Categorizing Concepts and Phenomena in Management Research: A Four-Phase Integrative Review and Recommendations

Concerns about imprecise concepts and incoherent theories have long plagued management studies. Though systematic categorizing was once proposed as a remedy for those concerns, as it had resolved similar ones in other scientific disciplines, conversation about that potential ceased decades ago. This integrative review revives and refocuses that conversation by systematically categorizing how management scholars categorize concepts and phenomena, in four phases. Phases 1 and 2 (conceptual-mapping and etymological reviews, respectively) together yield a framework encompassing three general approaches—classical, commonsense, and contemporary—scholars across all scientific disciplines, including management studies, historically have taken to categorize concepts and phenomena. Phase 3 (a qualitative review) determines that management scholars seldom use formal methods to categorize. Finally, Phase 4 (another qualitative review) yields a second framework that more meaningfully differentiates the ways management scholars currently categorize. The results indicate that categorizing in management studies remains unsystematic due to scholars predominantly relying on intuitive methods and introducing idiosyncratic categorial schemes instead of rigorous methods to improve extant ones. Unexpected findings from each phase provide insights into the changes scholars must make to categorize systematically as well as how doing so would foster more precise conceptualizing and coherent theorizing in the field.