, but without an attempt to explain the occurrence of specific types by finding relations with independent factors or to find or explain effects by finding relations with dependent factors. The research objective of such a theory-building study can be specified as follows: The objective of this study is to contribute to the development of theory regarding topic T {specify the object at study} by discovering and describing a phenomenon of interest {specify the phenomenon}.

8.2 Principles of theory-building research

Propositions can be built by exploration and by theory-building research. Because exploration is not research, we think that it is important to define what is distinctive in theory-building research. Research is building and testing statements by analysing evidence drawn from observation. Whereas it is perfectly acceptable in exploration to derive propositions from what practitioners and other people say about the phenomenon whether or not this is based on evidence that is accessible to the researcher, propositions derived from theory- building research should be grounded in observations that can be justifiably seen as indicators or measurements of the concepts of the proposition that is built. ??? Figure 8.5 Not yet known concept

8.1.4 Discovering concepts