The Alienation of Scholarship in Modern Business Schools: From Marxist Material Relations to the Lacanian Subject

Alakavuklar, Ozan Nadir; Dickson, Andrew; Stablein, Ralph

doi:10.5465/amle.2015.0004

Cited by 29 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 88 publications

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“…The first element could be the training business school academics receive, particularly in doctoral programs that insist on a particular ontological and epistemological approach to PhD research. With the advent of the “neoliberal business school” (Alakavuklar et al, 2017; Fleming, 2020; Huzzard et al, 2017; Parker, 2018) doctoral training has been highly rationalized in that its aim is not only to impart relevant research skills but also skills in how to play the “publishing game” in top-tier journals. Following the mantra of Taylorism, there is indeed one best way, which is closely aligned with the same research protocols we find in AMJ, Management Science , and ASQ , for example (Mingers & Willmott, 2012).…”

Section: Why Do Business Schools Dodge “Big Questions?”mentioning

confidence: 99%

Not Even Trying to Change the World: Why Do Elite Management Journals Ignore the Major Problems Facing Humanity?

Harley

Fleming

2021

The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

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Social scientists have long been concerned with using their research to make the world a better place and there are frequently calls within the management studies community for research which does so. In this essay, we consider the extent to which such concerns and calls are reflected in what is published in elite management journals. We coded approximately 5,500 articles published in “top-tier” management journals between 2008 and 2018 and found that only 2.8% of articles critically addressed global “grand challenges”—such as inequality, climate change, racism, and gender discrimination. This essay explores the possible reasons why. We reject the explanation that management academics are uninterested in major problems facing the world. Our argument instead focuses on the relationship between business school practices and journal norms. We term this the business school/elite journal gridlock. To break the gridlock, a number of changes are recommended.

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Section: Why Do Business Schools Dodge “Big Questions?”mentioning

confidence: 99%

Not Even Trying to Change the World: Why Do Elite Management Journals Ignore the Major Problems Facing Humanity?

Harley

Fleming

2021

The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

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“…This culture has been grafted onto the traditional public interest culture of universities, effectively leading to a hybrid institution that lives in the worlds between public and private university, while increasingly prioritizing the needs of industry as the dominant stakeholder (Parker, 2011). So as Alakavuklar et al (2017) have put it, universities have become compliant with the demands of the market, pursuing this through a discourse of managerialism. Thus, universities have pursued seemingly contradictory strategic agendas of revenue growth, productivity improvement, quality enhancement, and cost reduction: all actioned through mass production economies of scale, technical and cost efficiencies, and casualization of staff (Parker, 2013).…”

Section: University Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public university research engagement contradictions in a commercialising higher education world

Parker

2022

Financ Acc Manag

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This paper aims to critically assess the impact of public university commercialisation on research engagement and practice relevance. Recent decades have seen dramatic changes in university environments, identities and missions, as well as in government and private sector funding and involvement. As increasingly commercialised and corporatised organisations, universities have increasingly mimicked private sector hierarchical organisation structures, professionally managed and subject to performance management via proliferating management control systems. From accumulated prior research, this paper finds university research now primarily conducted for the private rather than public good, researchers being subject to and tailoring their endeavors to conform with proliferating metrics focused university management control systems. External engagement appears as a university impression management strategy, while internally, researchers are still compelled to pursue a contradictory focus on high-status self-referential journal publication venues. This contradictory environment is found to have produced an increasing distance betweenThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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“…As numeric indicators associated with journal ranking lists increasingly drive measures of scholarly performance so research topics in the HRD and MLE fields may be evaluated through criteria directed at publication proficiency at the expense of academic, organizational, or wider social value. The danger is that HRD and MLE scholars' interests and curiosity become subsumed by the requirements for success in a system that aligns scholarly quality with publication destination (Alakavuklar, Dickson, & Stablein, 2017;Alvesson & Spicer, 2016). Such alienation of scholars from the products of their (would be) passions serves to limit the generation of new knowledge and constrain the boundaries of what is known and understood in the field beyond what is considered to be immediately 'citable' (Sangster, 2015).…”

Section: The Effect Of Ranking Lists On Hrd and Mlementioning

confidence: 99%

Power, Powerlessness, and Journal Ranking Lists: The Marginalization of Fields of Practice

Anderson

Elliott

Callahan

2021

AMLE

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This essay contributes a new perspective to debates about journal ranking lists and their effects on the practice of scholarship. Our argument is grounded in practice theory and draws on Bourdieu's concept of field. We examine the effect of metrics, targets and rankings on Human Resource Development (HRD), a conjunctive field associated with the Management Learning and Education (MLE) field. We examine the ways in which the boundaries of the MLE field are shaped by journal ranking lists and how, irrespective of seniority in the field, scholars simultaneously experience both power and powerlessness as a result of journal ranking processes. We contribute a new perspective on issues of academic practice with consequences for specialized areas of scholarship. We conclude by proposing practical interventions that senior scholars and journal editors can undertake to challenge the undesirable effects of ranking systems and encourage scholarly diversity.

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The Alienation of Scholarship in Modern Business Schools: From Marxist Material Relations to the Lacanian Subject

Cited by 29 publications

References 88 publications

Not Even Trying to Change the World: Why Do Elite Management Journals Ignore the Major Problems Facing Humanity?

Not Even Trying to Change the World: Why Do Elite Management Journals Ignore the Major Problems Facing Humanity?

Public university research engagement contradictions in a commercialising higher education world

Power, Powerlessness, and Journal Ranking Lists: The Marginalization of Fields of Practice

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