ABSTRACT:
This dissertation contributes to research on scientific communication by a comparative case study
of the "careers" of eight different theories in the social sciences over a period of approximately
twenty years. These theories include work on institutional isomorphism, organizational citizenship
behavior, vertical dyad linkage and leader-member exchange, electronic markets and hierarchies,
marketing channel structure, social influences on technology adoption and utilization, the
antecedents of whistleblowing behavior, and the development of "pseudo-community" in virtual
environments. The theories range from those that have received minimal levels of citation
since their original publication, to several around which larger or smaller "invisible colleges"
have already crystallized, to one "citation classic" that can be considered foundational
to a sociological paradigm.
Using citation analysis, citation context analysis, content analysis, surveys of editorial review
boards, and personal interviews with theorists, a model of functional "theory characteristics"
that appear to promote theory diffusion into particular channels around various epistemic
communities is presented. It is then compared to Everett Rogers's classic typology of
"innovation characteristics that promote diffusion," and considered in the context of
a variety of other ongoing research programs in diffusion, bibliometrics, and computational
epistemology that study theories as part of the "commodification of justification."
Please cite as:
Betsy Van der Veer Martens, Theories at Work: Functional Characteristics That Facilitate Their Diffusion Over Time,
PhD dissertation (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University, November 20, 2003).
Individual chapters may be downloaded as PDFs as shown below.
Appendices available on request to Betsy Van der Veer Martens