Welcome
Social Science Theory is an open-access field guide to the ideas that social scientists and evidence-minded managers use to explain behaviour: of people, teams, firms, markets, and societies. It covers more than 150 theories, and more than 200 entries in all once named effects, phenomena, and frameworks are included, drawn from management, marketing, finance, economics, psychology, sociology, communication, and information systems.
Every chapter is written to be useful twice: once for research (what the theory claims, why, under which conditions, how it has been tested, and how to derive hypotheses from it) and once for practice (where the theory shows up in real business decisions, and what it implies for strategy, marketing, finance, operations, and people management).
| Part | Chapters | Entries | What you will find |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foundations | 1-3 | 4 | What theory is, how to evaluate it, and how to turn it into hypotheses |
| Organizations & Strategy | 4-15 | 88 | Resources, capabilities, governance, institutions, information, networks, innovation, strategy, international business, organizations, and leadership |
| Markets, Finance & Economics | 16-17 | 18 | Finance, capital markets, institutions, platforms, auctions, and social preferences |
| Individuals & Groups | 18-26 | 60 | Culture, motivation, self-regulation, attitudes, social influence, decisions, prospect theory, emotion, and persuasion |
| Consumers & Marketing | 27-28 | 19 | Consumer behavior, branding, services, customer value, and marketing strategy |
| Effects, Phenomena & Frameworks | 29-31 | 29 | Named effects, social phenomena, classic models, and a cross-theory mechanism toolkit |
Who this book is for
- Doctoral students and early-career researchers who need a systematic map of the theories their field “just knows”, and a fast way to find the right lens for a research question.
- Faculty looking for a free, citable companion text for seminars in management, marketing, organizational behaviour, and consumer behaviour.
- Practitioners, strategists, marketers, product managers, analysts, HR leaders, and consultants, who want to understand why interventions work, not just that they work.
How each chapter is built
Theories are presented in a consistent format so they can be compared at a glance:
Core claim: the theory in one or two sentences. Origins, who proposed it, when, and in which discipline. Level of analysis: individual, dyad, group, firm, market, or institution. Key constructs and boundary conditions. Related theories: links to neighbouring entries.
Each card is followed by the theory’s core logic and propositions, a mechanism diagram, a review of evidence and extensions, a balanced discussion of critiques (including replication status where relevant), one or more business cases, and a research toolkit with sample hypotheses, measures, designs, and data sources. Chapters close with key takeaways, a comparison table, discussion questions, and annotated further reading.
Look for these boxes throughout:
Applications drawn from strategy, marketing, finance, operations, HR, and policy.
Sample hypotheses, operationalizations, research designs, and data sources.
Critiques, contested findings, and replication evidence.
The most common ways a theory is misunderstood or misapplied.
How to read this book
You do not need to read it in order. If you have a specific theory in mind, use the search bar or jump straight to the Theory Atlas, a searchable table of every entry with its level of analysis, mechanism, key source, and business use. If you want the big picture, start with the Introduction and the interactive theory map. If you are writing a paper, Chapters 2 and 3 show how to move from a theory to testable hypotheses.
Prefer print? Download the full book as a PDF.
How to cite
If this book is useful in your work, please cite it:
Nguyen, M. (2026). Social Science Theory: A Field Guide to the Theories, Effects, and Frameworks Behind Research and Business. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23708720
@book{nguyen_social_theory,
author = {Nguyen, Mike},
title = {Social Science Theory: A Field Guide to the Theories, Effects,
and Frameworks Behind Research and Business},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Zenodo},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23708720},
url = {https://mikenguyen13.github.io/social-theory/}
}The DOI always resolves to the latest edition. Each archived release on Zenodo also has its own DOI if you need to cite a specific version.
Contributing
This is a living book. Corrections, new theories, better examples, and translations are welcome. Every page has an Edit this page link that opens the source on GitHub. You can also open an issue to suggest a theory. Contributors should follow the style guide. If the book helps you, starring the GitHub repository helps others find it.
License
The text, figures, and tables of this book are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You may share and adapt the material for any purpose, including commercially, provided you give appropriate credit, link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. The code that builds the book is released under the MIT License.
Acknowledgments
The book is written in R Markdown and built with bookdown (Xie 2026a), knitr (Xie 2026b), and rmarkdown (Allaire et al. 2026). Figures use ggplot2 (Wickham et al. 2026) and DiagrammeR (Iannone and Roy 2026). Tables use kableExtra (H. Zhu 2026). Interactive maps and tables use visNetwork (Almende B.V. and Contributors and Thieurmel 2025) and DT (Xie et al. 2025).