According to Whetten (1989) there are three questions related to formulating a theory; what, how, and why (Whetten, 1989).
The answer to the question “what” defined the phenomena included in the theory.
The answer to the question “how” described the cause and effect relationships between phenomena.
The answer to the question “why” is the argument for why a cause and effect relationship exist and why it is important.
According to March (2010) there is no management theory (in strong the meaning of theory according to Whetten) that all organization could use — and that include a general cause-effect relationship between management and success.
Still, authors of management books and papaers present so called “management theories”, but they usually do not use theory in the strong meaning of Whetten.
Instead, management theory means something else:
According to Brunsson (2017), those who speak about management theory often tend to add their own views on how organizations ought to function.
However, there is no general accepted way to derive “ought” from “is”.
That is, theory is not compatible with recommendation.
Instead, there need to be a clear distinction between explanation on one side and prescription on the other. The former one is based on valid empirical experiences. The latter one is rather a recommendation in form of guidelines and procedures that help employee to work in systematic ways to solve practical problem.