The Value & Purpose of Management Education

Looking Back and Thinking Forward in Global Focus

Eric Cornuel, Howard Thomas, Matthew Wood, Eric Cornuel, Howard Thomas, Matthew Wood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000586053
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economía
• Subtopic: Desarrollo sostenible

Without a doubt, business schools have been a success story in higher education over the last 50 years (the period of EFMD's existence). Even so, they have come under scrutiny, and attack, over their academic legitimacy and value proposition for business and society. In this book, drawn from a special issue of Global Focus, the EFMD has selected around 25 of the best, most thoughtful short papers published in Global Focus to examine the role and purpose of EFMD in the evolution of management education.

Each of the chapters interpret current strategic debates about the evolution of business schools and their paradigms and also identify possible strategic options for handling uncertain, volatile futures. These papers can be broadly categorized into four consistent themes: the first theme is concerned with the purpose and value proposition of management education; the second theme focuses on a perceived need for new business models and how to design and build them; the third theme addresses the question of the impact of the business school on business and society given the increasingly academic pursuits of business schools and their often weak links to the business community – the so-called rigour/relevance dilemma; and the fourth theme concerns how to 'map' and design business school futures in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous crisis-oriented environment.

This impressive collection of insights from business management leaders from across the globe is inspiring reading for higher education leaders, policy makers and business leaders seeking insight into the future of management education.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Section_03 Rigour-Relevance and Business School Impact

DOI: 10.4324/9781003261889-17

“Co-production depends on relationships. You can’t do it if you don’t get out beyond the boundaries of the university and meet people, engage with them, talk to them and develop good personal relationships. To me it’s fundamentally about relationship building and a willingness to experiment”

Andrew Pettigrew

‘Scholarly impact and the co-production hypothesis’

Audio version

‘Scholarly impact’ and the co-production hypothesis

DOI: 10.4324/9781003261889-18

How can we make academic research into management more relevant to practitioners? Andrew Pettigrew has some suggestions.

There is, to say the least, some scepticism throughout the management community about the impact of management research – who listens, who notices, what consequences does it have? This is something that scholars and also potential users of management research are increasingly concerned about.

There are a number of hypotheses one can make about how this situation can be improved; how research into management issues can be both of a high scholarly quality and of real use to practitioners. In other words, how do we give management research “scholarly impact”?

The first hypothesis is that scholars in the area should have the aspiration to do both scholarly and practical research work – to tackle the “double hurdle”.

The second concerns the quality of relationships held by the academics and the ability sometimes to work through “knowledge brokers”, or intermediaries.

Third is the quality of ideas.

Finally, the key hypothesis concerns the co-production of research by scholars and practitioners.

The ‘double hurdle’

Research into management often seems to be a dichotomy – you either have an impact on scholarship or you have an impact on the worlds of policy and practice. But rather, we should aspire to meet a double hurdle, where we seek to do work that has both a quality of scholarship and a practical impact.

The current reality of course is that people diverge and define themselves either as a scholar, spending all their time writing articles and books and others who define themselves as an applied researcher or consultant and don’t worry too much about where their work is published but much more concerned about who they can influence in the “real” world.

It’s rare to find people who aspire to produce work of the highest scholarly quality and deal with practical issues at the same time. Our aim should be to encourage people to aspire to this.

It will involve a cultural change that will shift people’s focus from publishing output, writing articles and books – which to me is an intermediate good – to the final good, which is having scholarly and practical impact. At lot of the incentive systems in academia have unwittingly focused people on the intermediate good.

This is not to decry the value of published research but somehow we have to turn people’s gaze from this intermediate good to the final good. And that will not be easy

Relationships

Another issue is the problem of engaging with potential users of research. The one thing we know about user engagement is that very often it depends on how particular issues are regarded at the time by potential users – are these issues rising or falling in their list of priorities?

Often, too, they become interested in something because they know, or have heard of, the academic involved. It’s really about brands. For example, Michael Porter is a “brand” and therefore what he says is likely to generate interest and to be accepted as authentic. The same is true of certain research centres and other institutions that have gained general public acclaim. The Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, for example, can be characterised as such a brand, as can the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies, also in the UK.

And it is because they are so influenced by branding, by the reputation of individual academics or of the centres where they work, that potential users of research can be fickle.

If the director of an institution changes, something goes with him or her. Some users may walk away because their allegiance was to that person.

So user receptivity is unpredictable and person-dependent. It’s built on relationships.

It’s also dependent on context and timing.

As an academic you can come forward with some really great concept or idea—lees say it’s about technological change and find that there’s absolutely no interest in it whatsoever. Three years later something has stirred up the political nest and everybody is fixated with technological change.

This means that academics have to be visible over the long term. They have to have sustainable long-term relationships.

What I think this means for younger scholars is that they not only have to develop intellectual capital as they build up their work they also have to develop social capital.

Some of them may know that intuitively but my feeling is that they don’t go out and deliberately build networks.

But if you want your work to have impact then you must be a networker. You’ve not only got to have relationships but you also have to know how to sustain them and how to exploit them.

And these networks must be global. One of the problems I see at the moment is that too many European academics are becoming rather self-concerned with their own academic institutions. This is fine. But if it is at the expense of neglecting North American institutions then it is a mistake. Networks must be global and building networks in North America is particularly important to this.

“It is because potential users of research are so influenced by branding, by the reputation of individual academics or of the centres where they work, that they are so fickle”

These networks should also extend to the corporate world. If you are an expert in, say, the financial services industry you need to know chief executives, senior people, strategy people in the big banks.

It also means having networks inside government, knowing senior civil servants, consulting firms, think tanks, even journalists, who often act as translators and amplifiers of academic work in the management field. The fact that someone writes about your work in the Financial Times make people interested.

The quality of ideas

Another issue is the belief that some people have is that dissemination is impact – “if only I could write better or talk like Tony Blair, then there wouldn’tbeaproblem. We are such dreadful communicatorsbut if only I could disseminate better then there wouldn’t be a problem”.

To me that is fantasy and trivialises the problem. I’m not denying the importance of dissemination or skill in writing or talking because we are in the influence business and people influence through the written and spoken word. But no matter how good a communicator you are, if you ask the wrong questions and pose them in the wrong areas then no amount of accessible or skilful communication will produce any sort of impact.

Dissemination is not impact. You can’t guarantee impact just by writing well or talking well. You have to ask the right questions, pursue the right themes at the right time. Accessibility on its own is not enough. There is a dissemination issue but not just a dissemination issue.

Co-production

This leads on to the key hypothesis of co-production.

I can sit here and work on my own or with other academics and that’s fine. But if I go out and say I want to work with McKinsey or PwC or whoever on this, that doesn’t mean setting up an advisory group so that they come here and give me advice.

Co-production means the involvement of partners throughout the complete cycle of research. First, it involves the scoping and direction of a research project; second, the commissioning of research; third, the leading and managing of research; and fourth, the delivering of the research results and ensuring their impact.

The hypothesis here is that early and continuous engagement increase the probability of impact. There is no set model for co-production and it is encouraging that many scholars are now willing to experiment with various forms of engagement to see which works most effectively.

Of course, the complete antithesis to co-production is what one might call “smash and grab” research, which, amazingly enough, is still going on. Smash and grab research involves a highly unilateral state of affairs where a scholar can gain access to an organisation, go and grab the information and data, and then write it all up in scholarly isolation.

“No matter how good a communicator you are, if you ask the wrong questions and pose them in the wrong areas then no amount of accessible or skilful communication will produce any sort of impact”

Not only is this unfair to the organisation it is also unfair to other scholars who may come along later and be refused access to the same organisation because of the poor behaviour of their predecessors.

Again, my hypothesis is that co-production, this involvement in the whole research cycle from the inception to the dissemination, increases the probability of impact. You can’t guarantee it, of course,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Section 01_ The Purpose and Vision of a Business School
• Section 02_ Business Models and the Paradigm Trap
• Section 03_ Rigour-Relevance and Business School Impact
• Section 04_ Uncertain Futures and Transformational Change
• Commentary: Where do we go from here?