Assessing the Theoretical Strength within the Literature Review Process: A Tool for Doctoral Researchers

Making a theoretical contribution can be viewed as one of the most important and confusing objectives for a doctoral researcher. Focusing on the literature review process, this paper highlights the need to develop a tool that will enable doctoral researchers to assess the theoretical strength of the literature they survey. Through synthesizing theory development literature, from both a general research and IS perspective, we propose a tool to aid ‘new’ doctoral researchers in understanding the theoretical landscape within a domain. We then discuss how the tool can be utilized in the wider doctoral research process to combat the issues of rigor and relevance that have permeated the fabric of Information Systems (IS) research, through aiding in a two step literature review process of [1] categorizing the literature and [2] developing a theoretical framework to guide making a theoretical contribution.