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Working Paper Series Beyond Rigour and Relevance: A Critical Realist Approach to Business Education Jawad Syed Kent Business School John Mingers Kent Business School Peter Murray University of the Sunshine Coast

Working Paper No.191 February 2009

Beyond Rigour and Relevance

Beyond Rigour and Relevance: A Critical Realist Approach to Business Education Dr. Jawad Syed and Professor John Mingers Kent Business School University of Kent Canterbury, Kent CT2 7PE, UK Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]

Associate Professor Peter A. Murray Faculty of Business University of the Sunshine Coast Queensland, Australia Email: [email protected]

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Beyond Rigour and Relevance: A Critical Realist Approach to Business Education "Can you do addition?" the White Queen asked. "What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?" "I don't know," said Alice. "I lost count." (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass)

Abstract

This paper takes a critical realist perspective to understand the research-practice

gap in the field of business and management. To investigate issues surrounding the rigour versus relevance debate, we examine how the divergent perspectives of scholars and practitioners can be bridged by a critical realist approach in relation to: (1) the research paradigm: instead of confining their research within methodological purism, scholars may need to deploy any research paradigm to investigate a phenomenon in its context, (2) context and causality: critical realism provides an ontological grounding for interpretivist research reaffirming the importance of a focus on context, meaning and interpretation as causal influences, (3) methodological rigidity: multiple research methods will be more important when addressing research-practice gaps since they are more receptive to interdisciplinary functions and contexts in time and space than traditional methodologies, and (4) ethical aspects of business research highlighting the need to engage with the knowledge agenda of not only the university but also society overall. The critical nature of management studies we contend also helps to explain why at least certain research-practice gaps can be treated as natural because of divergent preferences of scholars and practitioners.

Key Words: critical management studies; critical realism; management education


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Introduction In his recent piece in the Financial Times on the accessibility of business research, Michael Skapinker (2008) argued that unlike their counterparts in law, medicine and engineering, business school scholars predominantly focus on producing work that is too abstract, jargonfilled, and theoretical to interest practitioners. Pointing towards the prevailing publish-or-perish incentives at universities,1 Skapinker alleges that business scholars “prefer to adorn their work with scholarly tables, statistics and jargon because it makes them feel like real academics” (para. 12).

Although Skapinker might have overstated the close relationship between research and practice in medicine and other professions2, closing the research-practice gap in the field of business and management is a challenge. Current research practices are equivocal for many scholars; see for example Ghoshal's (2005) and Ghoshal and Moran's (1996) critique of bad management theories and Transaction Cost Theory, and Gioia's (2002) critique of a narrow emphasis on shareholder value. Scientific papers in organisational research contain far too much detail over the methods and analytical procedures employed according to Gelade (2006). The practical, organisational implications of research is a major issue for these scholars and business academics are not doing a good job of educating managers.

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Such as the need to publish in prestigious peer-reviewed journals to get tenure at a US university or to rank high in the UK's Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).

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For example, Klein (2008) suggests us to try asking a family physician about an article we recently read in a renowned medical journal.


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These issues have often been cast in terms of the rigour versus relevance debate (e.g., Bridgman, 2007; Pettigrew, 2001; Reed, 2000; Starkey and Madan, 2001), the presumption being that management research may be sufficiently rigorous but lacking in relevance. The debate is strongly related to the distinction between Mode 1 and Mode 2 research originating from the hard sciences by Gibbons et al (1994). Mode 1 knowledge is the traditional, discipline-based largely theoretical work aimed at understanding how the world works, while Mode 2 knowledge is transdisciplinary and is concerned with getting things to work in practice.

To the extent that the research-practice gap has not been sufficiently explored, this paper illustrates how a critical realist (CR) perspective can address many divergent research approaches. It explores a CR approach in solving problems related to research design, causality and context, and methodological rigidity. For research design, it is feasible that multiple research approaches may work better, not just those located within traditional research paradigms. Scholars accordingly may need to deploy any research approach as may be required to investigate a phenomenon in its context. For causality, the need to reaffirm a focus on context, meaning and interpretation is equally if not more important than one-dimensional studies of a single phenomena. In relation to methodological rigidity, business problems are multidimensional and cross-functional requiring greater breadth and depth in research. Accordingly, although abstract, universalistic theories often hold sway, scholars may need to situate their research within the realist context of time, space and culture.

With CR theory, this paper underscores the need to enhance the ontological component of business research. Thus, the CR natural and social realism perspective as well as the concepts of


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structures and generative mechanisms (Dobson, 2002; Mingers, 2004a), come sharply into focus. Critical realism allows for the resolution of research-practice inconsistencies through a reinterpretation of the activity of research. It offers a notion of causality that is consistent with the quest for answering the underlying ‘why’ questions posed in business research (Bhaskar, 1978; 1998). It also provides interpretivists with a richer ontology by accepting their epistemological insights concerning the crucial role of meaning, interpretation, whilst maintaining the existence of both social and material phenomena (Smith, 2006). We consider CR as epistemological pluralist (Lipscomb, 2008), useful in recognising the existence of logical connections between the ontological, epistemological, and methodological premises of research.

The paper is structured as follows. First, we offer an overview of CR (discussed next) and discuss the importance of methodological plurality within a CR perspective of business research. Second, we discuss the value of pursuing multiple research paradigms and CR research across interdisciplinary functions. Third, we explore how CR is a useful approach for the study of a phenomenon within its context since the focus of research is on interpreting different meanings and their causal links. Fourth, while seeking to make a contribution to the research-practice gap, the paper pays special attention to the ethical aspects of business research and how CR plays a role. Therefore, while we highlight CR's potential to advance business theory and research, we also argue for a stronger link between various stakeholder groups and a more systematic approach to the use of cumulative empirical evidence. Overall, our contribution lies in how CR can be applied to resolve research-practice inconsistencies by reinterpreting the activity of research, by better connecting causal mechanisms to events in practice, and how the researchpractice gap can be closed.


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Critical Realism Critical realism was developed primarily by Bhaskar (1978; 1979; 1993) as a way of overcoming the limitations of existing philosophical paradigms, e.g., empiricism, interpretivism and postmodernism (also see Adler, Forbes, and Willmott, 2007; Archer et al., 1998). In recent years it has generated much interest in a range of disciplines (Ackroyd and Fleetwood, 2000; Danermark et al., 2002; Fleetwood, 1999; Learmonth, 2007; Mingers, 2009; Mingers, 2004a; Pawson and Tilley, 1997; Reed, 2005; Sayer, 2000); it seems to offer a way out of the sterile philosophical debates and into research practice that recognises and tries to address the complexities of the real world. The primary characteristics of CR are:

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A commitment to a realist ontology, i.e., to the existence of causal mechanisms whose interactions generate the events and occurrences of the world. These mechanisms may be unobservable directly (e.g., social structures or ideas and categories) yet we can accept their existence because of their causal efficacy. This undermines the empiricist illusion of the primacy of empirical data (the actualist fallacy);

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An epistemology that accepts, with interpretivism, that our knowledge is always socially and historically relative, but maintains a distinction between the transitive, subjectdependent aspects of knowledge, and the intransitive domain of the objects of our knowledge. This undermines the interpretivist and post-modern claims that being itself must always be limited to human knowledge of that being (the epistemic fallacy)3;

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Bhaskar uses this term (epistemic fallacy) to refer to the notion that (the intransitive) reality is exhausted by our (transitive) knowledge of it. In the glossary to his book Plato etc., Bhaskar (1994: 253) defines it as ‘The analysis or definition of statements about being in terms of statements about our knowledge (of being)’.


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A commitment to methodological pluralism based on its pluralist ontology. Since CR accepts the existence of a variety of structures – material, social and conceptual – it also accepts that we need a variety of research methods to access them;

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The claim that no social theory can be purely descriptive, it must always be to some extent evaluative, and thus there can be no positivistic split between facts and values. And, following from this, the view that social theory is inevitably transformative, providing an explanatory critique that logically entails action (Mingers, 2009).

While space restricts here a comprehensive discussion of CR, we nonetheless explore CR concepts which are fundamental to the purpose of this paper; in particular, its conception of causality, its view of agency and structure; and its view of social science. First, CR draws a distinction between the events that actually occur (or do not occur despite being expected) and the underlying structures or mechanisms which generate or cause them. These ‘generative mechanisms’ are relatively enduring and have causal properties or tendencies. They may be observable or unobservable and it is their interactions that generate the actual events that occur (or do not). Only a small subset of these events are observed and recorded empirically to become relevant to scientific enquiry. The objective of science is then to take these empirical observations and explain them in terms of underlying generative mechanisms and structures. Its methodology is retroductive or abductive – it hypothesises mechanisms or structures that, if they existed, would explain the observed results. In this, it goes beyond empiricism which reduces science simply to the patterns of empirical events that actually occur (actualism); and beyond interpretivism or constructivism which reduces the ontology of the world to our experiences of that world. Moreover, CR maintains a stratified or hierarchical view of causality by observing


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and explaining events within a local context generating causal mechanisms at work. These could be at a variety of exogenous levels – types of organisations, geographical regions, and cultures, or endogenous levels: relationships between individuals, groups, and organisations.

Second, CR has a sophisticated view of the interaction between agency and structure. As developed originally by Bhaskar (1979) it was known as the transformational model of social action (TMSA) and bore many similarities to Giddens’ (1984) structuration theory. CR argues that there is an inextricable bond between agency and structure – structure conditions action and action reproduces or transforms structure - but the two are distinct and yet equally real in an ontological sense. However, CR recognises that social structures are intrinsically different to physical structures. In particular, social structure:

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Does not exist independently of social activity;

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Cannot be empirically identified except through such activities;

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Is not independent of actors’ conceptions of their activities;

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Is relative to particular times and cultures.

The concept of social structure was further developed by Archer (1995) to emphasise more strongly the dualism of action and structure as two equally real, interacting systems (Mingers, 2004b). Agents are causal mechanisms in themselves who act on the basis of their reasons and motives. However, activity is always conditioned or moulded by a pre-existing social structure of roles and expectations. In its turn, activity transforms or reproduces the social structure. The clear distinction between the two can be seen in Archer’s morphogenetic model: at time T1 the


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existing structure conditions actions that are about to take place; at time T2 activity occurs; then at time T3, as a result of the activity, the social structure is either transformed or reproduced by the activity.

The third aspect of CR to be considered, and partly why it is called ‘critical’ realism, is its view that social science is inherently and unavoidably evaluative – value-full rather than value-free (Bhaskar, 1993; Mingers, 2009). This is, of course, diametrically opposed to the Humean opposition of facts and values. The first part of the argument is that the subject matter of social science is itself always already expressed evaluatively and that social science should not try to reduce or obscure this by redescribing the phenomena in neutral terms. For example, while a) “John was murdered” and b) “John ceased breathing” may both be true descriptions of the same event, ‘a’ is to be preferred because: i) it is more accurate and particular – ‘a’ implies ‘b’ but not vice versa; ii) ‘b’ tends to carry the presumption that John died naturally, since that is more common, when that is not in fact the case; and iii) ‘a’ maximises the explanatory power of the theory required to explain it. In social science, ‘facts’ already come with ‘values’ attached. The second part aims to show that social science is also committed to various kinds of societal change – explanatory critique. Science seeks to discover the ‘truth’ about society and then to disseminate that truth. Where it finds groups of people who hold clearly false beliefs about how society works it must be committed to removing those false beliefs. Furthermore, if social science identifies social structures or institutions that are maintaining the false beliefs then it is equally committed to removing them too. If it is not, then it will be committing a ‘performative contradiction’ that is espousing one view (truth) but acting differently.


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Research Paradigms, Interdisciplinarity and Multimethodology Business and management schools are in general structured along fairly rigid disciplinary lines (Knights and Willmott, 1997). In part, this reflects a desire to emulate traditional disciplines such as sociology and economics, and in part it mirrors the functional organisation imperative often called the 'silo mentality'. Disciplines such as management science, marketing, HRM, accounting and strategy have developed their own theories, research paradigms and hierarchy of journals.

In the same way that the complexity of real-world problems requires a degree of interdisciplinarity, research equally requires different research methods – mixed-method research (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 2003) or multi-methodology (Mingers and Gill, 1997). While there is growing acceptance of the value of multi-methodology (see for example a major business research methods text such as Bryman and Bell (2003)), there is still a degree of resistance by top journals (Mingers, 2003) and grant awarding bodies. This relates to the conservative and disciplining nature of the disciplines and to the battles over paradigm incommensurability which is still fought (Mingers, 2004c).

In his study of research methods in management accounting, Modell (2007) used CR to propose a framework for validating mixed methods research. This approach is helpful in developing a coherent philosophical foundation for producing knowledge. Modell notes that in contrast to contemporary pragmatist thought, implicitly or explicitly guiding much mixed methods research, CR provides a unified and consistent philosophical foundation for combining research methods and theories. Similarly, Smith's (2006) study of the 'standard' accounts of research in information sciences suggests that a predominant reliance on positivism or interpretivism may be a reason for


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persistent research-practice inconsistencies. These inconsistencies are located between researchers’ stated or implicit ontological assumptions and actual practices and outcomes, calling for a (re)consideration of the underlying ontological premise of research and practice.

There is also some evidence that CR ethnography can facilitate an expansion of epistemological boundaries. In their study of research-practice gaps in the nursing profession, Porter and Ryan (1996) suggest that it is possible for researchers to give due attention to social structures without losing focus on individuals. They argue that CR ethnography works under the assumption that the relationship between social structures and individual actors involves a bilateral process. While the enabling and constraining structural conditions influence individual actions, those actions in turn either maintain or transform social structures. Porter and Ryan conclude that the theory-practice gap in nursing is neither the result of clinicians' ignorance of nor antipathy to theory, but is largely generated by the lack of resources available to nurses, which in turn is a reflection of the social structure of capitalism within which nurses operate. Similarly, in their exploration of the notion of CR in the nursing profession, McEvoy and Richards (2003) argued that CR provides a coherent framework for evaluation research that is based on the understanding of causal mechanisms.

In his book on CR and education research, Scott (2000) offers a 'transcendental realist' alternative to the false dichotomy of empiricism/hermeneutics and, by so doing argues in 'defence of educational research’ (p. 7). Transcendental realism has its roots in Kantian philosophy implying that individuals have a perfect understanding of the limitations of their own minds. Scott adopts this approach in two main stages. First he argues for a transcendental realist


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framework for analysing academic research. He then utilises this framework in engagements with the areas of dispute, foci and approaches in research, before setting out the way forward. Scott compares empiricism and radical relativism with transcendental realism. He addresses the ontological question of how educational activities are structured and the methodological consequences for researching these activities. Ontologically, Scott defines the object of study of educational research as comprising the relationship between structure and agency; epistemologically, he highlights the value-embeddedness of research practice; and methodologically he suggests that social research must incorporate an ethnographic or qualitative element.

Although the hermeneutic approach has arguably become dominant within large swathes of the sociology of education, quantitative research remains the firm favourite of educational managers seeking definite answers to practical problems and legitimation of their policy decisions (Maton, 2001). Scott (2000) confronts beliefs in this approach with four main problems: the ways in which systematic unpredictability undermines predictive claims; its misunderstanding of the nature of open and closed systems4; its conflation of association with causation; and its wholesale neglect of the intentionality of social life. He outlines various views of the relationship between theory and practice, which either identify knowledge with theory or with practice, or argues for their difference. Scott builds upon such realist ideas as the epistemic fallacy and morphogenesis5 to argue that one needs to analyse educational knowledge in terms of power

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In closed systems, the external conditions of causal mechanism remain constant to allow them to operate consistently. In open systems, an object has powers and capabilities that are causally efficacious (Archer, 1995; Bhaskar, 1993).

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The literal meaning of morphogenesis is the physical process that gives rise to the shape of an organism. In CR, it is a conceptualisation of the dynamic nature of relations between structure and agency.


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relations, relational structures, differential allocation of resources, the operation of sanctions and rewards, re-contextualisation, and many other factors. In sum, there is significant value in researchers connecting the epistemological, methodological, and ontological nature of research in practice.

Context and Causality In resolving rigour versus relevance inconsistencies, CR can provide a different notion of causality that allows for the capturing of the underlying ‘why’ questions posed in research. Furthermore, it may give a solid ontological grounding for interpretivist research reaffirming the importance for a focus on context, meanings, and interpretation as causal influences without unnecessarily denying their existence (Smith, 2006).

Pettigrew (1997a) argues that “the challenges for management research are best captured in a series of concurrent double hurdles which together raise a wide spectrum of cognitive, social and political demands on our skills and knowledge as researchers” (p. 291). This argument is consistent with Morgan's (1983) who refers to a narrower landscape of knowledge, highlighting the need of 'conscious pluralism'. Pettigrew (1997b) suggests that it is important to elevate user engagement and embeddedness to a principal of research method contextualising of knowledge as a generic ambition of scientific endeavour (Nowotny et al., 2001). Indeed, variation in organisational, institutional, and national context can shape patterns of managerial behaviour and organisational outcomes (Pettigrew, 2001).


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Yet another contextual factor is the ethical considerations of institutions and individual researchers (e.g., their commitment to issues related to diversity or social responsibility). There is thus a multitude of factors, all of which may have divergent, possibly conflicting implications for management education and research. In sum, we argue that the contextual nature of management research and education and the causality of various structural forces must be taken into account in understanding the critical nature of management scholarship. Thus, while it is possible to find some common expectations from management scholars (e.g., in terms of the quality of their teaching and research), in depth stratifications of such expectations (or requirements) may generate different critical realities of management scholarship which remain shaped by the forces of socio-political and economic context, culture, space and time. In other words, any universalistic or simplistic approach to management learning and research may not be a feasible option.

Methodological Rigidity: Rigour and Relevance Along with the disciplinary boundaries that confine research practice, methodological rigidity exists. Historically, management research was founded on a positivist or empiricist approach and largely remained so until Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) enunciation of organisational paradigms. Although this established the validity of alternative research methodologies, much business academic research remains founded on issues of experimental design derived from the hard sciences, which become the driving force in selecting research questions rather than the needs of practitioners. It is hardly surprising then that academic research often does not address the questions and problems that trouble practitioners.


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For an example of charges and explanations of methodological purism, refer to debates surrounding a series of mainly qualitative studies of the education of ethnic minority children in England, which reported teacher racism at both organisational and classroom levels (Foster, 1990; Gillborn and Gipps, 1996; Hammersley, 1993; Troyna, 1994). Another example is the rejection of what is termed as the preoccupation of quantitative researchers with technique, and specifically their dismissal of any research that does not match the rigorous standards of the quantitative method. The complaints of Mills about the fetishism of method (Mills, 1959: 224), for instance, may fall into this category (Hammersley, 2000). What is needed, instead, Troyna (1994: 5) argues, is a perspective in which research is not construed as something pristine but as something "carried out by flesh and blood figures who are engaged in real life activities".

Critical realism, in particular through its novel ontological position, has the potential to advance business theory and research. The major benefits of CR flow from the reinterpretation of the activity of science (Ron, 2002: 140) which can then better explain previous research (see Befani, 2005; Pratschke, 2003; Ron, 2002). Indeed, a reinterpretation of the current practice of business research arguably may resolve some long-standing research-practice inconsistencies. Based on CR insights, we contest the notion of contradiction - what we term false dichotomy - of rigour versus relevance in the field of business education. The separation of rigour from relevance may be tantamount to adopting the presumption that rigour in research lacks relevance to real-world management practices. Indeed, we consider it natural to expect gaps between research and practice in any complex, diversified and specialised field. For example, in the field of work psychology, Anderson (2007) identifies six prominent but not mutually exclusive types of research: pure, fundamental, applied, action research, consultancy generated research and critical


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theory. Anderson argues that the existence of research-practice gaps are not the problem, but rather the lack of integrating processes, bridges for information exchange and policy formulation in both research and practice (p. 176). In other words, it is not actually the width of the gap that schools and policy makers should pay attention to, but rather, the lack of sufficient bridging mechanisms to span research and practice (Anderson, 2005).

Several scholars have used CR to support interdisciplinary research. For example, Danermark (2002) discusses the useful manner in which CR may lay the foundations for interdisciplinary research. A similar approach was taken by Bhaskar and Danermark (2006) in their study of interdisciplinarity and disability research.

In the field of business education, scholars have highlighted the need to reinvent business schools “geared to developing skills in reflective, collaborative and analytical thinking as well as action mindsets that enable managers to negotiate the complex tensions that exist between the conceptual and the concrete” (Starkey et al., 2004: 1523). Eldridge (1986) suggests the need for sound empirically based social science that is also seen as relevant, but there is a sting in the tail: “In so far as this kind of approach attempts to understand organisations in order that managers may more effectively control uncertainty, it may be regarded as highly relevant to management. Yet the analysis takes place on the assumptions that the existing distribution of power remains unchanged.” (p. 174). Similarly, Weick argues that:

The much lamented ‘relevance gap’ is as much a product of practitioners wedded to gurus and fads as it is of academics wedded to abstractions and fundamentals. The gap persists because practitioners forget that ‘the’ real world is actually ‘a’ world that is idiosyncratic, egocentric and unique to each person…[and]… fads and egocentric perception suggests the existence of more fundamental barriers to effectiveness, e.g.,


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ceilings on improvement, weak situations, ambiguous signals, non-obvious adaptive forms and preoccupation with vision. Joint practitioner-academic effort devoted to questions of how events come to be seen as ‘real’ could re-bridge a gap whose nature has been misidentified (Weick, 2001: S71).

This view is consistent with Eldridge's (1986) who distinguished between what he calls convivial and critical relevance when he reviewed the development of some significant contributions to management research. While recognising the practical usefulness of the research (on the impact of technology on organisations), Eldridge recognises the extent to which research failed to treat various aspects of managerial control as problematic:

It is perhaps the questions that are not asked… [and]… if we neglect to ask what a particular form of technology is designed to do, in whose interests and with what consequences, it does save a good deal of unpleasantness. If we do not inquire into the structure of domination within which typologies of technology and control systems are embedded, then the critical relevance of the theory is diminished (Eldridge, 1986: 175).

From this perspective, the notion of relevance in management research can be seen as flawed. Borrowing Eldridge's terminology, it is used or defined solely in the sense of 'congenially' relevant to a partial group, community or their representatives, rather than 'critically' relevant (Wensley, 2007).

Ethical Aspects of Management Research The prevailing view within business schools is the utilitarian one (such as the one highlighted by Skapinker (2008) in his critique of business research) that business education should be primarily concerned with enhancing business and managerial effectiveness. This can be seen in the debate about Mode 1 and Mode 2 research which takes this viewpoint for granted. However, there are alternatives which see a role for management studies as one which holds current management


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practices at arms length in order to be able to subject them to appropriate scrutiny from the wider perspective of the common social good. Grey and French (1996) and Grey (2001) contrast the managerialist view with a critical view that business education must be dissociated from managerial activities so that the claims and practices of management can be called into question. Huff and Huff, in a response to Starkey and Madan’s paper, have advocated Mode 3 research: “The purpose of Mode 3 knowledge production, generally stated, is to assure survival and promote the common good, at various levels of social aggregation” (Huff and Huff, 2001: s53).

This seems particularly necessary at this point in time when there are major concerns about the behaviour of corporations and its effects on society and the environment (Mingers, 2009):

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There have been significant breaches of legitimacy and trust (e.g., Enron, WorldCom); human rights violations; and collaboration with repressive regimes (Palazzo and Scherer, 2006; Sethi, 2002);

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Globalisation means that some corporations are both economically and indeed politically more powerful than many nation states (Beck, 2000); and

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Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the rather reluctant acceptance of the reality and consequences of global warming has led even hardened executives to accept that they are part of a problem that goes beyond short term stock valuation or even long term shareholder wealth.

In the preceding sections, we have argued that a CR perspective would enable a pluralistic and contextualised scholarship. To do so, however, would warrant a qualitatively different research


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orientation and a different model of research evaluation than the one offered by the Research Assessment Exercise or the new metrics-based Research Excellence Framework in the UK. Previous research has highlighted the need to establish a more democratically accountable form of management research that is evaluated by those whose lives and professions in organisations are directly affected in so many ways by management education (Alvesson and Wilmott, 1996). This would involve focussing attention on managing as an activity that we all do in our personal and occupational lives and how the knowledge produced in business schools is consumed in the world of work. From this perspective, business research could aim to synthesise the often competing demands of pragmatics, ethics and morality (Habermas, 1992, 1993).

However, the notion of democratic accountability of business education and research to public and organisational well-being is a role which remains largely marginalised in the prevailing conceptions of an increasingly commercialised business school. The demonstration of ‘relevance’ does not mean the pursuit of a narrow commercialisation agenda where business institutes promote a strictly managerialist view of the world (Bridgman, 2007: 425). Encouraging critical reflection in business schools and among business academics, Ali (2005: iii) argues, is not only a scholarly responsibility but also a moral imperative. For example, one must also take into account the institutional and contextual pressures which may be influencing the direction and the outcomes of academic research. Academic scholars' mission and the essence of their very existence are not merely to validate existing models and to mould their ideas into sanctioned frameworks. Rather, the essence of scholarship is to be creative, ethical, and critically contest boundaries that put a ceiling on ideas and possibilities.


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Research in epistemology as well as philosophy of science has shown why the classical distinction between observation and theory, and between fact and value, cannot be maintained – expressed in the two doctrines of modern philosophy of science, the theory-dependence of observation and the under-determination of data by evidence. The ontological orientation of personal knowing, while realised and enacted within a community, was understood long ago by Polanyi to have precedence over the community: “The discipline required to regulate the activities of scientists cannot be maintained by mere conformity to the actual demands of scientific opinion, but requires the support of moral conviction, stemming from devotion to science and prepared to operate independently of scientific opinion” (Polanyi, 1946: 54). It is however a fact that even in formulating the problem of the affect, scholars are likely to pre-judge it through a set of socio-cultural assumptions that indiscriminately lumps together all value categories. Lewin (1991) argues that the positivists made this prejudice a virtue by seeking the complete separation between fact and value, and though this demarcation has proved to be untenable, the denigration of value categories continues to haunt scientific research.

In other words, one major challenge facing CR scholars is the identification and elucidation of ethical aspects of their research: What triggers their research and what inhibits it? What are short-term and long-term implications for organisations as well as for overall society? Is their research socially and ethically legitimate? Are its effects publicly known and have they been debated at adequate forums? If not, how could this situation be reformed?

Wilson and Greenhill (2004) take a non-Habermasian critical realist approach to develop a radical critical stance. Their approach entails a commitment to emancipation, a focus on issues of


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equality and inequality, a questioning of the status quo, and a challenging of ideology. One key implication of their approach is the need for alliances of researchers with less conservative members of organisations in order to avoid compromise on emancipatory aims of CR research.

We argue that CR may serve as a useful approach to social investigations in its provision of an ontology for the analytical separation of structure and agency. Bhaskar (1978, 2002), for instance, has shown how his conceptualisation of CR arose out of some very unique conditions. Bhaskar was displeased with the inability of economic science to deal with economic justice, a realisation which encouraged him to develop a notion of realism that could do justice to issues of ethics and individual agency.

Furthermore, the strength of CR lies in its emphasis on the particular (e.g., structural and contextual conditions) and its rejection of universalistic theories. It has the potential to uphold the specificity of social structures and actions and to understand and describe truth, agency and freedom within those specificities. Unless research and arguments are related to ethical issues, such as social formation and class, CR may end up with an abstract and universalised ethics and social analysis which is devoid of any specific content. Joseph (2002) argues that CR accounts, with particular attention to issues of power and hegemony, may help examine society as structured and stratified in a specific way. From an ethics perspective, CR can inform us about the conditions under which hegemony operates and about the materiality of hegemony and the conditions of its emergence. What are possible implications of CR ethics for the researchpractice/practitioner distinction? In particular, researchers want to find explanations for why things do or do not work, while practitioners want things done.


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Discussion and Conclusion We have argued in this paper that with its simultaneous critical attention to scholars' and practitioners' preferences and constraints, CR may contribute to an improved understanding of tensions between research and practice, a four pronged bridge between rigour and relevance (Figure 1). Also, by implementing this perspective, several research-practice inconsistencies can be addressed. Among other things, they may be treated as natural, such as those arising from varied ethical or economic preferences of scholars and practitioners (Bhaskar, 2002). Despite various tensions pertaining to the rigour versus relevance debate, business research remains generally focused on and also constrained by the reality that research is trying to explain. As some scholars suggest, we are all realists (Bhaskar, 1978; Latour, 1999). What CR can offer is a richer social ontology that also takes into account the material/objective dimension of social reality and a different epistemology (an alternative perspective on the nature/purpose of social science).

In the context of business education, Starkey and colleagues (2004) argue that while business schools in their current form stand criticised in terms of their research and teaching, let alone their ethical standards, there are ways in which such schools can be reconfigured. In particular they espouse a growing and influential role in developing knowledge. Alongside this, Starkey and colleagues see it as essential that the business schools recognise its complicity in the new forms of practice that are seen to have dysfunctional consequences in the wider society. Wensley suggests that complicity, rather than espousal, may well be a fair charge, and that Starkey and colleagues' analysis suggests a different but important role for business schools to engage with the knowledge agenda of not only the university but also society overall (Wensley, 2007: 12).


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Figure 1. A critical realist bridge between rigour and relevance

Contextuality and Causality

Methodological Rigidity

Business Practice (Relevance)

Business Education and Research (Rigour)

Interdisciplinarity and Multimethodology

Ethical Aspects of Management Research

Critical Realist Perspective

Do businesses ignore business schools? The issue Skapinker (2008) raised seems to be a persistent challenge within the field of business research and education. Those in business academe who are concerned with work on esoteric micro-concerns which are largely inaccessible to business managers may consider the fact that there is much that can be done academically to develop the knowledge of practice rather than mere knowledge itself. Sartof (2008) suggests that businesses merely ignore what does not appear useful to them in practice. The development of an understanding of epistemic practice requires, however, such 'backward-looking' analysis as Harvard’s case study method. The challenge is therefore not for academe to struggle to forecast what innovators will do next, and neither should business require that of academe. The challenge is, rather, for academe to also develop knowledge about how others can arrive at their own new


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knowledge through practice. Managers also need to proceed from a body of knowledge and to learn to build on it.

Indeed, efficient research and teaching is recognised worldwide as an important means of spreading new knowledge and improving public good. As the quality of that public good develops managers are forced to invent organisational practices which are more efficient than the public good. In that way, research and teaching has the same function as a knowledge market. Organisations can survive if they are better than what is readily available on the market. At the same time, it will be ill-advised for academics to be entirely comfortable with the status quo. In their attempt to bridge the false dichotomy of rigour versus relevance, scholars may like to ensure that their research features problems that are of interest to managers, and that their research has an explicit dependent variable that matters to managers, and independent variables that are managerially actionable. Scholarly journals may also consider expanding their editorial board memberships to also include practicing managers. With a relatively small shift in incentives (e.g., tracking impact, rewarding the development of practice-oriented tools and resources), and including relevance in promotion decisions, business schools may be able to bridge the much publicised rigour-relevance gap.

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http://www.kent.ac.uk/kbs/research-information/index.htm