Theory Construction Series: Building Theory from Existing Work: Finding Your Contribution

To make a contribution we need to identify scholarly holes. This booklet provides recommendations to identify papers and to take advantage of reference and database software to both identify key authors and papers, and to elicit ideas for the purpose of theory construction. It also presents a coding mechanism for the review of the literature to subsequently construct a visual map, using open source software, which can more easily help us to identify holes in current research. The codes will help to determine the main disciplines and sub-disciplines, the methods most commonly used, the levels of analysis, as well as the types of studies that others have used to approach the subject under research.