Not Simply Returning to the Same Answer Over and Over Again: Reframing Relevance
| Author | Gerard P. Hodgkinson,Ken Starkey |
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00757.x |
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
Not Simply Returning to the Same
Answer Over and Over Again:
Reframing Relevance
Gerard P. Hodgkinson and Ken Starkey
1
Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK, and
1
Nottingham University
Business School, University of Nottingham, Jubilee Campus, Nottingham NG8 1BB, UK
Corresponding author email: g.p.hodgkinson@lubs.leeds.ac.uk
From its earliest days, the field of business and management studies has wrestled with
fundamental questions concerning its nature and purpose: for whom and to what ends is
scholarly research ultimately directed? However, amid unprecedented changes to the
world of work, over the past two and a half decades these questions have become of
central importance to academicians, practitioners and policy-makers. The British
Academy of Management (BAM), through the work of its Research Policy Committee
and the British Journal of Management, has played a central role in these
developments. This paper traces the lineage of BAM’s contribution and offers a critical
assessment of the current state of play with regard to the so-called relevance problem,
arguing that design science and critical realism have the potential to take the field
forward by transcending the ‘either/or’ game into which the rigour versus relevance
debate has a tendency to develop.
The fact is, Phaedrus, that writing involves a similar
disadvantage to painting. The productions of
paintings look like living beings, but if you ask
them a question they maintain a solemn silence.
The same holds true for written words; you might
suppose that they understand what they are saying,
but if you ask them what they mean by anything
they simply return the same answer over and over
again. (Plato, Phaedrus)
In this paper we present a critical overview of the
major developments that have occurred with
regard to the question of relevance in business
and management studies (BMS) and related fields
of scholarly research over the past two decades.
In particular, we trace the evolution of debates
stimulated initially through the deliberations of
the Research Policy Committee of the British
Academy of Management (BAM), which culmi-
nated in publication of the paper by Tranfield
and Starkey (1998) entitled ‘The nature, social
organization and promotion of management
research: towards policy’. In reviewing the con-
siderable volume of literature that has amassed
on both sides of the Atlantic in part at least as a
result of the various conversations stimulated by
the publication of this work, which appeared in
the British Journal of Management (BJM), our
goal is to enhance the prospects for the emer-
gence of a trans-disciplinary field of inquiry that
can authentically meet the twin imperatives of
scholarly rigour and social usefulness, at a time
when many management, economic and social
‘truths’ are ripe for rethinking. We believe that
business and management research is well placed
to make an important contribution to ongoing
debates pertaining to the fundamental nature and
purpose of the social sciences in academia and
wider practitioner and policy-making circles.
The business and management field is not so
much a discipline as a confluence of disciplines,
uniquely situated at the nexus of practice and
contributing (social science) disciplines (Petti-
grew, 2001). A number of commentators, dating
back to Herbert Simon’s treatise, The Sciences of
British Journal of Management, Vol. 22, 355–369 (2011)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00757.x
r2011 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management r2011 British Academy of Management. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
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