Impact and Management Research: Exploring Relationships between Temporality, Dialogue, Reflexivity and Praxis
| Author | Jean Bartunek,Bill Cooke,David Denyer,Katy Mason,Nic Beech,Robert MacIntosh |
| Published date | 01 January 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12207 |
| Date | 01 January 2017 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 28, 3–13 (2017)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12207
Impact and Management Research:
Exploring Relationships between
Temporality, Dialogue, Reflexivity
and Praxis
Robert MacIntosh, Nic Beech,1Jean Bartunek,2Katy Mason,3Bill Cooke4
and David Denyer5
School of Social Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK, 1University of Dundee,
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN, UK, 2Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill MA-
02467-3809, USA, 3University of Lancaster, Bailrigg, Lancaster LA1 4YX, UK, 4University of York,
Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK, and 5Cranfield University, College Rd, Cranfield, Bedford, MK43 0AL, UK
Corresponding author email: Robert.MacIntosh@hw.ac.uk
This paper introduces the special issue focusing on impact. We present the four papers
in the special issue and synthesize their key themes, including dialogue, reflexivity and
praxis. In addition, we expand on understandings of impact by exploring how, when and
for whom management research creates impact and we elaboratefour ideal types of im-
pact by articulating both the constituencies for whom impact occurs and the forms it
might take. We identify temporality as critical to a more nuanced conceptualization of
impact and suggest that some forms of impact are performative in nature. We conclude
by suggesting that management as a discipline would benefit from widening the range
of comparator disciplines to include disciplines such as art, education and nursing where
practice, research and scholarship are more overtly interwoven.
How, when and for whom does management
research create impact? This has been a question
for decades (see Bartunek and Rynes, 2014) and
one that does not seem to have been resolved (e.g.
Nobel, 2016). Yet, this is clearly an important
issue for many people. Hence this special issue of
the British Journal of Management attracted the
highest number of submissions that the journal
has received for a special issue. It draws together
four papers that seek to address the question of
how management research might create impact.
In everyday usage, impact is defined as the ac-
tion of one object coming forcibly into contact
with another. Fortunately, there may be limited
evidence of peer-reviewed research outputs com-
ing ‘forcibly’ into contact with policy and prac-
tice. Our hope in this special issue is that we can
suggest a richer conceptualization of impact that
moves beyond this linear sense.
Bresnen and Burrell (2012) note that, over the
centuries, courtly, aristocratic, ecclesiastical and
mercantile patronage played a role in enabling
research and practice across the arts and sciences
whilst shaping the research agenda. Who, then,
are the contemporary patrons of management
research? And what do they get for their patron-
age? Our research is supported by our universi-
ties, by governmental funding agencies, by indus-
try and occasionally by individual curiosity. Some
argue that ‘disputes on the purpose and nature
of management research appear to have taken on
some of the characteristics of language games’
(Romme et al., 2015, p. 545). Indeed, one is left to
wonder whether ‘the only real beneficiaries of the
© 2017 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
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