Management Inquiry Research Articles

PARALLEL, TRANSFER OR COLLABORATION STRATEGY OF RELATING THEORY TO PRACTICE? A CASE STUDY OF PUBLIC MANAGEMENT DEBATE IN GERMANY

The relationship between theory and practice is essential to ‘applied sciences' such as public management. However, the current debate on this topic lacks empirical substantiation. Here I develop a methodology for the indication of how the theory-practice gap is actually addressed in a given subfield of management enquiry. I distinguish three archetypal strategies of relating theory to practice and develop several bibliometric indicators for them. Subsequently, I apply this methodology in a case study on the German public management debate from 1989 to 2005, a study based on bibliometric data of some 900 articles on public management. As will be demonstrated, in Germany, the theory-practice divide is predominantly framed as a problem of knowledge transfer between scholars and practitioners. Reflections on the institutional structures of public management in Germany make it clear why the transfer strategy is chosen, thus proving the validity of the suggested indicators.

Side Shadowing Appreciative Inquiry: One Storyteller’s Commentary

This is a commentary on an article by Fitzgerald, Oliver, and Hozsey appearing in this issue of Journal of Management Inquiry. I look at sideshadowing as a way out of the duality of an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) that does not look at critical analysis or collection of non-appreciative stories, and a critical approach that does not do appreciation. I conclude that AI uses a chronotope (defined by Bakhtin as relativity of time and space in narrative) that makes events conform that conforms to the views of positive science, positive organizational behavior, positive leadership, and positive thinking. This commentary therefore supports a more ‘critical’ version to AI.

Crossvergence of values: An analysis of the use of impression management strategies in India, Israel and Pakistan

The present research aims to develop a cross-cultural understanding of impression management (IM) behavior at workplace. A new measure of IM, using elements of job-focused, initiative-focused and relationship-focused strategies, is developed for the study. Analysis of 535 employees from India, Israel and Pakistan demonstrates both differences and similarities in the use of various IM strategies. Although a majority of the significant differences contradict current evidence of IM, our findings do highlight the cross-cultural significance of IM behavior, and demonstrate emergence of crossvergence of values among Israeli, Indian and Pakistani employees. New studies are needed to further evaluate the cross-cultural validity of the IM scale developed for this study, at the same time fresh scholarly inquiry in international management should take a closer and more in-depth look at the complexity of transition of values in order to contribute to a better understanding of IM in international settings.

Understanding and Creating Caring and Compassionate Organizations

Academy of Management ReviewVol. 35, No. 2 Call for PapersUnderstanding and Creating Caring and Compassionate OrganizationsPublished Online:30 Nov 2017https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.35.2.zok334AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB ToolsDownload CitationsAdd to favoritesTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail View articleREFERENCES Anderson R. C. , White R. 2009. Confessions of a radical industrialist: Profits, people, purpose—Doing business by respecting the earth. New York: St. Martin's Press. Google Scholar Cameron K. S. , Dutton J. E. , Quinn R. E. 2003. Positive organizational scholarship: Foundations of a new discipline. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Google Scholar Cappelli P. 2008. Employment relationships: New models of white-collar work. New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Chouinard Y. 2005. Let my people go surfing: The education of a reluctant businessman. New York: Penguin Press. Google Scholar Dees J. G. 1998. The meaning of social entrepreneurship. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Google Scholar Fineman S. 2006. On being positive: Concerns and counterpoints. Academy of Management Review, 31: 270– 291.Abstract , Google Scholar Frost P. J. 1999. Why compassion counts! Journal of Management Inquiry 8: 127– 133. Google Scholar George B. 2004. Authentic leadership: Rediscovering the secrets to creating lasting value. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Google Scholar Grant A. M. , Dutton J. E. , Rosso B. 2008. Giving commitment: Employee support programs and the prosocial sensemaking process. Academy of Management Journal, 51: 898– 918.Abstract , Google Scholar Harter J. K. , Schmidt F. L. , Hayes T. L. 2002. Business-unit-level relationship between employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and business outcomes: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87: 268– 279. Google Scholar Hawken P. 2008. Blessed unrest: How the largest social movement in history is restoring grace, justice, and beauty to the world. New York: Penguin Press. Google Scholar Kaul G. 2009. Gautam Kaul on his sustainable finance course. Available at http://www.youtube.com/sustfin. Google Scholar Keltner D. 2009. Born to be good: The science of a meaningful life. New York: Norton. Google Scholar Prahalad C. K. , Hammond A. 2002. Servicing the world's poor, profitably. Harvard Business Review, 80 (9): 4– 11. Google Scholar Yunus M. 2003. Banker to the poor: Micro-lending and the battle against world poverty. New York: PublicAffairs. Google Scholar Zuboff S. 2009. The old solutions have become the new problems. Business Week, July 2: 1. Google ScholarFiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Vol. 35, No. 2 Permissions Metrics in the past 12 months History Published online 30 November 2017 Published in print 1 April 2010 Information© Academy of Management ReviewDownload PDF

The Construction and Contributions of “Implications for Practice”: What's in Them and What Might They Offer?

“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).

The Halo Effect and the Challenge of Management Inquiry: A Dialog Between Phil Rosenzweig and Paul Olk

The ideas found in Phil Rosenzweig’s book “The Halo Effect … and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers” provide the basis for a conversation between Phil and Paul Olk. Besides discussing Phil’s critique of the research methods found in some popular business books, they address implications of the halo effect and the other delusions for teaching and conducting academic research, including the difficulty in conducting research that is both methodologically rigorous and practically relevant, teaching executives, and bridging the relationship between theory and practice.

Towards a Framework of Trust Attribution Styles

The issue of trust has attracted considerable business and management inquiry over the last decade, due to its impact on working relationships within and between organizations. Given its importance, it is fundamental for management to be able to foster trust and thus necessary to accurately diagnose the current state of trust in their organization. However, diagnosing trust in real contexts is challenging due to its taboo and tacit nature. Hence, a surreptitious approach to data gathering and analysis may be required to elicit honest accounts from participants about trust. This paper contends that attribution theory can provide the basis for the development of such an analytical framework by enabling researchers to analyse field data about organizational life. The paper presents literature that highlights the appropriateness of attribution style analysis for explaining trust. It presents a taxonomy of trust‐related terms, and proposes a framework of distinct attribution patterns for each term to systematize the diagnosis of trust in situ. The paper concludes with a discussion about the value of the framework for trust research and directions for future work.

An Organizational Impression Management Perspective on the Formation of Corporate Reputations

Researchers have only recently turned their attention to the study of corporate reputation.As is characteristic of many early areas of management inquiry, the field is decidedly multidisciplinary and disconnected. This article selectively reviews reputation research conducted mainly during the past decade. A framework is proposed that views reputation from the perspective of organizational impression management. Corporations are viewed as social actors, intent on enhancing their respectability and impressiveness in the eyes of constituents.

Do Audit Actions Consistent with Increased Auditor Scepticism Deter Potential Management Malfeasance?

Effective audits are claimed to not only enhance the detection of fraud but also the deterrence of potential fraud. We conduct an experiment with 167 senior corporate managers in which we examine whether changes in auditor actions and behaviours consistent with auditors exhibiting a heightened level of professional scepticism deter managers from committing corporate malfeasance. We examine three audit action changes: an increase in management inquiry rigour, an increase in the extent of the audit sample and a change in the nature of the audit tests. All of these changes are situated in an experimental design where the objective probability of detecting managerial malfeasance does not change and managerial malfeasance can occur in the same period as the audit action changes. We find that changing the nature of the evidence collected decreases participating managers’ intention to commit corporate malfeasance. Furthermore, we find that the most common auditor response in practice, increasing the extent of the sample without changing tests, does not reduce managers’ intention to commit malfeasance. Finally, we find that combining the use of more critical client questioning with increasing extent of testing does result in less managerial intent to commit malfeasance. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Social Influence on Knowledge Worker's Adoption of Innovative Information Technology

User perceptions toward information technology (IT) are crucial to its successful implementation. The purpose of our study is to improve the understanding of the impact of social influences on different types of users' perceptions and adoption of IT. To do this, the study refines and expands the operationalization of the social influence construct to include four components: subjective norm, image, visibility, and voluntariness. This is used to examine influences by type of user (knowledge worker versus university student) and IT (innovative versus mature). The key finding is that when knowledge workers consider adopting innovative IT they are sensitive to general perceptions of its usefulness. The results have implications for management enquiry and practice.

Can Information Systems Foster Emotional Intelligence? A Design Theory-Based Approach

Researchers in Information Systems (IS) have conducted extensive research into various kinds of collaboration systems over the last twenty-five years. A parallel stream of inquiry in psychology and management has developed research in organizational Emotional Intelligence, which contributes to the effectiveness of group interactions by increasing cooperation and reducing conflict. Collaboration systems present a special opportunity to introduce soft management functions such as Emotional Intelligence because they are designed as an intelligent channel of interaction between group members. This research used an Information Systems Design Theory approach to guide the integration of Emotional Intelligence functions into collaboration systems. Two artifact systems were constructed based on these designs, and the systems were utilized and compared in a lab exercise that required group interaction. The findings of the research provide validation of the design approach, evaluation of emotional communication effects, and implications for new dimensions of emotion-based subtext and advisory capabilities that enhance Emotional Intelligence.

From Utilitarian Morality to Moral Imagination

In this essay, the authors take Jim March's Journal of Management Inquiry essay on the nature of scholarship as their starting point to assess the contribution of the business school in promoting a “utilitarian morality” model of education where knowledge is valued, not for its intrinsic worth, but because of the consequences it produces. In particular, the authors consider the role of historical, institutional, and market forces in shaping the missions, values, and views of knowledge that business schools purport to achieve. They conclude by suggesting how we might reimagine the business school through the lens of moral imagination.

Inquiry in health knowledge management

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to reduce ambiguity in diverse approaches to health knowledge management by surfacing key issues, perspectives and philosophical assumptions.Design/methodology/approachKnowledge management research in health is critically reviewed. Issues are grouped into research domains, and examined in the light of associated knowledge management perspectives, and philosophical assumptions.FindingsSystemic complexity in health knowledge management derives from tensions within and between issues in three domains: specific value‐laden aspects of clinic practice (knowledge creation); integration of workplace practice into generic process flows (knowledge normalization); and the technical integration of disparate information systems (knowledge application). These concepts are related to three knowledge management perspectives, viz., personal values, social norms and objective facts, respectively. Both domains and perspectives are anchored in philosophical assumptions about the interests served by knowledge (viz., emancipatory, practical, and technical), and in approaches to inquiry (critical pluralist, interpretivist, and positivist).Research limitations/implicationsThe findings are based on selected literature about Western health care practicesPractical implicationsThe framework assists understanding of the practical reasoning that motivates the use of technology in health knowledge management. The conceptual linkages that are developed are of value to practitioners and researchers sensitive to the intertwining of facts, norms and values.Originality/valueIn total, the concepts and relations developed in this paper constitute both a framework for inquiry in health knowledge management, and a normative theory for a critique of patient care. Recognising, and articulating, the relative importance one ascribes to facts, norms, and values is crucial in tackling the hard problems in health knowledge management.

Inquiry-based learning in the first-year Information Management curriculum

This paper describes and evaluates Inquiry in Information Management, a first year undergraduate module designed on inquiry-based learning (IBL) principles at the University of Sheffield. In the module, students undertake a small scale, group research project, choosing a research question, conducting the research and reporting their results in poster form to invited staff and their peers, while also maintaining a group blog. The paper begins by explaining the context in which the module was developed and summarising the concept of IBL. It continues by describing the design of the module, highlighting some workshop activities designed to ‘scaffold’ students’ inquiries. The quality of student work was high, and there was an enthusiastic response to the freedom offered by IBL. Involving students in designing assessment criteria for the posters helped them understand the assessment better. Overall, students’ engagement with Information Management seemed to have deepened. Future developments are discussed and the authors reflect on the new demands IBL makes on both students and staff, and on how the application of IBL in this context is shaped by the fluidity of Information Management as a discipline and ambiguities regarding the place of research in this context.

The mosquito, the elephant and the House of Lords Water Management Inquiry

In 2005, sensing that there was growing public interest and concern about water, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee decided to hold an Inquiry into Water Management in England and Wales. The nature of such inquiries is that they seek to elicit evidence of the latest thinking, experience and opinion from a wide cross-section of persons and sources, and to weigh such evidence in an impartial manner in order to make recommendations to Government with regard to policies and actions. In this paper we examine three of the issues that provide communication spaces for the sense-making of policy, science and technological thinking around the subject of water management: levels of affordability, debt and disconnections; the appropriateness or otherwise of defined 'economic' or 'sustainable' levels of leakage; and burgeoning housing development and associated projections of water demand. Although in policy matters the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee has limited formal powers, it can exercise a significant nuisance factor on Government, much like a mosquito on an elephant.

Stylized facts, empirical research and theory development in management

Stylized facts matter enormously in management inquiry because such inquiry ultimately deals with the real world. But management research places much less emphasis on empirical regularities than we should expect, and that is required, for scholarship that ultimately concerns itself with the real world. Imagine grounding the study of real organizations only in theory; we ought to be laughed out of the academy for that. Yet our journals appear to insist on theory testing. In a field that seeks to understand the real world, it makes little sense to always put theory before facts. We must understand at least the broad outlines of ‘what’ a phenomenon consists of before we try to explain ‘why’ it occurs. That is, we need research directed toward uncovering empirical regularities, otherwise known as ‘stylized facts’. Only then are we in a position to build theory that in turn can serve as the basis for more refined tests and extensions.

Why Gerry ain't a pacemaker

Successful businessmen have held a fascination (or should that be fetish?) for managing the NHS ever since the 1983 NHS Management Inquiry, headed by then Sainsbury's boss Roy Griffiths.

Ethical inquiry in knowledge management

A defining feature of systems thinking is reflection on boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. This paper reviews concepts of knowledge (and ignorance) provided by Kant, Churchman, Ulrich, and Habermas. We propose a fourth wave normative theoretical framework comprised of four architectural elements knowledge perspectives, sources of boundary judgement, system roles, and knowledge dynamics to identify the knowledge concepts that must be addressed to enable those in a position of power (because they are involved with the knowledge management system) to impose order on the behaviour of others (who are affected but not involved) by means of ethical inquiry.

Environmental accounting as workplace activism

Drawing on a case study of a Canadian City Council, the paper argues for the utility of a ‘social movements in organizations’ perspective [Zald MN, Berger MA. Social movements in organizations: coup d’etat, insurgency, and mass movements. American Journal of Sociology 1978;83(4):823–61; Zald MN, Morrill C, Roa H. The impact of social movements on organizations: environment and responses. In: Davis GF, McAdam D, Scott WR, Zald MN, editors. Social movements and organization theory. Cambridge University Press; 2005. p. 253–79] in environmental accounting research. It demonstrates how environmental accounting is used by employees to build an organizational response to environmental issues, and argues that beyond conventional legitimacy or organizational change perspectives, there is a further analytical possibility: environmental accounting as ‘workplace activism’ [Creed D, Scully M. Songs of ourselves: employees’ deployment of social identity in workplace encounters. Journal of Management Inquiry 2000;9(4):391–412]. The findings raise questions about how we evaluate environmental accounting interventions, and about a role for research in helping environmental movement adherents on the inside of organizations to stay engaged and avoid premature capture.

In search of relevance: conventional or critical management inquiry?

PurposeThis article provides a critical appraisal of the relevance of conventional management inquiry to management, and a proposal to use the critical management paradigm to develop genuinely relevant management studies.Design/methodology/approachDiscusses the relevance of conventional management inquiry to management.FindingsConventional management inquiry closely mirrors scientific inquiry, with strict adherence to scientific method in pursuit of “objective” and rigorous empirical evidence or “proof” of specific and universal managerial truths. The products of this research are published via a machine bureaucracy that reinforces the hegemony of science. However, some academics have expressed concern that there is little uptake in commerce of “new” management ideas, and that practising managers have little or no interest in academic research. Based on 20 years experience of commerce and academe the author explores the underlying reasons for the failure of management academe to be taken seriously by managers.Research limitations/implicationsThe article proposes the need for a more applied and critical direction to management research. Some ideas for research are presented at the end of the piece, but the main message is that all management research should be more timely and relevant to practitioners' issues in the daily task of management.Practical implicationsThe article is a commentary on the principles on which management should be studied (and to a lesser degree on how these studies should be published). As such it is difficult to suggest any implications for management practitioners. That said the author would advise management practitioners involved in the funding of research to question the relevance of research themes and conventional responses to them. There guidelines drawn for academic practitioners.Originality/valueSimilar ideas on “relevance lost” have been presented previously. However, the arguments have been lost in an academic hegemony that reinforces the requirements for a strictly scientific approach to the study of management. The original proposition of this article is one of the outliers of this approach, critical management theory, should take centre stage in ensuring relevance.