Management as science and practice

1. Management as science and practice Alexander Styhre School of Business, Economics and Law U. of Gothenburg Science in management, GS Management , Final lecture, Oct 21, 2014

2. The science of and science in management • Business schoolsgrew from the needtodevelopcompetenciestoorganizelarge and geographically distributed corporation(e.g. the railways in the 19th c., the manufacturingfirms in the postwar period, and retailingcompanies and ”innovation networks” in the contemporary period) • To repeat: Not until the late 1950s and early 1960s was business schoolteachingexpectedto be based on proper scientificmethods and procedures. Business schooltrainingwasprofessionalized and becamesubjecttoscholarly and regulatorycontrolafter ca. 1960 (management education in e.g., Uppsala, Lund and Stockholm Universities in the period, HGU incorprated in Gothenbuirg U. in 1971). • Today, in the late modern, auditsociety, business school research is monitored by accreditationorganizationssuch as EQUIS (in Europe) and AASCB (in the U.S., and globally).

3. The threepillarsof the business school • “American business schools typically faced three conflicting modes . . . Practical relevance, academic authority, and doing good.” (Fourcade and Khurana, 2013: 124-125. Emphasis added) • “The practice-oriented constituencies toward which business school directed their knowledge brought to the fore of concerns and political design of corporate actors.” (Fourcade and Khurana, 2013: 124-125. Emphasis added) • “The academically-oriented constituencies within universities exerted a powerful pull in the opposite direction—often expressing a sharp disdain for anything practical (e.g., by preferring ‘pure’ sciences and liberal arts), and urging for more scientific approaches to practical problems (e.g., the development of engineering and the applied sciences).” (Fourcade and Khurana, 2013: 124-125. Emphasis added) • “Finally, philanthropies (on which the new schools were financially and symbolically dependent) had their own agenda, too: they saw themselves as agents of social progress, moral education, and institutional innovation.” (Fourcade and Khurana, 2013: 124-125. Emphasis added)

4. The shifttoward science • The sciences as norm • “The high prestige of the natural sciences after the Second World War, and the success of applied mathematics in dealing with military problems during it, encouraged the widespread belief in the late 1940s and 1950s that science could be applied to managerial and business problems and science research into these problems should be supported.” (Whitley, 1986: 171) • If science is the answer, what is the question? • “Anyone who spends time in an elite business school today knows that it is a place riddled with contradictions. Faculty are hired and promoted on the basis of discipline-oriented research that . . . often has little or no bearing on the practice of management.” (Khurana, 2007: 369-370) • “Most management problems are ill-structured. They are messy, involving complex interdependencies, multiple goals, and considerable ambiguity, and their nature is much dependent on the conceptual lens through which they are viewed.” (Teece and Winter, 1984 117)

5. The usesoftheory • Abend (2008) lists seven meanings of the term theory in social science: • “[I]n the case of theory the problem stems from the erroneous belief that there is something—indeed, one thing—out there for the word ‘theory’ to really correspond to.” (Abend, 2008: 182) • Theory are both general and lends themselves to empirical research work • “To qualify as theory, assertions must form a coherent and parsimonious framework that is sufficiently general to capture a broad range of empirical situations . . . but precise enough to allow scholars to test propositions and hypotheses.” (Boxenbaum and Rouleau, 2011: 274)

6. Theoriesabout management • Theoriesneedto be (1) eitheruseful in terms of the abilitytoshedlight on empiricalmatters, or (2) guide managerialpractices. • In the former case, theoriesaretoolsthatto a variousdegrees ”do the job” for the analyst; in such a pragmaticview, the choice oftheory is a combination ofpreferences, conventions, and opportunitiesbeingidentified (e.g., the influenceof ”management fashions”) • In the lattercase, theoriesare part of the ”professionaltool-box” bothinternalized and applied by the manager, i.e., theoriesshapepractices.

7. The ”tool box view”: Elites in training (1) • Debra Schleef’s (2006) study of the paradoxes of “elites in training”: • “The process of becoming professional includes learning to think critically and to question assumptions. Far from being unwilling dupes of ideological indoctrination, students are self-reflective, and they strategically accommodate and resist the ideologies of their education.” (Schleef, 2006: 4) • “The most important audience for professional ideology . . . is the professionalsthemselves—they need to believe in the higher mandate that the professionals are alleged to embody.” (Schleef, 2006: 5. Emphasis added)

8. Elites in training (2) • Students gradually internalize privileges in the forms of skills and “worldviews” (“to think like a manager or a lawyer”): • “Students go from viewing the skills of business and law as a ‘common sense’ credential to unique, valued styles of reasoning that have changed the way they think”. (Schleef, 2006: 201). • Danielle, a law schools student at “Graham university” who “firmly believed during her first year of law school that most lawyers were overpaid and took advantage of their powerful position in society, now says without criticism: ‘Lawyers work really, really hard . . . the money is deserved. I think lawyers are really, really smart. I think they are very articulate and on top of things’”. (Schleef, 2006: 2) • In thisappropriationofresourcesthathelps business school students ”think like a manager,” theories play an activerole.

9. The productionof management theory • The “cultural circuit of capitalism” (Thrift, 2005): “Business schools, management consultants, management gurus and the media.” • Theory are not always produced in the academy and thereafter disseminated to industry through the conduit of management consultants; at times, consultants construct models and in other cases legislation or industry initiatives influence managerial practice in turn being examined in academic research. Theory production is entangled with many different actors and institutions.

10. The Science in Management course • A distinctionbetween ”social theoryview” and ”economictheories” of management (as demonstrated by e.g., Anna Jonsson’stwopapers); ”soft” and ”hard” theories. • The engagement with predominant theoreticalperspectives (Lectures, paper reportssubmitted). • The abilitytoevaluate and criticallyassesstheoriesand models and accompanying ”truthclaims” (e.g., Vedran Omanovic’sseminar, Assign. 3). • The abilitytoassessone’sowntheoreticalassumptions(Assign. 2)

11. In summary • Management theoriesaremore or less usefuldepending on whataspectsof organizations the analystwantto understand. A ”perspectivistview.” • Fewtheoriesare ”true” (in a natural science sense of the term), butstill theycan be usefulif human actorsbelievetheyaccuratelydepictreality or arehelpful in accomplishingcertainmanagerial tasks (seee.g., Karl Weick). • At times, theoriescan ”becometrue” ifactorsbehave in accordancewithwhattheypredict and prescribe; theyareperformative inasmuch as theyprovideguidelines for collective action. • In othercases, theoriesmayhave ”unintendedconsequences” (Merton, 1936), as in the case of e.g., ”non-parternalist leadership” beingunderstood as ”no leadership at all.” • Skilled researcher and practicing managers chose theoriesthatsuittheir interests and objectives; managerialwork is a form of ”reflection in action” (Schön, 1983)

12. Literature • Abend, Gabriel, (2008), The meaning of ‘theory,’Sociological Theory, 26(2): 173-189. • Boxenbaum, Eva and Rouleau, Linda, (2011), New knowledge production as bricolage: Metaphors and scripts in organizational theory, Academy of Management Review, 36(2): 272-296. • Fourcade, Marion and Khurana, Rakesh, (2013), From social control to financial economics: The linkedecologies of economics and business in twentiethcentury America, Theory and Society, 42(2): 121–159. • Khurana, Rakesh, (2007), From higher aims to hired hands: The social transformation of American business schools and the unfulfilled promise of management as a profession, Princeton: Princeton University Press. • Merton, Robert K., (1936), The unanticipated consequences of purposive social action, American Sociological Review, 1(6): 894-904. • Schleef, Debra J., (2006), Managing elites: Professional socialization in law and business schools, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. • Schön, D.A., (1983), The Reflective Practitioner, New York: Arena. • Teece, David J. and Winter, Sidney G. (1984), The limits of neoclassical theory in management education, American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 74(2): 116-121. • Whitley, Richard, (1986), The transformation of business finance into financial economics: The role of academic expansion and changes in the U.S. capital markets, Accounting, Organizations, and Society, 11: 171-192.