A Systematic Consideration of Observational Design Decisions in the Theory Construction Process

The aim of this paper is to develop an explicit protocol for gaining the use of new concepts from external and transdisciplinary sources during the theory construction process. We are concerned with Churchman's ‘sweeping in’ of alternative perspectives and with inductive research. The potential for innovation that concepts from external disciplines bring is balanced by the risks of working outside a researcher's area of expertise. There is potential for researcher bias when gathering new ideas as well as when filtering possible new theory, and a protocol might help minimize such problems. For example, few business researchers are fully versed in ecology, and vice versa. This applies to the authors here, but we look at the issue from our respective sides and bring our respective expertise. Hierarchy theory is fundamentally a theory of observation. Here it helps us to define how the perspective of the researcher affects theory construction and the use of transdisciplinary concepts. It introduces a precision about the use of levels and brings out the dualism that arises in movement between levels. We use this to develop a theoretical model of the theory‐building process that avoids bias whilst making best use of the researcher's preconceptions. We illustrate our protocol using the business ecosystem metaphor, which is common in the business literature. Our special case that straddles business and ecology might offer guidance in other transdisciplinary efforts. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.