Management Research is Clear as Mud
“... In my opinion, for example, much of the research on authentic leadership is no longer merely biased in favour of finding positive results. Rather, studies are designed so that only positive results can be discovered (Tourish, 2019). ...”
"Beware the guru with a theory that explains how companies behave or the perfect recipe for how firms succeed. Beware, too, the lengthy academic studies to similar effect. That is the stark warning of “Management Studies in Crisis: Fraud, Deception and Meaningless Research”, a new book by Dennis Tourish, a scholar of organisations at the University of Sussex.”
“Too much modern management research, the author argues, is a mess of inconsequential jargon, tailor-made to appear in leading journals. Academics are judged on their ability to get papers published in these periodicals and business schools are ranked on their ability to employ the most prolific of these academics.“
“This rush to publish has led to management research being affected by the same problems as other disciplines. A bias exists to publish studies that show headline-grabbing results. ‘Fishing expeditions’—selective use of statistics in search of a striking conclusion—are commonplace. Results showing an effect does not exist, as scientifically useful as positive findings, are stashed away in a drawer. One survey of the literature found that 25-50% of management articles had inconsistencies or errors; another concluded that 70% of papers disclosed too little data to permit independent verification of their findings.”
The Economist, November 24, 2019: “Management research is clear as mud”
Tourish, Dennis (2019) Management studies in crisis [electronic resource] : fraud, deception and meaningless research, Cambridge University Press
ResearchGate, July 2019: Management Studies in Crisis: Fraud, Deception and Meaningless Research, by Dennis Tourish (full text request and similar research available)
