Contingency Theory is not a theory at all, in the conventional sense of theory as a well-developed set of interrelated propositions. It is more an orienting strategy or metatheory, suggesting ways in which a phenomenon ought to be conceptualized or as approach to the phenomenon ought to be explained. Drawn primarily from large-scale empirical studies, contingency theory relies on a few assumptions that have been explicitly stated, and these guide contingency research.

Claudia Bird Schoonhoven. 1981. "Problems with contingency theory: Testing assumptions hidden within the language of contingency "theory". Administrative Science Quarterly, 26: p. 350