Editorial
| Author | David Knights,John Burgoyne,Hugh Willmott |
| Date | 01 March 1997 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.00033 |
| Published date | 01 March 1997 |
This issue had its origins in the ‘Contrasting
Research Styles in Management’ stream of the
British Academy of Management Conference at
Bradford in 1992.
At that time there was concern about how rep-
resentative of the diverse interests of the wider
management research community the British
Academy of Management and its conference was.
Internal debate about such questions had been
newly focused by the recent research assessment
exercise. This had concentrated minds on the
‘strength’ and ‘credibility’ of sub-discipline areas,
different forms and media of research and the
variety of meaning and practices associated with
terms like multi- and interdisciplinary research.
Management academics had also been asking
whether the area was fairly treated in grant and
resource allocation compared with other economic
and social sciences, and further afield, the natural
and mathematical disciplines. As reviewers, man-
agement academics were alleged to make con-
fused but devaluing assessments of each others’
research. In turn this was seen by some to result
in an underrating of vibrant but immature multi-
disciplinary work. Others took the view that those
espousing multi- and interdisciplinary research
really were confused and pursuing research of a
lesser scholarly character than our counterparts
in the social sciences.
At worst, management research has tended
to command little respect from peers, business
practitioners and indeed academics working in
the base discipline fields from which intellectual
inspiration is drawn. Applied work had no call on
public funds being sustainable by the market, and
was vulnerable to the criticism that it is flawed by
its instrumental commitment and unquestioning
attitude to its purposes. Purer or more critical re-
search, in contrast, was seen as having no practical
utility, and indeed often sought not to risk such
contamination!
The intention of this special issue is to provide
a focus and forum for a variety of research and
scholarship that engages with a number of the
challenges and problems of pursuing multi- and
interdisciplinary research. In preparing the call
for papers we were particularly interested in the
plurality, originality, multi- and interdisciplinarity
of management research, in contrast to what might
be thought of as more traditional single disci-
plinary perspectives where management is simply
divided up into a multiplicity of theoretically
distinct, yet mutually incompatible approaches to
its study.
The resulting collection is certainly pluralistic,
covering as it does empirical, theoretical and re-
flective papers, overt attempts at multi-disciplinarity
and the development of special approaches.
A conventional view of the sub-disciplines of
management might identify the following: behav-
ioural/social areas, human resource management
and development, marketing, finance, accounting,
strategy, management sciences and operational
research, systems, information management, inter-
national management, social responsibility and
ethics, management development, etc. It is notable
that submissions to this special issue and the
papers selected for publication can be judged, in a
complex way, to be weighted towards the social
sciences. This is a contestable list, and a contest-
able judgement. It is worth reflecting on why there
is this bias. Leaving aside the preference amongst
some sub-disciplines to publish in specialist jour-
nals, one view is that the behavioural and social
sciences are more sophisticated at dealing with
these kinds of issues, being thoughtful and re-
flective about their methodologies, or indeed that
they are taking over from, or incorporating the
traditional role of philosophy as an overarching,
uniting discipline. A somewhat similar argument
can be expressed in a very different tone by say-
ing that the non-behavioural disciplines have a
more established legitimacy in their own fields,
and perhaps also enjoy greater harmony between
academics and practitioners, so that they are
more inclined to get on with straightforwardly
British Journal of Management, Vol. 8, 1–2 (1997)
Editorial
© 1997 British Academy of Management
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