Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Seek the approval of academic peers rather than the business community

Seek the approval of academic peers rather than the business community


In terms of pure quantity of research and debate, business schools have performed amazingly in promoting management as a distinctive activity. The problem for business school researchers in hartford whalers jerseys is that they seek the approval of their academic peers rather than the business community. Not a day goes by without another wave of research papers, books, articles, and journals. Figures and statistics are fitted into linear equations and tidy models. There has to be a backlash,” says Julian Birkinshaw in a hartford whalers jersey of London Business School. No other discipline has produced as much in such a short period.


The desire to establish management as a credible discipline leads to research that panders to traditional academic criteria with boston bruins jersey. It is unclear yet how much of it will stand the test of time, but for sheer industry, the business school deserve credit. In the United States this has led to the sort of grand ‘paper clip counting’ exercises that meet demands for academic rigor but fail to add one iota to the real sum of human knowledge. In these terms, schools have produced a generally accepted theoretical basis for management. When it comes to knowledge creation, however, they find themselves in difficulties and hope Quebec Nordiques jersey could encourage. They are caught between the need for academic rigor and for real-world business relevance, which tend to pull in opposite directions.


Business schools have too often allowed the constraints of the academic world to cloud their view of the real world. Business school researchers with quebec nordiques jerseys seek provable theories – rather than helpful theories. They have championed a prescriptive approach to management based on analysis and, more recently, on fashionable ideas that soon disappear into the ether. The ‘one best way’ approach encourages researchers to mould the idiosyncrasies of managerial reality into their tightly defined models of behavior. Economists wearing nhl jerseys and other social scientists label this cure smoothing. Meanwhile, reality continually refuses to co-operate.


It is a criticism also made by some business school insiders. “Academic journals tend to find more and more techniques for testing more and more obscure theories and hockey jerseys. Central to this is the tension between relevance and rigor. In a perfect world, there would be no need to choose between the two. But in the business school world, the need to satisfy academic criteria and be published in journals often tilts the balance away from relevance. In other words, it is often easier to pursue quantifiable objectives and nhl jersey than it is to add anything useful to the debate about management.


To a large extent, the entire business school system works against useful, knowledge-creating research. Academics have five years in which to prove themselves if they are to make the academic grade encouraged by the spirit of Atlanta thrashers jersey. It seems long enough. But it can take two or even three years to get into a suitable journal. They therefore have around three years wearing Atlanta thrashers jerseys, probably less, to come up with an area of interest and carry out meaningful and original research. Since then, most of the leading schools have undergone major reassessments and introduced sweeping changes. However, it is questionable whether those changes have gone far enough.


In large part, the problem goes back to a time when business schools were trying to establish themselves with Bruins jerseys. Up until the 1960s, American business schools were dismissed as pseudo-academic institutions, including the universities of which they often formed a part, regarded them as a little more than vocational colleges. This is a demanding timescale. Just like wearing buffalo Sabres jersey need the fit size scale. The temptation must be to slice up old data in new ways rather than pursue genuinely groundbreaking, innovative research. They are asking trivial questions and answering them exactly.

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