ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies the practical and philosophical difficulties associated with testing management theories and, from a critical realist perspective, proposes methods for improving the rigor of theory testing. It highlights falsification in an effort to encourage a balance that has been neglected by past and current research practices in management research. The chapter discusses the major obstacles to testing theories in a rigorous manner, resulting in the dearth of falsification. A critical problem posed by the Duhem-Quine thesis is that when an instance of falsification occurs, logic alone cannot isolate which elements of a test system are responsible for the falsification. Management research tends to move from theoretical arguments motivating sets of hypotheses directly to theory testing using multivariate models that incorporate proxies for multiple theoretical and control variables. Donaldson portrays management theories as oriented toward different levels of analysis and different value assessments of organizations and managers, as well as having distinct languages and methodologies.
