Organization and Management Theory OMT

Don Hambrick begins with a call to call off the requirement that an article must demonstrate a theoretical contribution in order to be published in top management journals.  He argues that we should focus on generating facts, regardless of their ability to advance theory.  The current requirement not only makes it difficult to publish facts, but it also leads to a great deal of fluff in articles as authors force-fit theory to their findings in order to pass editorial muster.  Finally, it stymies our ability to accumulate knowledge by pushing authors toward novelty rather than replication.  As a way forward, Don recommends that top management journals broaden their scope to allow in findings of interesting phenomena, and that we consider creating a new journal devoted to theory testing and replication. 

            <st1:personname w:st="on">Bill Starbuck</st1:personname> turns the discussion from excessive reliance on theory to excessive reliance on misused statistical practices.  He argues that our standard use of tests of statistical significance often leads us to ignore useful but statistically insignificant findings and to bury important findings "in a garbage dump of statistically significant but meaningless noise."  Studies often do not meet the underlying assumptions necessary for these tests to be valid.  Moreover, most variables used in management studies are correlated to some degree, and so null-hypothesis significance tests are biased toward rejection.  Bill notes that experiences in other disciplines such as psychology suggest that it will be difficult to change these long-standing practices.  He recommends that we make simple changes such as using robust regression tools and reporting substantive significance in our papers, and he argues that editors, authors, and our professional societies need to come together to push for banning null-hypothesis significance tests.

            Denise Rousseau is also concerned about how existing practices hamper our ability to accumulate a robust body of managerial knowledge.  She espouses an evidence-based approach that gets us beyond troubling fads and fashions by using scientific practices to build principles, or general truths, about organizations.  She compares our challenge to that of medical research, which recently went through a period of questioning its influence on the practices of physicians and came away devoted to an evidence-based approach.  Noting that evidence in itself is not a solution, though, she focuses her presentation on the challenges to implementation of evidence.  Denise asserts that management research should produce more procedural knowledge – knowledge of how to apply the facts science has discovered – so that researchers can advise practitioners and students about potential uses of their evidence.  She argues that mindfulness is key to applying evidence effectively and that one's ability to engage in mindful learning increases with practice over time.

            Jim Walsh also focuses on the importance of procedural knowledge but extends its use into the classroom.  He argues that the process of research informs students more than does presentation of the outcomes of research.  Regardless of the particular evidence their studies produce, professors become better teachers through the practice of research, provided they bring the mindset of critical inquiry with them into the classroom.  He outlines how he has brought his passion for research into the classroom and encouraged his students to join him in seeking answers to his research questions.  Jim notes the improvements in his teaching ratings and personal satisfaction, and he encourages others to teach the process of research rather than simply report its outcomes to students. 

Mike Barnett rounds out the panel by urging researchers to collaborate more actively -- to develop collective goals and then to pursue these goals cooperatively.  He notes the successes of some industries and societies that have been achieved through cooperation, sometimes codified in "technology roadmaps."  He conjectures that such roadmaps could be used in management research.  Management researchers could come to agreement on core questions and then devise roadmaps that parcel out tasks to individual researchers or research teams that would, in aggregate, produce answers to these questions.  This stands in contrast to the current independent and uncoordinated approach that leads to considerable overlap and confusion.