A Conceptual Framework for Building Practical Theories in Social Science: How to Link the Sense-Making World of Scholars and Practitioners?

This paper provides an explanation of the quality of a good theory and theorizingprocess as one of the most serious activities of mind. This paper has been written intwo sections. The first section focused on the quality of good theory and model. In thissection, the criteria of a good theory are classified into three categories: philosophical,methodological and practical. In the second section, we review the existing models of"link between theory and practice" (shaping a good theory), and then we propose amodel for scholars and practitioners for sense-making linkage between theory andpractice. This model emphasizes on the collaboration between action-orientedpractitioners and science-oriented scholars in order to develop a good theory. It isbelieved that prescriptive theories of practitioners must be combined with descriptiveand normative theories of scholars to develop a sound theory.