Book contents
- Management Studies in Crisis
- Management Studies in Crisis
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: the Crisis in Management Studies
- Chapter 1 Flawed from the Get-Go: the Early Misadventures of Management Research
- Chapter 2 How Audit Damages Research and Academic Freedom
- Chapter 3 ‘When the Levee Breaks’: Academic Life on the Brink
- Chapter 4 The Corruption of Academic Integrity
- Chapter 5 Paradise Lost but Not Regained: Retractions and Management Studies
- Chapter 6 The Triumph of Nonsense in Management Studies
- Chapter 7 Flawed Theorising, Dodgy Statistics and (In)Authentic Leadership Theory
- Chapter 8 The Promises, Problems and Paradoxes of Evidence-Based Management
- Chapter 9 Reclaiming Meaningful Research in Management Studies
- Chapter 10 Putting Zest and Purpose Back into Academic Life
- Notes
- Index
Chapter 1 - Flawed from the Get-Go: the Early Misadventures of Management Research
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2019
- Management Studies in Crisis
- Management Studies in Crisis
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: the Crisis in Management Studies
- Chapter 1 Flawed from the Get-Go: the Early Misadventures of Management Research
- Chapter 2 How Audit Damages Research and Academic Freedom
- Chapter 3 ‘When the Levee Breaks’: Academic Life on the Brink
- Chapter 4 The Corruption of Academic Integrity
- Chapter 5 Paradise Lost but Not Regained: Retractions and Management Studies
- Chapter 6 The Triumph of Nonsense in Management Studies
- Chapter 7 Flawed Theorising, Dodgy Statistics and (In)Authentic Leadership Theory
- Chapter 8 The Promises, Problems and Paradoxes of Evidence-Based Management
- Chapter 9 Reclaiming Meaningful Research in Management Studies
- Chapter 10 Putting Zest and Purpose Back into Academic Life
- Notes
- Index
Summary
In this chapter, I outline two main arguments. Delving into our history, and particularly the work of Frederick Taylor that led to scientific management and the famous Hawthorne Studies that laid the foundations for the human relations school, I argue that many of the problems now confounding management research were present from the origins of the discipline. These include poorly designed studies, an extravagant tendency to generalise from small samples to a population consisting of everyone who has a job (everywhere in the world), and a blatantly political agenda that obscures issues of power and so serves dominant interests. This is not a purely historical exercise. Rather, it illuminates the weak foundations on which much of our scholarship rests and reveals the extent of the challenges we face if we really wish to do better.
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- Management Studies in CrisisFraud, Deception and Meaningless Research, pp. 8 - 33Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019