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Perspective—Making Doubt Generative: Rethinking the Role of Doubt in the Research Process

Mason School of Business, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia 23185
School of Management, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215
Department of Planning, Policy, and Design, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California 92697-7075
karen.locke{at}mason.wm.edu
kgbiddle{at}bu.edu
feldmanm{at}uci.edu

In this paper, we want to shift the attention of our scholarly community to the living condition of doubt and its underappreciated significance for the theorizing process. Drawing on Peirce's notion of abduction, we articulate the relationship between doubt and belief in the everyday imaginative work central to theorizing, and establish the role played by doubt as abduction's engine in these efforts. We propose three strategic principles for engaging and using doubt in the research process. In concluding, we explore our field's overemphasis on validation to the exclusion of discovery processes and to the detriment of excellence in theorizing. We call for a broadening of our notions of "methodology" to incorporate discovery processes and to begin their explication.

Key Words: doubt; abduction; theorizing; research process; discovery

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