Introduction to the Special Research Forum— Public Policy and Management Research: Finding the Common Ground

Abstract

Little did we know when Sara Rynes first asked us to organize a special research forum on public policy and management research that it would appear at a time of such great need and opportunity. We write this introduction at what we hope will be the nadir of the worst economic downturn, indeed the biggest economic and institutional crisis facing the United States and world since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The crisis has triggered debates that ought to have struck right at the heart of the study of management. Did U.S. regulators grant Wall Street too much autonomy? In decreasing regulation and government oversight of new financial instruments and practices, did they fail to act in the broader social interest? Should we as scholars have paid more attention to the decline in the countervailing power of other institutions in society? If managers lost control of or turned a blind eye to excessive financial risk taking within their organizations, could different public policies have averted such actions? If Keynes was right in noting that the ideas of most policy officials (madmen?) can be traced back to the scribblings of some academic, then now is the time to see how the scribblings of management researchers might inform efforts to rebuild our economies, institutions, and organizations. We have seen how fallible organizations can be and the public and private costs their decline can exact. Many firms, not just a few, that once seemed beyond reproach no longer exist. What does management research have to say about how public policies might mandate or encourage changes inside business organizations? How can management research inform the relationships between business and government? What about the role of educational institutions, including universities, and management schools in particular? Should governments impose solutions on business and civil society? And what about other nongovernmental organizations, such as labor unions, environmental coalitions, standards associations, and nonprofit service providers? From the recent crisis will come the rebuilding of businesses and institutions, and the birth of new ones. Management researchers will only inform this process if we can reframe and broaden the dominant paradigm guiding management research in recent years. Some would argue that, in this community of scholars, the lack of a dominant paradigm is both our greatest asset and our greatest weakness (Pfeffer, 1993; van Maanen, 1995). Yet the de facto paradigm we have is one that focuses on pursuing narrowly scoped research topics leveraging available data to achieve publication in top journals. Gaining influence in policy debates will require more careful forethought as to the research subjects we choose and the design of our research programs as well as more direct interaction with the policy-making community—government officials and the full range of stakeholders that influence policy. The articles in this issue are excellent illustrations of how management research can be framed and carried out in ways that speak directly to critical challenges in three key policy domains: work Academy of Management Journal 2009, Vol. 52, No. 6, 1088–1100.