Field Of Business Studies Research Articles

The life and times of a senior scholar

Purpose – This paper aims to interview a senior scholar to get their perspectives on the field, it’s history and future. Design/methodology/approach – A semi-structured in-depth interview was conducted. Findings – The interview reflects the changes in business schools over the interviewee’s decades of experience. Research limitations/implications – It is one person’s personal views, albeit, a person with very considerable success in the field of business studies. Originality/value – The interviewee offers a very unique perspective.

Writing for Publication in Business Administration: Comparing Insights from Brazilian and American Scholars

This paper seeks to compare the process of bibliographical production of Brazilian professors who lecture in postgraduate programs in the field of Business Studies with that of their North-American counterparts. In-depth interviews were conducted with professors, lectures in Brazil or US, who have presented articles for publication to international journals with JCR impact factor greater than 1. Keeping in mind the particularities of each nation's educational system, the results call for the organization of the process of bibliographical production in Brazil, so as to reduce the existing gap between the research conditions prevailing in Brazil and the US.

History and IS – Broadening Our View and Understanding: Actor–Network Theory as a Methodology

The call for historical research In IS, mirrored In other fields of business studies, Is an explicit recognition of the predominance of presentism in business research; the use of the past only to justify and validate current beliefs or inserting modern beliefs onto the past, rather than using the past to understand and reveal current assumptions and biases. There is freedom in severing time and centering ourselves and our artifacts (computer technology), looking to improve the future unburdened by the past. Yet, if that assumption is wrong, and the present is instead fluid and unstable because the past embedded in the present is tension filled and unresolved, this raises fundamental challenges to the work that we do, the value of that work to others, and is cause for reflection on our impact as educators. This paper demonstrates the merits of using Actor-Network Theory as a methodology for historical IS research, through its use in a Canadian case study. The study was prompted by the apparent resolution of a privacy controversy, involving personal motor vehicle registration information in the province of Alberta, through an appeal to something called ‘historical purposes and practices.’ Strangely, the purposes and practices were never identified. This begged the question, ‘what was the substance of this argument and how come it was successful?’ Tracing actual ‘purposes and practices,’ from the early 1900s to the present, reveals how historical, contextual understanding offers not only insights into, but can alter our very understanding of, the present.

Interdisciplinary Engagement as an Acculturation Process: The Case of Japanese Studies

Linking regional expertise with disciplinary theory-motivated rigour is one of the key challenges for Japanese Studies. With Acculturation Theory as the theoretical basis, this paper develops and examines a framework that distinguishes variations in interdisciplinary engagement strategies among scholars working at the interstices of Japanese Studies and Business Studies. The findings should assist Area Studies scholarship in identifying how to shape relations with recipient Social Science disciplines—both at the individual and institutional level. We chart intergroup relations from two perspectives: (i) national and international institutions and (ii) interview data obtained from scholars working in Japanese Business Studies. We find variations in how Japanese Studies scholars interact with the field of Business Studies. These result from emphasis placed on the maintenance of Japanese Studies scholarship on the one hand and openness to engagement with the business discipline on the other. Integration, assimilation, separation, and marginalisation reflect realistic ‘sojourning’ (or interdisciplinary engagement) options available to Japanese Studies scholarship. By conceptualising interdisciplinarity as an acculturating change process, our framework offers a systematic understanding of why, how and to what effect Area Studies interacts with Social Science disciplines.

The Challenge from the Cultural Industry to Knowledge Management

Knowledge management, nowadays, has been accepted as a crucial business process and become one of the key research fields of business studies. Nonaka’s SECI model is recognised as the dominant paradigm in this field. However, the ability of generalisation of this model has not been fully tested. This model has several characteristics: technological oriented, as a key business process in ‘big’ enterprises, and taking place in an organised, utilitarian production network. This study examines the applicability of the SECI model in the context of the cultural industry. The theoretical gaps are identified and the directions for further research are provided.

Re‐articulating the ethical corporation: the case of the Woolf Committee Report

PurposeEfforts to address the role and responsibilities of large global corporations have predominantly focused on the need for increased and more effective global corporate governance, but this underestimates the need to articulate a global ethics for these corporations. This paper aims to analyse the Woolf Committee Report (WCR; the weapon company BAE Systems plc's attempt to outline what it would take to become a global corporate leader in ethics) and benchmark it against an ethical response to corporate responsibility articulated as a global ethics.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on a textual analysis of the WCR.FindingsThe WCR contains openings towards a re‐articulation of the role and responsibilities of large global corporations, but it is predominantly a text that gives us more clues to how difficult it will be for BAE, or any other corporation, to “live” a global ethics.Research limitations/implicationsCritical analyses of the language that corporations use in order to address their role and responsibilities are important. However, how texts influence practice is dependent on how they travel and more studies on such journeys are also needed.Practical implicationsGiven that textual analyses, such as ours, are re‐connected to practitioners, such studies might contribute to making practitioners more discursively aware of the corporate talk that they are embedded in.Originality/valueThe paper predominantly speaks to the field of business studies and its originality lies in its focus on a global ethics (without reducing this to governance) in relation to the role and responsibilities of large global corporations.

Heard on the grapevine

PurposeTo discover Nigel Nicholson's views of the implications of evolutionary psychology for business.Design/methodology/approachNigel Nicholson speaks to editor Sarah Powell about the implications of evolutionary psychology for business. Nigel Nicholson has been a professor at the London Business School since 1990, holding the positions of Chairman of the Organisational Behaviour department (twice), Research Dean, member of the governing body and Deputy Dean. He is widely known for pioneering the introduction of the new science of evolutionary psychology to business. Current major research interests include the psychology of family business, personality and leadership, and people skills in management. Before becoming a business psychologist, he pursued a career as a journalist.FindingsReveals Nigel Nicholson's views on the implications of evolutionary psychology for business.Originality/valueProvides the views of a pioneer in the field of business studies.

Obstacles to the Evolution of Risk Management as a Discipline: Some Tentative Thoughts

Drawing on the counterfactual example of the professionalisation of accountancy in 19th-century Britain, this paper argues that the ability of risk management to fully establish itself as an applied academic discipline is hindered by a number of factors. These include: the lack of a precise and unambiguous legislative mandate for risk management; the lack of sufficient research-based evidence with regard to the value added by risk management activities; and the lack of a clear categorisation of risk management as an applied discipline within the fields of business studies and management. The paper concludes that unless researchers are able to demonstrate the benefits which arise from risk management activities, the field is likely to enter a period of stagnation.

“It is interesting to note that…”: a comparative study of anticipatory ‘it’ in student and published writing

The study of metadiscoursal components of academic texts, through which writers organise, interpret and evaluate content matter, provides one means of examining the relationship between writer and reader. This paper explores one grammatical feature of metadiscourse, clauses with an anticipatory it and extraposed subject (as in ‘It is interesting to note that no solution is offered’). This feature is compared in two computerised corpora of text, one consisting of published journal articles from the field of Business Studies and the second of MBA student dissertations written by non-native speakers of English. It-clauses are found to have four main interpersonal roles in hedging, marking the writer's attitude, emphasis, and attribution. The main differences between the two corpora are in the use of it-clauses to persuade readers of the validity of claims, with student writers making an apparently greater and more overt persuasive effort, and stating propositions more forcefully. Proposals are made on why this might be the case, taking into account the different writer-reader relationships in journal articles and dissertations. Implications of the findings for the teaching of academic writing are presented.

Variation in student selection within the Australian Unified National System: A case study in undergraduate business studies from Western Australia

This paper draws on data relating to the field of business studies from four Western Australian universities to illustrate differences between institutions in the Australian Unified National System (UNS) of Universities. Large differences exist between universities in the input characteristics of students which may be expected to affect student progress and presumably student outcomes. These differences have implications for issues like credit transfer where the transferring student may have come from an institution with a much lower entry criterion and presumably different learning culture.