Tight Mapping: A Concrete Procedure for Borrowing from Radical Traveling Theories

The scientific domain of organization and management is multidisciplinary; its theorists have borrowed extensively from other domains such as biology , psychology and sociology . Many of the borrowed theories are radical traveling theories , i . e ., abstract , general theories that have made groundbreaking contributions to their domain of origin , and that have great potential for organization and management . Theory borrowing has received considerable attention over the past thirty years , during which time fundamental epistemological issues have been addressed , but little attention has been paid to the difficulties that are involved in carrying out borrowing . More pragmatic works are needed , and with this in mind , we suggest tight mapping transformative analogical reasoning . This mode of reasoning creatively and rigorously reduces the abstraction of radical traveling theories so that they provide accurate and coherent organization and management theories . Tight mapping facilitates borrowing and can be helpful to the many organization and management theorists who borrow from radical traveling theories . We hope that our concrete suggestion for tight mapping will serve as a starting point for further pragmatic research on theory borrowing .