From Borrowing to Blending: Rethinking the Processes of Organizational Theory Building

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Abstract
Why are there not more original and radical theories in organization theory? To answer this question, we consider an overreliance on “theory borrowing” from other disciplines. We identify a dominant foreign to domestic to domesticated pattern of organization and management theory building and propose that the prevalent process of one-way borrowing from outside the discipline should be counterbalanced by a two-way analogical process of conceptual blending, which involves dissonant thinking, disanalogy, and counterfactual reasoning.