Lost in Translation? On Mind and Matter in Management Research

Abstract

Again and again scholars evoke a seriously dysfunctional relationship between management research and education on the one hand, and the practice of management on the other. We share this viewpoint, and with this appraisal intend to (re-)open the debate. We expose some views on the intellectual and sociological roots of the malaise, advocating a philosophical stance rooted in pragmatism and particularly in John Dewey’s pragmatic stance. We outline a number of essentially workable, albeit for debate’s sake provocative and unpolished proposals for the redesign of academic institutions and of their publishing process. We sketch out radical redesign of academia—with, inter alia, (a) permeable academic and practical careers, so that executives and scholars could move between and act within each others’ realities; (b) a focus of management education on post-experience graduate level; and (c) an academic publishing process worthy of the real-time era of the Internet.