Are AMD manuscripts a-theoretical?

Absolutely not. Theory is critically important for any advancement of knowledge, but our appreciation of the roles of theory in scholarship needs to broaden. All data are theory-laden to some extent; one cannot consider evidence in a meaningful way without engaging in "sense-making." So AMD papers will very much rely on theory, but it is theory in service of describing and understanding the phenomena, more than it is theory in service of verification and testing as has been the case in AMJ and AMR.

In other words, theory plays two main roles in AMD papers: (1) Theory as a guiding framework that may be affected by the discovery (i.e., a discovery may highlight new boundary conditions for some theory; a discovery may overturn accepted understandings of the mechanisms underlying a relationship; a discovery may completely overturn basic assumptions underlying a particular theory; a discovery may demonstrate some relationship that is simply inconsistent with a variety of relevant theories). (2) Theory as a means to better understand the possible mechanisms underlying the relationships or dynamics discovered empirically.