--> Theme 2: Theory

So what about Theory you ask.

Well let's start with what the MIS report writes about theory in Informations Systems, "to understand IS, theory is required that links the natural world, the social world, and the artificial world of human constructions" (Gregor, S. 2006).
So what about Theory?

Theory is according to some people the answers to queries of why (Kaplan, 1964; Merton, 1967; Sutton, R.I & Staw, B.M, 1995). Theory is about the connections among phenomenon, it’s the story explaining all the other stories. The story that explains why acts, events, structure and thoughts occur (Sutton & Staw, 1995). According to Popper Theory is:

”Scientific theories are universal statements. Like all linguistic representations they are systems of signs or symbols. Theories are nets cast to catch what we call “the world”; to rationalize, to explain and tomaster it. We endeavor to make the mesh even finer”

On a philosophical note theory is the act of coherence between the small parts of reality explaining the whole concept of existence. Theory can be justified from our subjective point of view or it can be false. But it can never be regarded as the truth. And a theory can be found strong if data, variables, diagrams and hypotheses verify the logic and reasoning behind a theory (Sutton & Straw, 1995), but it could as easily go the other way around (and the references to someone else theory, data, a list of variables, diagrams or hypotheses is not theory in itself). 

This is one way of understanding theory. 

And this is a fun thing about how you can make fun of theory (The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy):

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened”. 

Hopefully you will now have an understanding of what theory is. 

The journal I’ve chose my article from is the MIS Quarterly and its impact factor for 2011 is 4.447 and on a five-year basis: 7.497 

The article is named “TECHNOSTRESS: TECHNOLOGICAL ANTECEDENTS AND IMPLICATIONS” by Ayyagari, Grover & Varun, 2011.

The theory the authors use to test their hypotheses consists of two theoretical paradigms of stress. The first paradigm is called the epidemiological paradigm (workload and vibration links to disease manifestation - environmental) and the second   the cognitive perspective paradigm (stressful outcomes are determined by how people cognitively interpret or appraise environmental demands - individually).

The growing consensus between researchers in the field of stress is that these two paradigms create an understanding of how stress neither emerges from the individual nor the environment but as a phenomenological process reflected in the relationship between the two paradigms (Ayygari, Grover & Varun, 2011). This is also the basis the authors rely on when they develop their hypotheses about how Technostress occur, what it is and what its implications are. You could argue that the authors use the “Explanation and Prediction” (EP) approach from Gregor, because of their “what is, how, why, when, where, and what will be” understanding of the problem.

The benefits with this selected type of theory is that it covers all the fundamental characteristics of what stress is about and applies this to their understanding of Technostress. It’s hard to actually point out the limitations because this is a really good paper, but maybe one of it’s limitations is that it doesn’t connect or undertakes the possibility to explore the interrelatedness between stress, Technostress and information overload as other authors do for example Tarafdar et al. (2007; 2011). 

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