Using theory and evidence in hbs assignments
CASE Guide to Using Theory and Evidence in HBS Assignments
Using theory and evidence in HBS assignments
(UH, 2019)
Using Theory
This is a very important academic skill. One of the most difficult writing tasks for students is to
use theory in assignments. However, it is an essential skill to develop if you want to be working at
the highest academic level. This guide will help you understand how to do that.
What is ‘Theory’?
Theories are just guesses initially. The first thing to realise is that theories are only a researcher’s
guess about how the real-world works. We all use theories all the time – without them we could
not function. These guesses are often called ‘hypotheses’ (plural), so a hypothesis (singular) is
actually a small theory and the beginning of a possibly larger theory. A theory is basically this
formula: if X then Y
My theory at the moment is that if I write this guide for you (X), then the outcome will be that you
will get better marks (Y) because you will be able to use theory more effectively in your essays.
Theories are neither right nor wrong – they are judged by how useful they are in explaining how
things work and in predicting how things might work in the future. For example, if lots of students
read this guide and then start to put theory effectively into their assignments, and then start
getting better marks, then my theory about this guide is supported. Notice I said ‘supported’ – not
proved.
In HBS, you will be using two main types of theory, and this guide will show you how to think
about using them.
1) Analytical and descriptive theories – theories which present a framework or list of criteria
which you can use to break an issue down into important parts which either might be influencing
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CASE Guide to Using Theory and Evidence in HBS Assignments
(impacting on) the issue or causing the issue. Examples of this type of theory are SWOT,
PESTLE, Five Forces, etc. They are sometimes called frameworks, models or taxonomies.
2) Explanatory theories – theories which claim that they can be used to help explain why things
happen and predict how and when they might happen. Examples of this type of theory are
Supply and Demand, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, etc.
Evidence and Proof
In everyday life, we use the word ‘prove’ in a different way to the academic
world. In the academic world, you cannot prove a theory or a belief is right
or wrong – you can only provide evidence to support or not support the
theory or belief. At university, the modern view of ‘knowledge’ is that it is
‘constructed’ by individuals and interest groups to suit their own purposes.
There are ‘everyday facts’ such as London is the capital of England and ‘the
Hertfordshire Business School (HBS) is in Hatfield’, but most other
‘knowledge’ is actually theory in the form of belief and opinion. These
‘everyday facts’ are sometimes called ‘correspondence facts’ because London ‘corresponds’ to
the place we call the capital of England. For all other types of statement, it is part of an academic
researcher’s job to investigate and ‘deconstruct’ these beliefs and opinions through primary and
secondary research. This then starts to build up a basis to support or not support these beliefs. If
they are generally not supported, then these beliefs can be changed, although of course, in the
real world, ‘believers’ are often very reluctant to change their ideas. For example, apparently,
there is still a ‘flat earth society’ of people who believe the earth is flat, despite pictures from
space showing it is not.
A) Using theory – describing and defining
When lecturers ask you to include theory in your assignment, they expect that you can name the
relevant theory or theories and provide an appropriate reference. However, what they do not
necessarily need is a detailed description of the theory. They know the theory very well, and it is
not useful for you to just copy out the theory again from lecture notes or a textbook. What they
want you to do is to show you understand the theory by applying it to a real-world issue or linking
it relevantly to a real-world issue. This is the same with definitions. Definitions are only theories
too – they are not ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ but are only opinions about what things are or how they work.
As they are also theories, definitions also need to be evaluated too.
B) Using theory – evaluation
If you evaluate something, you judge how good or bad it is, or how
useful it is. We do it all the time in our daily lives. However,
academic evaluation is usually more detailed and requires that you
analyse a situation or issue first, and then write about the
advantages and disadvantages of the strategy or theory, the weaknesses and strengths in the
arguments, etc. You are not normally required at undergraduate level to do this from your own
experience or personal knowledge. Generally, you are at university to develop an ‘informed’
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CASE Guide to Using Theory and Evidence in HBS Assignments
opinion by learning from ‘experts’, so you will not be expected to do this kind of evaluation. You
normally evaluate by using the expert research, opinion and theory that you are taught in the
modules. There are different ways you can do this (see also the CASE Guide to Analysis and
Critical Evaluation):
Different ways to evaluate
1) Personal critical evaluation of an article
Example: “Smith’s article (2021) gives a useful overview of the issues, however Smith (2021)
apparently does not include the perspective of the individual employee, only that of the company.
This may be neglecting a very important aspect of the issue. On the other hand, Smith (2021)
does give a very full account of the company macro-environment”.
2) Personal critical evaluation of a module
Example: “I learnt a lot from this module which will be very useful in any future business related
career. I enjoyed the inclusion of business practitioners in the teaching schedule. This made the
mini-conference particularly useful, since it gave us the opportunity to learn from their real-world
experience of business, rather than just from the coursebooks” (See also the CASE Guide to
Reflective Writing).
3) Critical evaluation of research
Example: “There have been many research studies on this issue (e.g. Brown (2021); Green
(2019); White (2017)). However, these studies have all focused largely on the company
perspective and nor that of the individual employee. As Pink (2018) suggests, it may be that
more research on the individual employee perspective will be vital to the process of gaining a
better understanding of the changes the company is currently undergoing”.
4) Critical evaluation of an issue
Example: “According to Brown (2020) this issue is a vital one for the industry to resolve.
However, as Brown (2020) suggests, unless all stakeholders are involved, then only token
progress can be made to improve the situation. Further, as Smith (2018) also points out, it could
be the case that a final resolution is not possible, since the issue is changing all the time, and
what is required is a better understanding of the change process rather than how to solve a
particular problem at a particular time”.
5) Critical evaluation of theory
Example: “Brown’s (2012) theory of employee motivation provides a useful analytical framework
of factors which might impact on workplace motivation in general. However, it may be that the
criteria he uses are too limited in scope. For example, the theory does not include any affective
criteria. We might also expect that the quality of the social experience associated with the
workplace, is also going to be an important motivational factor for employees”.
C)
Applying theory – linking theory and practice
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CASE Guide to Using Theory and Evidence in HBS Assignments
Since theories are basically ‘tools’ for helping us understand the world, they
are only judged by how well they explain and predict what happens in the real
world. It is very important that you can ‘apply’ the theory – lecturers give high
marks to students who can do this accurately and well. Applying theory can
involve three steps:
Identifying, applying and evaluating theory
Step 1) Identifying relevant theory
The first step in ‘applying’ theory is to identify the most relevant theory for your assignment.
Sometimes this is done for you by the lecturer, but if there is no guidance from the lecturer, then
these are some basic principles to use to select relevant theory:
a) Check the module site, lecture slides and recommended reading list for theory relevant to the
assignment.
b) Try to make sure you use current research. The only reason you would want to include ‘old’
theory is if it is ‘seminal’ (very important and influential theory) and therefore recommended in the
module site and slides.
Remember that this is only the first step – identifying and just describing a theory is NOT applying
it. You need to go on to step two:
Step 2) Applying the theory
If you are using an analytical and descriptive theory like PESTLE or Five Forces, which are
tools to help you break an issue into impacting factors, then you can then identify each of the
factors under the relevant headings – political factors, threat of new entrants to the industry, etc.
You then need to research each of these areas and describe the impacting factors and their
possible influence.
Example of applying the ‘S’ in a PEST analysis:
The socio-cultural environment includes aspects, such as, consumer demographics, demands
and tastes. These vary with social trends and disposable income and can therefore provide both
opportunities and threats for companies. ABC company have already had to change their New
Product Development (NPD) policy to respond to an ageing population. This may also mean that
they will have to change their marketing strategies and long-term strategic goals to fully address
this demographic.
If you are using an explanatory theory like Maslow’s Theory of Motivation, you can, for example,
link it to consumers to suggest an explanation for consumer behaviour in some circumstances.
Maslow’s Theory (1943) acknowledges that we all may have many different levels of motivation
at any one time, but his hierarchy of needs theory attempts to identify the basic types of
motivations, and the order that they generally progress, as lower needs are reasonably well met.
For example, we could use the theory to help explain the growth of the luxury goods sector:
“Maslow’s Theory of the Hierarchy of Needs (1943) can be used to help explain the global growth
of luxury goods sales. Wealthy consumers no longer need to concentrate on their basic needs for
food and shelter but are now more interested in satisfying their higher level ‘B’ (being) needs.
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Countries such as China and India, with rapidly growing wealthy middle classes, show the
greatest demand for luxury goods (Smith, 2021). According to Maslow (1943) the B needs
consist of the need for self esteem and to gain the respect of others. Many consumers think that
luxury goods can help satisfy these needs by giving them status and social recognition of their
achievement and wealth”.
Notice here that the reference is quite an old one now (1943), but Maslow’s psychological Theory
of Needs is regarded as ‘seminal’ – of groundbreaking importance in the topic of human
motivation). If you read about Maslow’s theory in a more modern publication, then you would use
a ‘secondary’ reference, e.g., (Maslow, 1943, cited in Smith, 2012).
Step 3) Evaluating the theory
You usually do not need to go this far at undergraduate level. However, if your lecturer wants you
to also evaluate the theory, then you need to find out what other researchers have said about the
weaknesses and strengths of the theory. If we use the Maslow example above, your evaluation
might look something like this:
“In an extensive review of research based on Maslow’s theory (1943), Smith and Jones (2020)
have found very little evidence for the ranking of needs as Maslow has described. Further, the
order in which the hierarchy is arranged has been criticised as being too ethnocentric (Pink,
2021) because it does not make any distinctions for social and cultural variations. These
objections, and the age of the original theory, indicate that Maslow’s model is not universally
accepted as a useful tool to understand the modern business environment. ”
Testing theory
Finally, one other thing you can do with a theory is to ‘test it’ to see if it does what it says it does.
This is again, not usually required in undergraduate work, but you may be required to do this at
postgraduate level. Testing a theory means setting up an experiment that allows you to see if the
predictions of a theory are supported by the results of your ‘experiment’. Normally, theory testing
is only really possible with theories that generate quantitative data – numbers and statistics.
However, it can be done with qualitative data as well if you can set up sufficiently well defined
‘control groups’ and research the different groups for the effects you are interested in. For
example, if you wanted to test a consumer purchasing theory and investigate whether or not it
applied differently to different age groups, you could research representatives from different age
groups to see if all consumers in your research made their decisions to buy things in the same
way that the theory predicted, or whether there did appear to be a demographic difference. The
results from your ‘test’ might then either support or not support the theory as having universal
applicability but it cannot ‘prove’ it.
If the topic of your own theory can be quantified- such as changes in the demand for
pharmaceutical stock over the last year – then you can set up ‘hypotheses’ to test your theory:
Positive hypothesis: The covid pandemic has increased the global demand for pharmaceutical
stock over the last year.
Null hypothesis: The covid pandemic has had no effect on the global demand for pharmaceutical
stock over the last year.
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Negative hypothesis: The covid pandemic has decreased the global demand for pharmaceutical
stock over the last year.
You can only set up these types of hypotheses ‘to test’ statistically if the concepts can be
operationalised quantitatively (i.e., converted to numerical data for ‘positivist’ research designs).
If you want to use qualitative methods, like most methodologies in the rather misnamed ‘social
sciences’ (which included business studies), then you can only set up ‘propositions’ which can
then be tested in relation to the weight of supporting evidence you can or cannot supply:
Proposition 1: The covid pandemic has increased the global demand for pharmaceutical stock
over the last year.
Fake News
There is always intense criticism of politicians and the media, with many people claiming that
both have just made up stories and ‘fake news’ in order to support their own interests. What is
surprising is that this issue is debated now as though it were new, but it is actually as old as
human communication. People have always told stories that make them or their group or their
nation appear in the best light to outsiders – or as the saying goes, the victors get to write the
history. The modern view of knowledge is that it is neither true nor false, but ‘constructed’ by
authors to make their own case more persuasive. If you think about how you tell stories about
yourself to your friends, or what you put on your social media, it is often to present your image
and identity in what you see as the best way. There is no ‘true’ interpretation about ‘what really
happened’ at your party – only the often very different perceptions of your friends, each of whom
will ‘construct’ their opinion on the basis of many different factors. Jealous friends may say that
your party wasn’t very good – loyal friends might say it was awesome.
How does this affect your HBS assignments? Firstly, you should write as though you understand
what I have just said – that no news is ‘true’, apart from the ‘correspondence facts’ about time,
location, number of people injured, or whatever, etc. All ‘news’ is a construction which has
personal, ideological and cultural bias built into it by the authors. You should use objective
language such as:
It is claimed that……
Research by xxxxx (2019) shows that….
NEVER say things like ‘The truth of the matter is…’ or “It’s true that….’
Because this would indicate that you do not understand the nature of ‘evidence’ in the academic
world – of course, you often say these things in everyday life, but academic use of language has
to be much more careful and precise.
Do not just use any references as evidence
In your academic writing, your ‘evidence’ is shown by your references, so these need to be
credible and from ‘good’ sources that are generally up-to-date (in the last five years). Some older
references to important theories of cases, might be ‘seminal’ and therefore are good evidence.
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Business School databases on StudyNet are the first place to look for more reliable evidence,
and also academic textbooks in the LRC. Below, are some evaluations of common ‘poor’
sources of evidence to help you develop better data sourcing habits for your HBS studies:
YouTube
YouTube can be very entertaining but full of unsubstantiated personal opinion and personal
claims. It can be very dangerous if the information is believed. It is not reliable evidence for
academic writing.
Wikipedia and other online business encyclopaedias
These are good for general context information but often the information is very biased and not
reliable – particularly if the accompanying reference list is not extensive and containing academic
journal references and reliable practitioner references. Wikipedia evidence is not acceptable in
academic writing but you can use it to get a general idea about current issues and also to use
some of their better academic and practitioner references.
Internet websites
Internet websites, as with YouTube, can be very entertaining and convincing, but are actually full
of unsubstantiated personal opinion and personal claims. They can be very dangerous if the
information is believed. See the CASE Guide to Fake News and the CRAAP Test for data.
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