Myopic Rhetorics: Reflecting epistemologically and ethically on the demand for relevance in organizational and management research[1]

David Knights

School of Economics and Management Studies

University of Keele, ST5 5BG, UK.

To be published in the Academy of Management Learning and Education (Forthcoming).

ABSTRACT
In this essay, I examine the relevance debate in organizational/ management research and teaching as a disciplinary rhetoric that should be treated with a degree of caution if not scepticism. There is a danger that if we become enslaved to relevance we will reduce our independence as academics; this would be counterproductive since, from my experience of working with a consortium of practitioners, this is something that management value. In this essay, however, I do not suggest resisting relationships with management. On the contrary, I endorse them as a way of developing productive, ethical research and learning, building sources of access for research, and enhancing teaching. Also, such relationships can supplement existing research funding resources, although it is still necessary to retain some epistemological distance from management practice at the same time as engaging with it as an ethical project.
Myopic Rhetorics: Reflecting epistemologically and ethically on the demand for relevance in organizational and management research

In this essay, I examine the relevance debate as a rhetoric that seeks to discipline academics in business and management schools in directions that would deflect them from sustaining an independently critical, rather than a captured and subordinate, relationship to their subject matter (Hind, 2007). At the same time, I do not advocate retreating to our “Ivory Towers”; rather, I argue that a skeptical view of relevance is entirely compatible with building collaborative relationships with practitioners not least because the contribution of academics is precisely to offer an alternative to what corporate business may prefer to hear, given its unremitting yet short term pursuit of growth an profit. In illustrating my case, I draw not only on my own experience of working with practitioners but also on intellectual developments surrounding epistemological, methodological and ethical issues of importance in breaking down the boundaries between academia and business, theory and practice, and human and non-human agency. I attempt this through an engagement with the ideas of Mode 2 approaches, of critiques of representational epistemologies, and of actor-network theory.

Of late, there has been some concern as to whether organization and management education and research is of much value to its target audience (Pfeffer, 1993; 1995; Pfeffer and Fong, 2002; 2004) either pedagogically or practically. Some (e.g., Hambrick, 1994; Beer, 2001; Starkey and Madan 2001; Mintzberg, 2004; Bennis and O’Toole, 2005) claim that it lacks relevance to a business community that is ever hungry for what promises to provide a competitive edge in an increasingly knowledge-intensive and information-rich, networked society (Castells 2000). Others attribute the dissatisfaction with business research and teaching to its overly abstract and esoteric nature (Kelemen and Bansal 2002) or its failure to offer interdisciplinary insights (Burgoyne et al., 1997; Tranfield and Starkey, 1998; Hodgkinson, 2001). Management research has also been accused of producing research findings that are considered to be impossible to implement in firms (Beer 2001). More recently, the debate has taken on a greater urgency not least because of the number of corporate scandals that some academics have attributed to the glorifying of shareholder value and the absence of adequate attention to business ethics in business schools (Mintzberg, 2004; Goshal, 2005).

Debate on the relevance of management education and research has proliferated in the US under the auspices of the Academy of Management’s annual conference and its journals (Hambrick, 1994; Pearce, 2004; Goshal, 2005; Van De Ven & Johnson 2006. This extends back to the early 1960s when business school research was criticised for its low scholarly standards and the absence of a ”strong scientific foundation” (Zimmerman, 2001: 2 quoted in Pfeffer and Fong, 2002: 79). In a search for scholarly respectability, business school academics have tended to separate theory from practice and incestuously only to talk to, and to write for, one another such that their work is not of the least importance to business practitioners (Hambrick, 1994). Pearce (2004) provided a personal anecdotal ‘real life’ example of these problems when she pointed out that both in teaching and in carrying out a senior management role in the university, she turns not to academic research but to folk wisdom acquired over the years. Hitt (1998) stands almost alone in suggesting that because there is a dearth of new management ideas or knowledge generated by practicing managers or even consultants, academics in business schools can fill the vacuum and that “effective basic and applied research may be our long-term competitive advantage" (Hitt, 1998: 218).

Drucker (2001) holds the exact opposite view; arguing that virtually nothing (apart from his own work and that of Kottler, and Porter) of any consequence has emerged from business academics. “…[S]ince World War II most of the so-called research of the business schools has added nothing to the effective practice of management. All of the innovation has come from people like Alfred Sloan or Jack Welch” (Drucker, 2001: 17). He believes that business schools should concentrate on their teaching and endeavour to emulate the professionalism of medical and law schools. Others endorse his position, and maintain that business schools are “not very effective in the creation of useful business ideas” (Pfeffer & Fong 2004: 1502) and have lost their way in embracing scientific rigor at the expense of other forms of knowledge (Bennis and O’Toole, 2005). Moreover, even when they do produce new knowledge, it is often considered to be unimplementable in firms (Beer 2001).

Mintzberg follows Drucker in believing that teaching and learning is a central function of the business school, but he is totally scathing of how this is currently delivered, arguing that it neither inspires nor offers much of practical value. Reform of the MBA is therefore the priority of those academics who think the MBA should provide more experiential learning, combined with an ethical and practice-driven pedagogy (Anthony, 1986; Leavitt, 1989; Bailey and Ford, 1996; Mintzberg and Gosling, 2002; Grey, 2004; Mintzberg, 2004; Starkey and Tempest, 2005). Yet others believe that business school faculties should seek to close the gap between academic research and the folk wisdom that they may more usually draw upon when teaching students (Pearce, 2004). In an attempt to professionalize not just teaching but also research, Pfeffer (1993) has demanded that management and organizational knowledge become more coherent and less fragmented. He posits that this can be achieved through developing a theoretical consensus similar to that claimed for economics; since this is a necessary condition for a science to have impact, to secure resources, and to gain status and respect, especially of a professional nature.

The various arguments have been neatly summarized as falling into one or other of 2 polarized sets of views wherein business schools are seen either as too distant from, or too close to, business practice as illustrated in Table 1.

TABLE 1 TO APPEAR ABOUT HERE

In Europe, the debate on the relevance of business schools has been more influenced by a methodological shift in the broader social sciences. This has arisen in the field of science and technology studies in the UK where the distinction has been made between what is termed Mode 1 research, defined as pure and disciplined based and where theory is developed independently of practice, and “Mode 2 research” approaches, where knowledge is linked closely to application and practice, and may be co-produced with practitioners (Gibbons et al 1994; Nowotny et al., 2001). The attraction of Mode 2 approaches is that they reflect the boundary spanning of the very practices that management and organization research studies (Tranfield and Starkey, 1998; Starkey and Madan, 2001; Pettigrew, 2001). There has also been some support for what is termed “Mode 3 research”, which differs from Mode 2 only in broadening the stakeholder contingent to encompass some degree of social responsibility (Huff and Huff, 2001). So far, this has been comparatively undeveloped but could be seen as a democratic version of Mode 2 in which government, as representative of society, is a meaningful stakeholder in knowledge development and use. Recent government commitments to ‘evidence-based’ knowledge and research as the foundation of public policy might be seen as an example of this in practice (For an example in higher education research see Gunn, 2004; and in management education see Rousseau and McCarthy, 2007). Mode 2 or 3 research has also been seen as a way of stopping up the shortfall in funding as Western governments seek to restrain public expenditure on higher education (Clegg, 2003). A parallel boundary spanning development has taken place in Scandinavia under the “triple helix” banner of science policy, where universities, business, and government agencies co-operate to advance knowledge and improve relations between different sectors (Ernö-Kjölder, 2001; Adler and Norrgren, 2004; Adler, Shani (Rami) and Styhre, 2004).

Like others (Hatchuel, 2001; Hodgkinson, 2001; Pettigrew, 2001; Grey, 2001; 2004), I pass a critical and skeptical eye over the rhetorical claims that advocates of Mode 2 approaches promulgate, whilst seeking to avoid making a set of claims that are equally as polemical against it. Debate has tended to focus more on whether Mode 2 is superior to Mode 1 (Starkey & Madan, 2001) or vice versa (Grey, 2001) rather than discussing and developing the implications of its analysis. However, insofar as metaphorically we all live in glass houses, it is perhaps as well not to throw too many stones and so, in this essay, I have attempted to support the spirit of Mode 2 approaches to collaborate with industry while being concerned to retain a measure of academic independence that could be interpreted as reflecting a Mode 1 approach.

One recent US contribution overlapping with this European model has suggested that a strategy of engagement between academics and practitioners is more realistic than a knowledge transfer model (Van de Ven and Johnson, 2006). Arbitrage, dialectical inquiry, constructive conflict, and a pluralist approach drawing on diverse models of reality is, they believe, essential not only for research to become more relevant for practice, but also for knowledge itself to advance and secure validity. Having confirmed through email survey that a majority of academics and practitioners believe a gap exists either because of research being ‘lost in’, or ‘before translation’, Shapiro et al. (2007: 262) conclude that “a more continuous, two-way dialogue” … “rather than merely event driven” collaborations are necessary.

Although I support building closer relationships, it is important to recognize that academic research can be highly relevant to practitioners despite not setting out to be so (Kilduff and Kelemen, 2001). Their suggestion is that we draw on the social capital of academics in developing cross-disciplinary studies that probably would not be produced were they too focused on the demands of business (Kilduff and Kelemen, 2001). I have much sympathy with this preference for keeping a respectful distance from the demands of business and this will be illuminated later with reference to business school academic-industry collaboration. The argument of this essay, however, is that we need neither be for nor against relevance but perpetually aware of its danger insofar as we may be tempted to subordinate our academic independence in exchange for the prospect of securing increased income and status through working for rather than merely with business. Not to protect our independence could delegate to business the power to constitute or transform us into particular kinds of subjects – subjects that no longer question how we have become tied to this or that particular discourse or identity for the very sense of our own meaning, purpose, and reality. In short, this is an argument against becoming attached to, or seduced by, particular constructions that then lead us to put a closure on other ways of thinking.

One other way of thinking about relevance is to see it as a rhetorical device that often seeks to discipline business academics to serve, rather than constructively, criticize those whom they research and teach. Disciplinary in that relevance is something it would be absurd to oppose in favor of irrelevance just as few would claim a preference for ugliness over beauty, falsity rather than truth, and enslavement in place of freedom[2]. However, to be enslaved to relevance destroys our difference as academics, which paradoxically might well be the potential source of our relevance, not just to business but also to society more broadly. We need, therefore, to resist relevance as we advance it, although what we are identifying here are different notions of relevance. The preoccupation with corporate success and economic growth is the discourse that fuels the relevance rhetoric and yet our paymasters are taxpayers in general and, moreover, it is beginning to be clear that there may be some incompatibility between economic growth and the reduction of CO2 emissions so important in the fight against global warming. Consequently, in this essay, I am proposing that we engage with business and administrative practice without subordinating ourselves to managerial preoccupations with performance and profit. It is in this way that we can develop creative and productive relations, and I provide an example of this by giving an account of some academic-industry collaboration that I have been involved with over several years.