jais-theory-development
Use when building the theoretical engine of a Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS) manuscript — original theory for the Theory category, a behavioral mechanism, an economic mechanism, a design theory, or a pre-theoretical framing for a novel digital phenomenon. Adapts the form of "theory" to the category and tradition; it does not run the analysis (jais-data-analysis) or frame the contribution (jais-contribution-framing).
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill jais-theory-development --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Theory Development (jais-theory-development) ## When to trigger - Your claims are descriptive ("A is associated with B") with no IS mechanism - You are targeting the **Theory** category and need a genuinely *new* construct or framework, not a relabeled import - You built an IT artifact but cannot say what generalizable **design knowledge** it embodies - A Senior Editor or reviewer says "the theoretical contribution is unclear" or "this is a borrowed-theory application" - You have a novel digital phenomenon and need a disciplined pre-theoretical framing ## Why theory carries more weight at JAIS JAIS is the AIS flagship and the Basket journal that treats **theory as a contribution in its own right** — it runs a standalone Theory category for "original theory" that proposes new concepts or integrates existing theories into novel frameworks. Even in empirical Research Articles, JAIS **discourages primary construct development** as the headline move — meaning a paper whose contribution *is* a new construct usually belongs in Theory, not as a bolt-on to a Research Article. This is the JAIS-specific discipline: name your theoretical genre, then build to that genre's bar. ## Theory takes
- When to trigger
- Why theory carries more weight at JAIS
- Theory takes a different shape by genre — pick your row
- Build a new construct properly (the Theory-category trap)
- Cross- and inter-disciplinary borrowing is a feature, used correctly
- Integrate theories without flattening them
- Derive claims before you look at results
- Make boundary conditions and the IT artifact load-bearing
- Checklist
- Referee pushback mapped to the theory fix
- Worked vignette: building a construct for the Theory category (illustrative)
- Anti-patterns
- Output format
What does the jais-theory-development skill do?
Use when building the theoretical engine of a Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS) manuscript — original theory for the Theory category, a behavioral mechanism, an economic mechanism, a design theory, or a pre-theoretical framing for a novel digital phenomenon. Adapts the form of "theory" to the category and tradition; it does not run the analysis (jais-data-analysis) or frame the contribution (jais-contribution-framing).
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill jais-theory-development --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, a repository with 909 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.