Intervention as a research strategy

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/joom.1065
• Date: 01 October 2019
• Published date: 01 October 2019
• Author: Rogelio Oliva

JOM FORUM

Intervention as a research strategy

Rogelio Oliva

Department of Information and Operations

Management, Mays Business School, Texas

A&M University, College Station, Texas

Correspondence

Rogelio Oliva, Department of Information

and Operations Management, Mays

Business School, Texas A&M University,

College Station, TX 77843-4217.

Email: roliva@tamu.edu

Handling Editor: Suzanne de Treville

Abstract

The Journal of Operations Management (JOM) has made design science central to

its development strategy, creating a department to incubate papers using this meth-

odology. An inaugural editorial published in 2016 called for papers with a generic

design supported by a design proposition that provides pragmatic guidelines to

bridge the gap between the case specific and the universal. In this article, I propose

ways in which the scope of interventions can be expanded beyond the editorial's

proposal to foster theoretical developments and better align with JOM's mission.

I propose that, rather than focus on the design propositions, we explore the role that

interventions (the ultimate manifestation of design science) can play in testing and

developing theory (the ultimate goal of an academic endeavor). Taking as a point

of departure the principles of action research and the explanatory framework of

process theories, I propose two modes of research for leveraging interventions as a

mechanism for testing existing theory and develop theories about organizational

and system transformation. I illustrate the application of these two frameworks in

the context of a previously published article.

KEYWORDS

action research, intervention-based research, process theory, process improvement

1|INTRODUCTION

The Journal of Operations Management (JOM) has made

design science central to its development strategy, creating a

department to incubate papers using this methodology. Design,

according to Simon (1981, p. 129), “is the principal mark that

distinguishes the professions from the sciences,”and its con-

cern with artificial systems that do not yet exist contrasts with

the natural sciences' interest in the description and explanation

of existing systems. For design, the main question becomes

“will it work?”as opposed to the natural sciences' “is it valid or

true?”; design's view of knowledge is thus pragmatic (in the

service of action) (Romme, 2003). Simon's ideas inform the

development of design methodologies that include formal

efforts to devise design guidelines in organization and manage-

ment studies (e.g., Romme, 2003; van Aken, 2004; van Aken &

Romme, 2012), information systems research (see Rai, 2017

for an exploration of the diverse design science research strate-

gies in information systems), and operations management

(OM) (e.g., Holmström, Ketokivi, & Hameri, 2009).

A common approach to design science entails a generic

design supported by a design proposition that follows the

pragmatic logic: “For this problem-in-Context it is useful to

use this Intervention, which will produce, through these

Mechanisms, this Outcome”(Denyer, Tranfield, & van

Aken, 2008). The inaugural editorial of the Design Science

Department by van Aken, Chandrasekaran, and Halman

(2016) explored this approach, framing design propositions

as pragmatic guidelines intended to bridge the gap between

the case specific and the universal. The objective is a generic

design that transcends the specific situation within which it

was developed. Such a generic design corresponds to a mid-

range theory (Merton, 1968). The key criteria for judging a

submission following this approach are pragmatic validity

Received: 8 August 2019 Revised: 23 September 2019 Accepted: 23 September 2019

DOI: 10.1002/joom.1065

710 © 2019 Association for Supply Chain Management, Inc. J Oper Manag. 2019;65:710–724.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/joom