From Research Gaps to Theoretical Opportunities: Theory-Oriented GenAI for Research Opportunity Evaluation

Abstract

Generative AI (GenAI) can explore large bodies of literature and generate plausible research ideas, but identifying what is missing, understudied, contradictory, or potentially connected does not by itself reveal where theory should advance. We develop a theory-oriented agentic AI system that helps researchers identify potential theorizing opportunities by incorporating established theorizing approaches into literature exploration and evaluation. The system operates through three stages. Stage 1 expands the theoretical search space and constructs a provisional Candidate Knowledge Graph. Stage 2 independently reconstructs what the literature supports through source grounded evidence extraction and theory-state reconstruction. Stage 3 evaluates the reconstructed knowledge state to determine whether an unresolved configuration warrants theory development or another research action and, when theory development is warranted, which theorizing approach is appropriate. We demonstrate the system through an end-to-end analysis of human oversight of agentic AI systems in organizations. The analysis shows that literature gaps alone are insufficient for identifying theoretical opportunities. For example,"transparency to trust"is routed to mechanism-based theorizing because the relationship is repeatedly documented in prior studies, while the generative mechanism explaining how transparency shapes trust remains insufficiently specified. By combining large-scale literature processing, structured knowledge representation, and theorizing-guided diagnosis, the system serves as a theory-oriented research assistant that supports researchers in identifying theoretically meaningful directions for subsequent research.