The Metascience of the Academy of Management: Supporting the Global Manager

Abstract

This is a theory and evidence-based exploration of the emerging Academy of Management metascience as an historical, international organization and social institution. Informed by industrial relations method for inquiry into the “web of rules” governing organizations and insight-based critical realism, I describe two parameters for situating research within the 26 divisions and interest groups (DIGs). First, there developed a horizontal research parameter between organizations and markets. The second vertical parameter ranges between individual and societal level analytics, such as between individual educational predictors for academic success to macro level societal studies. This parameter enables a criterion-predictor empirical modelling approach that appears to be a newly emergent feature of the Academy’s metascience. My exploration first clarifies these parameters. The Academy founding principles are then reviewed, along with a content analysis of Academy journal editor retrospectives. These trace a decades long privileging of quantitative, quasi-experimental design policy favoring statistical modelling. A convenience sample of business statistics texts indicates that the quasi-experimental design vocabulary of dependent – independent style psychological modelling is the dominant methods language available in current training texts. The criterion-predictor alternative for qualitative or quantitative inquiry described is wholly overlooked, although it offers an engaged epistemology for strategizing value-informed outcomes. From predictors of student academic success, to spirituality or religious assessments of workplace authenticity, to goals associated with diversity and change management and sustainability criteria like the triple-bottom line (TBL), this exploratory study captures key methods elements about the Academy’s dynamic, emerging metascience, enabling further dialogue to advance its historical, global mission.