Managing Leadership^®

A lot of academics today suffer from an identity crisis. Those who work in “soft” fields like business and management want to think of themselves as real scientists on a par with those in the hard sciences. In particular, they also want to be seen as “doing science” - that is, conducting research - rather than as being simple practitioners, which, many of them think, is hardly like being a real scientist at all.

Juvenile concerns like this really do beset people in all callings, and, make no mistake about it, concerns like this really are juvenile wherever they’re found. The problem for academics is that science is neither as antiseptically precise in any field as many would imagine, nor is its practice as thoroughly understood or accepted within its own community as many would hope.

Even in the hard sciences, the scientific method’s reputation is far from perfect. Indeed, some scientists even acknowledge that as many as half of published research results are, quite simply, wrong. When, as a scientist in a hard field such as biology, you are able to design replicable experiments in which you can control relevant factors, environmental conditions, and isolate the tested variable, and still suffer a 50% risk of having just gotten it all mixed up, what are your chances as a researcher in management or business, where you lack these abilities?

Much of of the “research” in these fields simply glosses over these difficulties, very likely greatly reducing the chances even further of producing reliable results. Moreover, any science suffers the additional problem of poorly understood or tested assumptions, improperly framed research theses, failure to capture all relevant variables, or inaccurate assessment of the research results. Indeed, some researchers, in fields as diverse as psychology and physics, are even questioning the need for testable or evidence-based theories at all, challenging the very foundation of modern science.

So, when you pick up a management “research journal,” or, more likely, the latest best seller by a celebrity academic, bear in mind that the odds of any “scientific” work in this field really being able to sustain the claims being made for it as scientific are, at best, problematic. Is the research based on mere statistical analysis, manipulating data about historical share price as compared with another record set that allegedly measures a “breakthrough” variable? Remember, we all know what statistics are damned for being. Or, more common still, is it allegedly core research based on surveys, interviews, or the quasi-scientific “case study?” Ask yourself how replicable, or how subject to conclusion bias, such research might be.

You will do well, then, to exercise the sceptical discretion that many of these “scientists” hope to dispel by hiding the messy details about their work behind the cloak of their credentials.

The foregoing notwithstanding, scientific investigation, even in such difficult fields as management and business, can have value. It has shown it time and again, and continues to do so. We will take a brief look at that, next.

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