’ S COMMENTS : DEVELOPING PROPOSITIONS , A PROCESS MODEL , OR A TYPOLOGY ? ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGES OF WRITING THEORY WITHOUT A BOILERPLATE

Writing theory papers is challenging and asks a lot of us as authors. Complex and big ideas may behard topresent ina focusedandpersuasive line of argument. Clearly defining constructs is not a straightforward taskeither,nor isknowingwhere to draw the lineandset scopeconstraintsorboundary conditions for your arguments (Whetten, 1989). And then where do you start: with the formulation of your own arguments, or with carving out the space for them within the existing literature? These and other well-knownwriting challengesmakewriting theory papers a real craft (Fulmer, 2012; Rindova, 2008; Suddaby, 2014). The craft of writing theory lies partly in the fact that there are no straightforward formulas or templates for theory papers (Ragins, 2012). This lack of simple writing formulas or a more general boilerplate for theory papers is perhaps to some extent inevitable. Staying with the image of craftsmanship (Kilduff, 2006; Ragins, 2012), writing theory ultimately hinges on the actual practice and experience of writing (Ragins, 2012). It is therefore incumbent on authors to work on their craft—to practice and refine their skills at developing and writing compelling theory. But besides perfecting their own skills, authors also benefit from knowing what editors, reviewers, and readers generally expect to see for different types of theory papers. Suchknowledgegives themasenseof thedifferent ways theory papers are written and of how they may best lay out their own arguments in pursuit of a strong theoretical contribution. With this in mind, I went through the reviewer reports and editorial letters for all of the AMR manuscripts I have handled to date and identified the common expectations that reviewers voiced for three frequently submitted and familiar types of theory papers: a manuscript centered around a set of propositions (a propositional style), a manuscript focused on developing a process model (a narrative style), and a manuscript building and elaborating a theoretical typology (a typological style). I describe these different types of theory papers in terms of different styles of theorizing (Delbridge & Fiss, 2013), which are distinct forms of developing theoretical arguments and writing theory papers. For each of these styles, I focused on identifying theexpectationsandconcerns that reviewersraised insofar as these seemed to alignwith the style itself (as opposed to more general writing advice [see Ragins, 2012]). These reviewers are seasoned readers who see more than their fair share of manuscripts in various stages of readiness. Their feedback and advice on each of these styles are therefore helpful for those keen to develop manuscripts for AMR. I then combined and summarized their most common feedback and advice so as to capture their expectations for each style of theorizing. I describe these expectations inmore detail below, including themost common suggestions that were made to address any style-related concerns. With this essay I would thus like to accomplish two things. First, as others have done in previous editor’s comments (Fulmer, 2012; Rindova, 2008), I would like to further demystify the process of writing theory papers and help authors improve their manuscripts by highlighting three common styles of theorizing. A clear outline of each of these styles may aid authors in forming a good understanding of the different ways theory manuscripts can be developed and written. This may be a helpful contribution in itself, given that writing theory is not often a central part of doctoral training at most schools and universities (Byron & Thatcher, 2016). Second, for each style I outline common expectations in the eyes of AMR reviewers and readers. Oftentimes,when authors receive feedback on their manuscripts as part of the review process at AMR, they get highly technical and coded comments on what makes for a strong theory paper. Yet, more often than not, the feedback they receive on issues such as the difference between propositions and hypotheses, the presence of circular or tautological reasoning in a manuscript, or the seemingly “descriptive”natureofamodelmaynotbe immediately obvious. My aim here is to translate such coded This essay has benefited a great deal from suggestions made by colleagues on the AMR editorial team and from comments by Peer Fiss, Krishnan Nair, and Ilaria Orlandi.