Management as science and
practice
Alexander Styhre
School of Business, Economics and Law
U. of Gothenburg
Science in management, GS Management , Final lecture, Oct 21, 2014
The science of and science in
management
• Business schools grew from the need to develop competencies to
organize large and geographically distributed corporation (e.g. the
railways in the 19th c., the manufacturing firms in the postwar
period, and retailing companies and ”innovation networks” in the
contemporary period)
• To repeat: Not until the late 1950s and early 1960s was business
school teaching expected to be based on proper scientific methods
and procedures. Business school training was professionalized and
became subject to scholarly and regulatory control after ca. 1960
(management education in e.g., Uppsala, Lund and Stockholm
Universities in the period, HGU incorprated in Gothenbuirg U. in
1971).
• Today, in the late modern, audit society, business school research is
monitored by accreditation organizations such as EQUIS (in Europe)
and AASCB (in the U.S., and globally).
The three pillars of the business school
•
“American business schools typically faced three conflicting modes . . . Practical relevance,
academic authority, and doing good.” (Fourcade and Khurana, 2013: 124-125. Emphasis
added)
•
“The practice-oriented constituencies toward which business school directed their
knowledge brought to the fore of concerns and political design of corporate actors.”
(Fourcade and Khurana, 2013: 124-125. Emphasis added)
•
“The academically-oriented constituencies within universities exerted a powerful pull in the
opposite direction—often expressing a sharp disdain for anything practical (e.g., by preferring
‘pure’ sciences and liberal arts), and urging for more scientific approaches to practical
problems (e.g., the development of engineering and the applied sciences).” (Fourcade and
Khurana, 2013: 124-125. Emphasis added)
•
“Finally, philanthropies (on which the new schools were financially and symbolically
dependent) had their own agenda, too: they saw themselves as agents of social progress,
moral education, and institutional innovation.” (Fourcade and Khurana, 2013: 124-125.
Emphasis added)
The shift toward science
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The sciences as norm
“The high prestige of the natural sciences after the Second World War, and the
success of applied mathematics in dealing with military problems during it,
encouraged the widespread belief in the late 1940s and 1950s that science could
be applied to managerial and business problems and science research into these
problems should be supported.” (Whitley, 1986: 171)
•
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If science is the answer, what is the question?
“Anyone who spends time in an elite business school today knows that it is a place
riddled with contradictions. Faculty are hired and promoted on the basis of
discipline-oriented research that . . . often has little or no bearing on the practice
of management.” (Khurana, 2007: 369-370)
•
“Most management problems are ill-structured. They are messy, involving complex
interdependencies, multiple goals, and considerable ambiguity, and their nature is
much dependent on the conceptual lens through which they are viewed.” (Teece
and Winter, 1984 117)
The uses of theory
• Abend (2008) lists seven meanings of the term theory in social
science:
• “[I]n the case of theory the problem stems from the erroneous
belief that there is something—indeed, one thing—out there for
the word ‘theory’ to really correspond to.” (Abend, 2008: 182)
• Theory are both general and lends themselves to empirical research
work
• “To qualify as theory, assertions must form a coherent and
parsimonious framework that is sufficiently general to capture a
broad range of empirical situations . . . but precise enough to allow
scholars to test propositions and hypotheses.” (Boxenbaum and
Rouleau, 2011: 274)
Theories about management
• Theories need to be (1) either useful in terms of the
ability to shed light on empirical matters, or (2) guide
managerial practices.
• In the former case, theories are tools that to a various
degrees ”do the job” for the analyst; in such a
pragmatic view, the choice of theory is a combination
of preferences, conventions, and opportunities being
identified (e.g., the influence of ”management
fashions”)
• In the latter case, theories are part of the ”professional
tool-box” both internalized and applied by the
manager, i.e., theories shape practices.
The ”tool box view”: Elites in training
(1)
• Debra Schleef’s (2006) study of the paradoxes of “elites in
training”:
• “The process of becoming professional includes learning to
think critically and to question assumptions. Far from being
unwilling dupes of ideological indoctrination, students are
self-reflective, and they strategically accommodate and
resist the ideologies of their education.” (Schleef, 2006: 4)
• “The most important audience for professional ideology . . .
is the professionals themselves—they need to believe in
the higher mandate that the professionals are alleged to
embody.” (Schleef, 2006: 5. Emphasis added)
Elites in training (2)
•
•
Students gradually internalize privileges in the forms of skills and “worldviews”
(“to think like a manager or a lawyer”):
“Students go from viewing the skills of business and law as a ‘common sense’
credential to unique, valued styles of reasoning that have changed the way they
think”. (Schleef, 2006: 201).
•
Danielle, a law schools student at “Graham university” who “firmly believed during
her first year of law school that most lawyers were overpaid and took advantage of
their powerful position in society, now says without criticism: ‘Lawyers work really,
really hard . . . the money is deserved. I think lawyers are really, really smart. I
think they are very articulate and on top of things’”. (Schleef, 2006: 2)
•
In this appropriation of resources that helps business school students ”think like a
manager,” theories play an active role.
The production of management theory
• The “cultural circuit of capitalism” (Thrift, 2005):
“Business schools, management consultants,
management gurus and the media.”
• Theory are not always produced in the academy and
thereafter disseminated to industry through the
conduit of management consultants; at times,
consultants construct models and in other cases
legislation or industry initiatives influence managerial
practice in turn being examined in academic research.
Theory production is entangled with many different
actors and institutions.
The Science in Management course
• A distinction between ”social theory view” and
”economic theories” of management (as demonstrated
by e.g., Anna Jonsson’s two papers); ”soft” and ”hard”
theories.
• The engagement with predominant theoretical
perspectives (Lectures, paper reports submitted).
• The ability to evaluate and critically assess theories and
models and accompanying ”truth claims” (e.g., Vedran
Omanovic’s seminar, Assign. 3).
• The ability to assess one’s own theoretical assumptions
(Assign. 2)
In summary
• Management theories are more or less useful depending on what aspects
of organizations the analyst want to understand. A ”perspectivist view.”
• Few theories are ”true” (in a natural science sense of the term), but still
they can be useful if human actors believe they accurately depict reality or
are helpful in accomplishing certain managerial tasks (see e.g., Karl
Weick).
• At times, theories can ”become true” if actors behave in accordance with
what they predict and prescribe; they are performative inasmuch as they
provide guidelines for collective action.
• In other cases, theories may have ”unintended consequences” (Merton,
1936), as in the case of e.g., ”non-parternalist leadership” being
understood as ”no leadership at all.”
• Skilled researcher and practicing managers chose theories that suit their
interests and objectives; managerial work is a form of ”reflection in
action” (Schön, 1983)
Literature
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Abend, Gabriel, (2008), The meaning of ‘theory,’Sociological Theory, 26(2): 173-189.
Boxenbaum, Eva and Rouleau, Linda, (2011), New knowledge production as bricolage:
Metaphors and scripts in organizational theory, Academy of Management Review, 36(2): 272296.
Fourcade, Marion and Khurana, Rakesh, (2013), From social control to financial economics:
The linked ecologies of economics and business in twentieth century America, Theory and
Society, 42(2): 121–159.
Khurana, Rakesh, (2007), From higher aims to hired hands: The social transformation of
American business schools and the unfulfilled promise of management as a profession,
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Merton, Robert K., (1936), The unanticipated consequences of purposive social action,
American Sociological Review, 1(6): 894-904.
Schleef, Debra J., (2006), Managing elites: Professional socialization in law and business
schools, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Schön, D.A., (1983), The Reflective Practitioner, New York: Arena.
Teece, David J. and Winter, Sidney G. (1984), The limits of neoclassical theory in management
education, American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 74(2): 116-121.
Whitley, Richard, (1986), The transformation of business finance into financial economics:
The role of academic expansion and changes in the U.S. capital markets, Accounting,
Organizations, and Society, 11: 171-192.