Systemic abduction: Reconstructing towards concept clarity in management studies

Abstract

Defining clear concepts and constructs is a prerequisite for all forms of validity in management and organization studies. This paper extends the existing recommendations on construct clarity and builds a method on systems thinking and abduction to help scholars with providing clear definitions in cases of (1) the constructs and concepts that come to academia from practice (2) the constructs and concepts on which there is no agreement among scholars, and (3) the constructs that were coined in the past eras but are mapped to the transformed observables in the new era. Moreover, we rethink the terms 'concept, 'construct', and 'variable' and introduce six clarity criteria to be used in the process of concept refinement in management and organization studies, and other disciplines of social and behavioural sciences.