Theory Building in Knowledge Utilization: A Review

초록

Despite voluminous studies on knowledge utilization, the extant research provides little support for claims that particular variables affect the use of knowledge in decisive ways. This research effort has been made more complicated recently by the changing contexts of knowledge utilization. In particular, the knowledge utilization field gives remarkably little attention to the systematic accumulation of knowledge from research studies. The purpose of this study is to critically examine studies from the 1990s and to see how they cope with key issues in the field. This study specifically focuses on the question: What conceptual and empirical work has been done in the area of knowledge utilization over the past ten years? An in-depth analysis of research studies shows that the studies done in the 1990s made little conceptual and empirical advancement. In general, these studies seem to walk one step away from infancy in terms of theory building efforts and the empirical orientation of research analysis. They, however, need to improve the rigor in theory building in terms of integrating partial theories or conceptual constructs. This study also suggests a set of ways for improving the efforts of theory building.

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