Second theme...

Question 1

  * What theory is :

Until today, philosophers have not succeeded in explaining what theory is exactly. So we cannot have a strict definition of what theory is, but we can try to get the general idea of it. I personally like what Popper said “Theories are nets cast to catch what we call “the World”, to rationalize, to explain and to master it”. In my mind I can think of theory as the “glue” that pulls together all the different elements of the world. In other words, with a more scientific perspective, Theories aim to describe, explain and improve the understanding of the world. Furthermore there can be some cases where theories can provide predictions of what is to happen in the future and a solid ground for intervention and action.

 * What theory is not :

As we said above, there is little unanimity about what theory is, but there seems to be more unanimity about what theory is not. It is highly believed that stand alone references, data, variables, diagrams and hypotheses does not consist theory.  But all these elements can be used for developing theory and also confirming it. Moreover, according to what Shirley Gregor says in her paper “The nature of theory in I.S.”, if conclusions explain or predict something, then they can be considered as theory.

Question 2

    * Paper and Theory Type :

I have chosen the article “Television and Web advertising Synergies” by Yuhmiin Chang and Esther Thorson. The article is cited 28 times and it was published in the Journal of Advertising. The main purpose of this study was to examine the application of different synergetic models in the faculty of advertisement, and also to compare them with the traditional repetition models through the advertising process. Moreover, this research is specified in the investigation of the television and Web advertising, as these two specific types of media are being more and more associated. In a television-Web synergy, both media are cooperating and the one’s unique qualifications are being synergized with the others. This leads to the fact that, an advertising campaign that adopts a web-TV synergy (i.e. moving images) can attract more attention than a campaign based on the repetition of one single type of media.

The authors produced their theory, based mainly on past literature, basically on scientific researches. Furthermore, while conducting their research they made some hypotheses based on two information-processing models: A) Central Processing (multi source combination) and B) Peripheral Processing (repetition condition). Also these hypotheses were tested through experiments, conducted by them. In the end of their research, the authors are getting to the conclusion that television-Web synergy does generates an effect to the audiences, way better than the one generated by a repetitive advertising condition. Also they make a brief reference of where their study could be implemented in the future.

In my opinion, the paper’s theory type is explanation and prediction (IV - EP), as there it is clearly discussed what is, how, why, when, where and what will be in the future. There are also predictions about where the study can be implemented in the future and there are both testable propositions and causal explanations.

Question 3

    * Benefits and Limitations :

EP theory requires the understanding of the root causes but also the prediction and description of the theoretical elements and the relationships among them.

The main problem of EP theory is that the produced theories are just predictions based on estimated facts. So in the case that these facts might be wrong, then the whole research will have to be conducted from the very beginning as there might be mistakes or fallacies.

References:

Gregor, S. The Nature of Theory in Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, Australia, 2006.