One of the key issues we've raised so far is the difficulties often experienced among academics in jumping the 'double hurdle' (as Andrew Pettigrew puts it) of rigor and relevance. Getting close to practice demands a focus on relevance while getting on in an academic career increasingly requires academics to publish in so-called A list journals. Having just sat on an interview panel for a new member of staff, I have just been reminded, if ever I needed it, of just how much importance is attached to the latter in an 'ancient' university such as my own in Glasgow (established1460) and how surprisingly little is attached to the former.
This comment on academic careers and how they are built is reflected beautifully in a new essay by Majken Schultz of Copenhagen Business School, herself a member of the Board of Governors of the AOM, entitled 'Reconciling Pragmatism and Scientific Rigor' in the new online edition of the Journal of Management Inquiry. In this paper, she contrasts her largely positive experience of the AOM. American business schools and American academics, with its concern for rigor and getting published in A list journals with the strengths (and weaknesses) of the European tradition of pragmatism, the world of ideas and of disseminating these through a range of media to influence practice as well as theory.
The main thrust of her argument, which has been made a number of times before, is that while American scholars have created much that is insightful in business and management, the 'physics envy' of the US business schools and desire for respect by their academic colleagues has had some marked negative effects. The first is a loss of relevance because of the promotion of many 'big studies of little questions' published in A list journals (see Andy Van de Ven's book for evidence on this point) and reported at AOM conferences. The accepted 'scientific' form for publication in such journals and the career interests of young academics in American business schools is based on the adoption of logical positivism and research methods which encourage anything but engage with practitioners, i.e., surveys (often of students) and secondary data sets. A second is the limited dissemination of research in only these journals because they alone count in getting promotion. A third is the psychic prison that traps academics into a form of self-referential, closed but highly privileged community, which fails to engage with business and management practitioners, politicians and and NGOs.
Her argument is that the Academy and American business schools have something to learn from the European pragmatic tradition. My experience of a number of British, European and Australian universities leads me to believe that the institutional strangehold of scientific rigor, promoted with vigor by the British business schools as a consequence of various research assessment exercises, is likely to diminish the contribution of the European tradition to a point that that there will be little to learn from. Such is the speed of take up of UK style research assessment in countries such as France, Italy, Australia, etc., coupled with the impact of 'coercive comparison' of international benchmarking through league tables, that there will be no real alternatives to scientific rigor.
Majken proposes that the increased globalization of the Academy and of American business schools will restrain this hegemony. I'm not so sure. Thoughts?
Monday, July 19, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Welcome to our AoM 2010 Engaging Encounters PDW Blog
Not that I needed any further reminding that we still have a long way to go in bridging the gap between the work of academic researchers and informing (and perhaps even influencing) practice but the last couple of years have certainly reinforced my views on this topic. Hello and welcome to our blog dedicated to firing up your imagination and starting the conversation before we meet in Montreal in just under four weeks time. My name is Kerry Grigg and I am an academic about to re-enter the corporate world at one of the leaders in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector on the global stage.
I have spent the last ten years in Australia working in academia, consulting to a range of organisations from the public and private sector while also working on my Masters and PhD qualifications. I am currently writing up my PhD thesis and as I reflect on the last three years it has been an interesting journey in working with the organisations that generously gave me access to the inner workings of their businesses and to their employees. The PhD process really illuminated the gap between academic research and the day to day reality for many practitioners at the coal face. While I don’t claim that my observations and opinions will be shared by my fellow presenters at the Engaging Encounters PDW I hope they provide the basis for some robust discussions around some of the challenges involved in ‘closing the gap’.
So to kick things off, here are just some of my thoughts and ideas based on my relatively short experience:
1. Negotiating access into organisations to actually conduct organisational research is exhausting (and character building) work! I now understand why many researchers seek out an alternative path to reaching participants via professional associations and other methods. Does this matter? Well of course the answer to that question will depend very much on the research question itself but I think to conduct quality research in the areas of talent management and employee engagement we want to as researchers submerge ourselves into those “brave” organisations that are willing, ready and able to participate.
2. Following on from my first point, I often wonder about the rich insights I missed out on gathering for my PhD research due to the unwillingness of some organisations to participate. I was researching the impact an organisation’s promotion of their work-life balance (flexibility) credentials had on the individual employee’s psychological contract. The great frustration for me was that I was unable to negotiate access into any of the organisations that were actively and explicitly promoting their support for work-life balance (e.g. in their recruitment advertising, internal communications). I do sometimes wonder if the difficulty in securing access to organisations that may provide some of the most revealing data and findings means researchers are left to take the easier path of researching within the most convenient , but perhaps less revealing, organisations. I believe ‘closing the gap’ could potentially make it easier for academics at all levels to access a wider and more diverse range of organisations.
3. I believe some (perhaps many) business practitioners do not see the value in robust academic research. In some of the organisations I approached about participating in my PhD study they couldn’t understand why my questionnaire included so many questions. A response I received from one practitioner probably reflects the view of many practitioners went something like this... “why do you need to ask about employee trust alone in seven different ways when Gallup can get to the bottom of employee engagement in this organisation in twelve easy questions?” Footnote: this HR Director did eventually agree to give me access to the organisation but it was a battle.
4. In my view at some Universities (despite their public claims), building links with the practitioner community just isn’t genuinely valued. Consulting work can become almost the “dirty secret” of some academics in some Universities where publication in top ranking journals alone is the only way to build a career and carve out an academic reputation. This is perhaps one of my great frustrations – I do not know a single business practitioner that reads a Management or HR Journal beyond the Harvard Business Review and I can understand why. In my humble view there just has to be a better way of encouraging academics to take that next step beyond publishing in top ranking (but rarely read) journals. I think a great academic conducts high quality and robust research, publishes it in the top journals, ‘translates’ it into a meaningful form for business practitioners and then gets amongst those practitioners to shape business practice while at the same time learning from practitioners (and the organisations and people they work for) to feed back into the research and teaching loop.
The motivation in setting up this PDW for me personally is driven by my ambition to be an academic and practitioner that somehow bridges that disconnect between quality research and influencing practice back out in the business community. It’s for that reason I approached Professor Graeme Martin, Professor John Boudreau, Professor Paul Sparrow and Professor Elaine Farndale to join this PDW to share their experiences on how they have bridged this gap in their own professional lives. Graeme, John, Paul and Elaine have used a variety of approaches to actively engage with the practitioner community and I’m really looking forward to hearing and learning more from them at the PDW. But just as importantly I’m really excited about the prospect of a group of academics and hopefully some practitioners coming together in Montreal to discuss these issues, share ideas and perhaps even develop some collaborative links along the way!
I really do encourage you to keep this discussion rolling along by commenting or if you would like to include a more substantial post please feel free to email me the contribution so I can upload it to our blog on your behalf. I have to confess I am a relatively newcomer to the blogosphere but I will be relying on the help of my good friend and blogger from way back ...Graeme Martin! My email address is Kerry.Grigg@buseco.monash.edu.au I look forward to meeting you in Montreal if not somewhere in the blogosphere in the meantime.
Kind regards
Kerry
I have spent the last ten years in Australia working in academia, consulting to a range of organisations from the public and private sector while also working on my Masters and PhD qualifications. I am currently writing up my PhD thesis and as I reflect on the last three years it has been an interesting journey in working with the organisations that generously gave me access to the inner workings of their businesses and to their employees. The PhD process really illuminated the gap between academic research and the day to day reality for many practitioners at the coal face. While I don’t claim that my observations and opinions will be shared by my fellow presenters at the Engaging Encounters PDW I hope they provide the basis for some robust discussions around some of the challenges involved in ‘closing the gap’.
So to kick things off, here are just some of my thoughts and ideas based on my relatively short experience:
1. Negotiating access into organisations to actually conduct organisational research is exhausting (and character building) work! I now understand why many researchers seek out an alternative path to reaching participants via professional associations and other methods. Does this matter? Well of course the answer to that question will depend very much on the research question itself but I think to conduct quality research in the areas of talent management and employee engagement we want to as researchers submerge ourselves into those “brave” organisations that are willing, ready and able to participate.
2. Following on from my first point, I often wonder about the rich insights I missed out on gathering for my PhD research due to the unwillingness of some organisations to participate. I was researching the impact an organisation’s promotion of their work-life balance (flexibility) credentials had on the individual employee’s psychological contract. The great frustration for me was that I was unable to negotiate access into any of the organisations that were actively and explicitly promoting their support for work-life balance (e.g. in their recruitment advertising, internal communications). I do sometimes wonder if the difficulty in securing access to organisations that may provide some of the most revealing data and findings means researchers are left to take the easier path of researching within the most convenient , but perhaps less revealing, organisations. I believe ‘closing the gap’ could potentially make it easier for academics at all levels to access a wider and more diverse range of organisations.
3. I believe some (perhaps many) business practitioners do not see the value in robust academic research. In some of the organisations I approached about participating in my PhD study they couldn’t understand why my questionnaire included so many questions. A response I received from one practitioner probably reflects the view of many practitioners went something like this... “why do you need to ask about employee trust alone in seven different ways when Gallup can get to the bottom of employee engagement in this organisation in twelve easy questions?” Footnote: this HR Director did eventually agree to give me access to the organisation but it was a battle.
4. In my view at some Universities (despite their public claims), building links with the practitioner community just isn’t genuinely valued. Consulting work can become almost the “dirty secret” of some academics in some Universities where publication in top ranking journals alone is the only way to build a career and carve out an academic reputation. This is perhaps one of my great frustrations – I do not know a single business practitioner that reads a Management or HR Journal beyond the Harvard Business Review and I can understand why. In my humble view there just has to be a better way of encouraging academics to take that next step beyond publishing in top ranking (but rarely read) journals. I think a great academic conducts high quality and robust research, publishes it in the top journals, ‘translates’ it into a meaningful form for business practitioners and then gets amongst those practitioners to shape business practice while at the same time learning from practitioners (and the organisations and people they work for) to feed back into the research and teaching loop.
The motivation in setting up this PDW for me personally is driven by my ambition to be an academic and practitioner that somehow bridges that disconnect between quality research and influencing practice back out in the business community. It’s for that reason I approached Professor Graeme Martin, Professor John Boudreau, Professor Paul Sparrow and Professor Elaine Farndale to join this PDW to share their experiences on how they have bridged this gap in their own professional lives. Graeme, John, Paul and Elaine have used a variety of approaches to actively engage with the practitioner community and I’m really looking forward to hearing and learning more from them at the PDW. But just as importantly I’m really excited about the prospect of a group of academics and hopefully some practitioners coming together in Montreal to discuss these issues, share ideas and perhaps even develop some collaborative links along the way!
I really do encourage you to keep this discussion rolling along by commenting or if you would like to include a more substantial post please feel free to email me the contribution so I can upload it to our blog on your behalf. I have to confess I am a relatively newcomer to the blogosphere but I will be relying on the help of my good friend and blogger from way back ...Graeme Martin! My email address is Kerry.Grigg@buseco.monash.edu.au I look forward to meeting you in Montreal if not somewhere in the blogosphere in the meantime.
Kind regards
Kerry
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