The word theory has such a mystique about it. We tend to talk about theory as researchers much like our forebears would have discussed theology: with a mixture of awe, fascination, and cynicism. Each of us comes to the topic from the perspective of our own experience, having found theory alternatively helpful and 'dangerously misleading in our work.In setting out my own views on the current state of theory development as it applies to the voluntary and nonprofit sector, I hope readers will indulge an approach rooted in personal narrative-specifically, how 1 came to be interested in communitarian theory and its applicability to theory of the third sector. In explaining my own experience with theory, I hope to suggest some alternative approaches and perspectives that may provide limited guidance for future intellectual exploration. My venture in theory development evolved from interest in how thirdsector organizations interact with their external environments and with other third-sector and public sector organizational actors within their environment. When I looked at prevailing association and interorganizational theory as a way of explaining how voluntary organizations in Canada in 1989-1992 interacted with each other and their environments, 1 found their behavior to be irrational in theoretical terms. The organizations 1 was observing were either acting consistently with theory but not surviving or flourishing, or acting inconsistently with theory and finding more success.My simple conclusion was that theory was wrong or that the assumptions on which it was based were wrong, too narrowly delimited, or insufficient. I began reviewing several sets of theory intensively, beginning with interestgroup formation theory (OlsonCobb, Ross, Q Ross, 1977). These pioneering scholars were principally concerned with explaining motives and incentives for group formation, analjz-.ing organizational weaknesses in the third sector, and categorizing behavioral
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