Prospecting for valuable evidence: why scholarly research can be a goldmine for managers

Strategy & Leadership

Volumn 32, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 27-33

  Sutton, Robert I ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Academic staff; Research; Research management

Indexed keywords

EID: 84993029173     PISSN: 10878572     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1108/10878570410511390     Document Type: Article

References (13)

1. Michaels, E., Handfield-Jones, H. and Axelrod, B. (2001) The WarforTalent, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA
2. See Meacham, J.A. (1990), “The loss of wisdom”, in Sternberg, R.J. (Ed.), Wisdom: Its Nature, Origins, and Development, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 181-211, and Meacham, J.A. (1983), “Wisdom and the context of knowledge: knowing what one doesn't know”, in Huhn, D. and Meacham, J.A. (Eds), On the Development of Developmental Psychology, Krager, Basel, pp. 111-34.
3. The classic academic article on this topic is DiMaggio, P. and Powell, W.W. (1983), “The iron cage revisited: institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields'’, American Sociological Review, Vol. 48, 147-160.
4. For example, I helped write: D'Aunno, T., Sutton, R.I. and Price, R.L. (1991), “Organizational isomorphism and external support in conflicting institutional environments: the case of drug abuse treatment units'’, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 34, pp. 636-61, and Elsbach, K.D. and Sutton, R.I. (1992), “Acquiring organizational legitimacy through illegitimate actions: a marriage of institutional and impression management theory'’, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 35, pp. 699-738.
5. Naftulin, D.H., Ware, J.E. Jr. and Donnelly, F.A. (1973), “The Doctor Fox lecture: a paradigm of educational seduction”, Journal of Medical Education, Vol. 48, pp. 630-35; and Williams, R.G. and Ware, J.E. (1976), “Validity of student ratings of instruction under different incentive conditions: a further study of the Dr. Fox effect'’, Journal of Educational Psychology Vol. 68, pp. 48-56.
6. Armstrong, J.S. (1980), “Unintelligible management research and academic prestige'’, Interfaces, Vol. 10, pp. 80-6.
7. I don't mean to imply, however, that academics always use more rigorous methods and logic than so-called popular authors do. For example, Tracy Kidder's (1981) Pulitzer Prize winning Soul of a New Machine (Avon Books, New York, NY) resulted from many months of intensive observation and interviews with the group of design engineers that he studied. Kidder had much deeper evidence than is usually published in top academic books and journals.
8. Bloom, M. (1999), “The performance effects of pay dispersion on individuals and organizations'’, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 42, pp. 25-40.
9. Peters, T. (1995), “Beating the great blight of dullness”, Forbes ASAP, p. 180.
10. Womack, J., Jones, D. and Roos, D. (1990), The Machine that Changed the World, Rawson-MacMillan, New York, NY.
11. See, for instance, MacDuffie, J.P. (1995), “Human resource bundles and manufacturing performance: organizational logic and flexible production systems in the world auto industry”, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 48; Pil, F.K. and MacDuffie, J.P. (1996), “The adoption of high-involvement work practices'’, Industrial Relations, Vol. 35; MacDuffie, J.P. (1997), “The road to ‘root cause': shop floor problem solving at three auto assembly plants'’, Management Science, Vol. 43, pp. 479-502.
12. Managers sometimes ask me if the widely read Harvard Business Review (HBR) is an exception to this pattern because it often contains articles by management professors and is widely read. But many so-called management scholars view HBR with contempt because it is written so that people who are not indoctrinated into our idiosyncratic language and values can actually understand what it says and will be interested in the content. Many top business schools do not count an HBR paper as a contribution to scholarly knowledge and there are some research-oriented schools where an HBR paper is viewed as a “black mark'’ on a researcher's record.
13. Bennett, A. (1988), “When management professors gather, relevance sometimes rears its ugly head'’, The Wall Street Journal, 15 August, B1.