Reproduction of form in Management and Organization Research: Why and how compulsively repetitive publishing kills academia

The popular and professional press is filled with discussions of major changes on the organizational landscape, including organizational design experiments at entrepreneurial firms as well as at major corporations, the slashing of corporate staffs, the downsizing, delayering and revitalization of firms, the emerging electronic organization, mergers and acquisitions, failures of high reliability organizations, and time-based competition. Each of these issues has been associated with the redesign of organizations, yet these redesigns seem far removed from academic research, and they do not typically utilize the academic body of knowledge. Although the field has progressed enormously in new methods and insights during a century of research, it seems to us that organization studies have been a source of recurrent disappointment for practitioners and academics alike (Bedian 1989; Cummings 1983; Luthans 1986; Slocum 1984). For example, Miner (1984) analyzed 32 established organizational science theories and concluded that with the exception of theories of motivation there is no relationship between usefulness and validity. Is the field of organization studies irrelevant? Organizations have become the dominant institution on the social landscape. Yet the body of knowledge published in academic journals has practically no audience in business or government. Unlike a field such as economics, research on organizations has not typically focused on problems relevant to business and government organizations, and the real world of organizations has not drawn on the work undertaken by organizational scientists. From colleagues within our field and in allied disciplines, we hear complaints that manuscripts espousing radical ideas, or topics outside the mainstream, are difficult to publish. Reviewers for established journals seem to value papers whose theses are anchored in established theories or that use "legitimate" methods, thus implicitly creating a publication barrier for research that falls outside mainstream topics or methods. Moreover, we observe that scholars with interests in organizations span many disciplines and fields of inquiry such as anthropology, economics, history, information science, communication theory, artificial intelligence, systems theory, psychology, sociology, political science, policy sciences, as well as organization behavior, strategic management and organization theory. We sense that a new discipline of organization science is evolving and we envision that a new journal can become a forum for a discipline defined more broadly. The purpose of this essay is to discuss these issues and the need for reorienting research away from incremental, footnote-on-footnote research as the norm for the field. Although current research approches have made solid contributions, they do not

Theory development is a high priority in organizational and management research. However, theory development is often equated with building new theory, a practice that is rewarded in the publication process and encouraged by norms that pervade the field. This practice has produced a proliferation of theories, most of which are not exposed to rigorous empirical research that probes core propositions and puts theories at risk. In the interest of theory development, management and organizational research would make better progress if we devoted more attention to theoretical refinement, conducting research that identifies the boundaries and limitations of theories, stages competitive tests between rival theories, and increases the precision of theories so they yield strong predictions that can be falsified. These issues are addressed by the articles that constitute this feature topic, with the goal of enhancing theoretical progress in management and organizational research.

We contribute to the literature on the production of knowledge through engaged management and organisational research. We explore how relational practices in management and organisational research may interpenetrate and change one another, thereby potentially producing new knowledge. We demonstrate the importance of the disruptive qualities of arresting moments in this process. We present data from within ongoing engaged management and organisational research at an arts festival involving related music, management and research practices, during which two arresting moments arose: one in our own core research practice, the other in related music and management practices. We found arresting moments were preceded by increasingly intense divisions between practices, when practitioners experienced increasingly entrenched views and heightened emotions. Arresting moments sometimes followed, producing an empathetic connection between practitioners, so that they could suddenly see situations from a new perspective. In this way, arresting moments could produce opportunities for (self-) reflexivity and the possibility of reconstructing knowing in relational practices.

“Most reviewers’ checklists of leading management journals list the criterion, “relevance for practice.” Authors comply with this criterion by pointing out what implications their results might have for practice. Evidence in the form of successful implementations of the results in practice is not required. Essentially, the authors are only supposed to point out what implications practitioners, as they socially construct them, can possibly draw from their results. If the reviewers’ construction of relevance is in accordance with the author’s, the criterion of relevance has been met . . .” (Kieser & Leiner, 2009: 522–523; italics in original).

2012 Presidential Address—On Compassion In Scholarship: Why Should We Care?

This paper addresses the issue of best-practice research methodology in management. It is argued that management research should follow what is known as ‘grounded theory’, or what Harvard Business School Professor, Robert Kaplan, termed as “innovation action research.” Today, management research is found following an inappropriate model, the hypotheticoscientific method designed for laboratory research in the natural sciences. This is unsuitable for management and not aligned with case-based pedagogy, action learning or reality-based executive programmes. The result is a painful disconnect between management research and management teaching. There is an increasing divergence and separation between educators and researchers, when in fact these endeavours should be integrated and converging. While educators use case studies intensively, researchers reject N=1 qualitative methods and instead employ N ≥ 25. It is indeed strange that sometimes the educator and the researcher are the same person. This strange methodological schizophrenia needs a remedy. For management, world is the laboratory. It therefore requires a worldly. research methodology. Management educators seek to use reality-based tools; yet, they often do research that is abstract and diffused. Some of the leading management tools taught by management educators originated, in fact, in best-practice innovations in organizations. Why not adopt this as general best-practice? And why, then, does management research pay lip service to the natural sciences, when its most powerful theories and tools emerged from clinical, not laboratory, settings? This paper offers an alternative, a new way forward, based on the familiar concept of grounded theory. Through examples and case studies, it shows how this approach might be applied and how teaching and research can become tightly integrated. It concludes with some poignant thoughts on the way forward, including finding robust ways to partner between management researchers, educators, and practitioners (who are participants of executive education programmes in most business schools). For instance: There would be a need for extensive collaboration between these three constituents. Management education and research must include extensive team work, rather than the common phenomenon of each educator doing his ‘solo’ act in management education programmes and moving on. There should be relevant and well-thoughtout themes that facilitate high quality dialogue between the three constituents (educators, researchers, and practitioners), where there is intense learning on the part of all of them. Significant mindset changes on the part of companies sponsoring their managers for management education programmes would be necessary. It is hoped that this paper would generate a lot of dialogue resulting in positive changes that would bridge the existing chasm between management education, research, and practice.

Proper recognition of fish swimming and collective behaviours hold great significance in the development of fish conservation. The influence mechanism of hydrodynamic parameters on fish collective and swimming behaviours remains incompletely established. This study investigated the individual and collective behaviours of juvenile Hemibarbus maculatus Bleeker and Dabry's sturgeon (Acipenser dabryanus) under various flow velocities [≈1-7 body length (BL/s)] from laboratory experiments and video analysis. Fish individual behaviours were quantified using tail-beat kinematics, and five collective metrics were used to evaluate fish collective behaviour. The results demonstrated that increasing flow velocity had a significant impact on the tail-beat movement of fish individuals, and collective behaviour had the potential to reduce swimming energy expenditure of fish individual in shoals. Meanwhile, the two species exhibited significant collective differences, and enhancing flow velocity can promote fish collective effects for both species with an upper limit. Various configurations and formations were adopted by fish shoals to cope with different flow velocities and optimize swimming efficiency. The results of this work contribute to fish conservation and a deeper understanding of collective behaviour in fish.

In Search of Scholarly Impact

Scapegoating in Baseball

Collective animal behavior is an emergent phenomenon arising from the local interactions of the members of animal groups. Considerable progress has been made in characterizing these interactions, particularly inferring rules that shape and guide the responses of animals to their near neighbors. To date, experimental work has focused on collective behavior within a single, stable context. We examine the individual and collective behavior of a schooling fish species, the x-ray tetra (Pristella maxillaris), identifying their response to changes in context produced by food cues or conspecific alarm cues. Fish exposed to alarm cues show pronounced, broad-ranging changes of behavior, including reducing speed and predictability in their movements. Alarmed fish also alter their responses to other group members, including enacting a smaller zone of repulsion and increasing their frequency of observation of, and responsiveness to, near neighbors. Fish subject to food cues increased speed as a function of neighbor positions and reduced encounter frequency with near neighbors. Overall, changes in individual behavior and the interactions among individuals in response to external cues coincide with changes in group-level patterns, providing insight into the adaptability of behavior to changes in context and interrelationship between local interactions and global patterns in collective behavior.

The Business and Management Coordinating Group (BMCG) is one of the newest coordinating groups of the Campbell Collaboration, founded in 2017 with Julia Littell as Editor and Eric Barends and Denise Rousseau as Co-chairs. Today Littell is Editor and Rousseau Associate Editor. The mission of the BMCG is to make systematic reviews on organizational research available to the broad public of business and management scholars, educators, and practitioners. This editorial describes the focus of BMCG and its challenges and opportunities. The BMCG aligns with the initiative in professional schools and management practice to promote evidence-based decisions in organizations, by managers and staff, boards and policymakers, and other stakeholders. Part of the wider movement toward evidence-based practice in medicine and public policy, the evidence-based practice movement in organizations (Barends & Rousseau, 2018) began as a response to the reliance on tradition, authority, and opinions consultants advance as a basis for action. It mirrors the origins of evidence-based medicine in the 1990s and the then-limited incorporation of scientific evidence into medical school education and physician practice. Managerial decisions affect the working lives and well-being of people around the world. As Henry Mintzberg (1989) said: “No job is more vital to our society than that of a manager. It is the manager who determines whether our social institutions serve us well or whether they squander our talents and resources.” The focus of BMCG is evidence regarding organization-related decisions and the diverse practitioners who contribute to them—from executives and entrepreneurs, coaches and consultants, workers and volunteers, to labor organizers and civil servants. With its organizational focus, BMCG is sector-neutral, including for-profit, nongovernmental and governmental organizations. BMCG is in the “pump priming” phase, meaning that it is in the setup stage of operation. Our goals are (1) to develop a pipeline of systematic reviews related to organizational decisions and practices, (2) to promote systematic reviews as a practice in management and organizational research, and (3) to support training in systematic review methods. We promote the systematic review methodologies developed by Cochrane and Campbell (Higgins et al., 2020; The Campbell Collaboration, 2019). Currently, we have nine approved titles on topics, ranging from the role of CEO financial incentives in firm performance and the uptake and use of structured interviews in employee selection, to the effect of workplace coaching on learning and performance. We actively promote systematic reviews in management and organizational research by publishing guidance of their use (e.g., Littell et al., 2008; Rousseau et al., 2008), and presenting panels of scholars and librarians at major management conferences including the Academy of International Business and the Academy of Management. A shout-out is due to the University of Calgary Professor Olga Petricevic and Librarian Zahra Premji, and Carnegie Mellon University Librarians Ryan Splenda and Sarah Young for their inestimable efforts to educate the Organization and Management Studies community regarding systematic reviews. We are working on the pipeline of systematic reviews by collaborating with doctoral programs in Organization and Management Studies to train students and faculty in systematic reviewing methodologies. The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, for example, now sponsors a doctoral program for scholar practitioners grounded in systematic review training and development. To promote broader systematic review awareness and skills, we are working with the Campbell Training and Development Coordinating Group, chaired by Jeff Valentine, to develop on-line training. Hannah Rothstein and Howard White have graciously shared their knowledge and skills with the broad Organization and Management Studies community, providing training in several venues. Lack of awareness of systematic review methods and limited training in review methodologies are endemic in Business and Management. As part of the Center for Evidence-Based Management, we have developed online training in evidence-based management, now used in over 30 universities (https://cebma.org/resources-and-tools/course-modules/). Advancing systematic review training is the next step in priming the BMCG pump. We hope to hear from you if you are interested in promoting, learning about, or conducting a Business and Management-related systematic review (denise@cmu.edu).

The divorce between management research and management practice has attracted intensive attention. It means that the findings or theories developed in management research are not used effectively in practices. This paper describes the divorce between management research and management practice, analyzes its causes, and presents the solutions to upholding heaven and standing on earth research as well as reform and improvement of academic appraisal system. It is found in related researches that although many scholars undertake and complete various research projects in the field of management, they are seldom granted theoretical research projects directing at practical management issues proposed and funded by enterprises. Some scholars may participate in management consultation projects funded by large enterprises, which, however, seldom involve the field of theoretical research. Meanwhile, few doctoral dissertations funded or entrusted by enterprises to study the practical problems they are faced with cover the field of management research. Besides, under the circumstance that the international trend leans towards empirical researches on management, the management research issues and hypotheses in many doctoral dissertations in mainland China are essentially common sense or hypotheses, which reflects the divorce between management theory and management practice. The relationship between management research and management practice has attracted the attention of many scholars in mainland China.

: If organization theory finds it useful to draw upon some of the ideas that have emerged in cognitive psychology, it will be advantageous to borrow also the terminology used in discussing these ideas. Without working toward a higher level of consistency in terminology than prevails in organization theory today, it will be difficult or impossible to cumulate and assemble into a coherent structure the knowledge we are gaining from individual case studies and experiments. We will be continually reinventing wheels. That is a luxury we cannot afford. The happy band of researchers on organization theory is sufficiently small to be kept fully occupied discovering and verifying the theory just once. (Author) (kr)

Research on social value became a growing interest in management and organization research. However, the disciplines of investigation are rather large and heterogeneous. The purpose of this contribution is to provide an overview of the current state of research on social value. For doing so, we employ content analysis and bibliometric analysis to analyse the research on social value published during the last decade, between 2010 and 2019, in the management and organization field. We employ methods of citation analysis, document co-citation analysis, and cluster visualization to identify major themes studied. The paper explores the assumptions underlying the core concept of social value in organization and management research. Thereby, we analyse 1,117 papers containing 55,059 cited references and uncover the structure, or intellectual base, of research on social value. We identify six distinct clusters of social value research that are grounded in multiple disciplines; (1) marketing and social psychology, (2) economy, (3) development studies, (4) medicine, (5) strategy and social entrepreneurship, and (6) social responsible investing. The assumptions found in these clusters can be grouped into three categories that conceptualize social value (1) as an individual/and or commodity characteristic, (2) as an asset of communities, and (3) as a matter of organizing.

Today's technological advances hold great promise for managers, as they unleash unprecedented amounts of information. Whether and how managers will cope with the cognitive (over)load to effectively seize these opportunities remains underexplored. Extant organizational and management research has built on the assumption of managers' cognitive capacity limitations – a key aspect of their bounded rationality. Numerous studies have relied on this assumption and have contributed to our understanding of how individuals, groups, organizations, industries, and organizational fields cope with limited cognitive capacity. Based on a review of this research, this chapter uncovers how the organizational and management scholarship has applied and complemented the foundational work. It then sheds light on recent insights from parallel disciplines, and outlines avenues for future research to develop a broadened conceptualization of cognitive capacity and to further integrate the role of modern technologies in shaping cognitive capacity and in coping with cognitive (over)load in organizations.