An agile literature review on management research relevance for informing the managerial intellectual learning (MIL) study

 

Working paper: jh-2021-04-4-a (https://josephho33.blogspot.com/2021/04/an-agile-literature-review-on_4.html)

 

An agile literature review on management research relevance for informing the managerial intellectual learning (MIL) study

 JOSEPH KIM-KEUNG HO

Independent Trainer

Hong Kong, China

Dated: April 4, 2021

 

Abstract: Literature review, done in an agile way, is handy for part-time undergraduate students, who are typically busy, to carry out. The article provides a demonstration on an agile literature review exercise covering the topic of management research relevance. With this review topic, the article produces useful review findings that enables intellectual enhancement on the research topic of managerial intellectual learning (MIL), as proposed by the writer.

Key words: agile literature review, literature review, management research relevance, managerial intellectual learning.

 

Introduction

Literature review is a main topic in academic study. For part-time undergraduate students, it is advantageous to practice literature review in an agile mode. Motivated by the research interest on managerial intellectual learning and the teaching work on part-time degree programmes in Business Management, the writer produced this article about “conducting an agile literature review on management research relevance to contribute to the research topic of managerial intellectual learning (MIL). The next section presents the agile literature review performed by the writer. It is followed by a brief discussion on how the literature review findings is able to contribute to the research project of MIL.

An agile literature review on management research relevance

An agile literature review endorses a nimble, evolutionary and responsive way to conduct literature review. The advantage of it is its ability to be in sync with the pace of life of part-time undergraduate students in business management. The agile literature review exercise on management research relevance was carried out by the writer from Mach 2-4, 2021. The exercise made use of Google Scholar and two U.K. university e-libraries for the literature search part. The aim of the exercise is to generate useful findings to contribute to the research endeavour of managerial intellectual learning (MIL) (Ho, 2014; 2021) as initiated by writer. The literature review findings are presented as follows in the form of Table 1, with the key ideas in bold font.

Table 1:  A set of gathered academic ideas related to management research relevance, grouped in three categories

Categories	Academic ideas of management research relevance
Category 1: the underlying issue of management research relevance (idea 1.1)	“The question of non-relevance is so controversial that it could limit the development of management studies, also due to the growing belief that it is unnecessary to commit to supporting research that is deemed unnecessary. Ghoshal (2005) sustains with very convincing arguments that academic management research, under scientific pretense, actually diffuses theories that are not only irrelevant but also have a negative effect on good management practices and on society” (Vicari, 2013).
Category 1: the underlying issue of management research relevance (idea 1.2)	“Professionals today have the perception that management science produces very thorough knowledge of irrelevant issues and that the type of concepts generated are fragmented to such an extent as to be of no use, as demonstrated by many studies indicating that academia is not the basis of key management techniques (Pfeffer and Fong, 2004; Birkenshaw and Mol, 2009). Added to this overall irrelevance, according to managers, is the considerable arrogance of researchers (Roux et al., 2006), accompanied by an inability to communicate the few results of some interest to companies beyond the inner circle of scientists” (Vicari, 2013).
Category 1: the underlying issue of management research relevance (idea 1.3)	“More than a decade ago, Anderson et al. (2001) raised concerns about researchers and practitioners moving further apart in the field of industrial, work, and organizational psychology. Short, Bing, and Kehrhahn (2003) questioned the survival of human resource development (HRD), observing that “HRD [human resource development] research and, to some degree, practice appear divorced from real-time problems in organizations” (p. 239). Similarly, linking theory to practice was also declared as the “grand challenge” for management research (Tranfield & Denyer, 2004)” (Tkachenko et al., 2017).
Category 2: the ingredient concepts of the management research relevance topic  (idea 2.1)	“ …. management research could be thought of as a field, which was ‘soft’, ‘applied’, ‘divergent’ and ‘rural’. It was ‘soft’ in that no single paradigm dominated; ‘applied’ in that it addressed practical concerns and built a knowledge base often using case law; ‘divergent’ in that disciplinary boundaries were ragged and research questions were being opened up rather than closed down; and ‘rural’ in that a broad intellectual territory was being addressed with a low people to problem ratio” (Tranfield, 2002).
Category 2: the ingredient concepts of the management research relevance topic  (idea 2.2)	“Overall, the long-term aim of the management research community must be to develop a high quality and highly relevant management research on which both the academic and practitioner communities can reliably base their thinking, decision-making and actions” (Tranfield, 2002).
Category 2: the ingredient concepts of the management research relevance topic  (idea 2.3)	“The production of scientific knowledge in any discipline, be it social, humanistic or scientific in the strict sense, requires that the researcher’s sole objective is precisely knowledge and nothing else. The reason, as we have known since Aristotle’s time, is that knowledge develops from the intellectual curiosity of the individual who wants to go beyond the limits of what is already known. This ‘going beyond’ can only be driven by intellectual freedom and the inquisitiveness of individual researchers” (Vicari, 2013).
Category 2: the ingredient concepts of the management research relevance topic  (idea 2.4)	“… the social system of science, including management science, has developed its own logic, and that as a result, the relationship between scientific rigor and practical relevance is far less harmonious than it is often assumed to be. Rather, a trade-off between rigor and relevance is to be expected (Kieser, 2002): Increasing relevance of management research is only possible at the expense of scientific rigor and vice versa” (Kieser and Nicolai, 2005).
Category 2: the ingredient concepts of the management research relevance topic  (idea 2.5)	“While we all recognize the value of experience, that experience is unique to every person, and there is no objective way to choose between the best judgment based only on the experience of different decision makers. Experience can also be confounded with responsibility bias: sales managers might choose lower advertising budgets in favor of higher expenditures on personal selling, while advertising managers might prefer larger advertising budgets” (Liliena et al., 2002).
Category 2: the ingredient concepts of the management research relevance topic  (idea 2.6)	“Anderson et al.’s (2001) model, known as the fourfold typology of research…. is built around two dimensions: (a) theoretical and methodological rigor and (b) practical relevance. According to the authors, the resulting four quadrants—Pragmatic Science, Popularist Science, Pedantic Science, and Puerile Science—present the four types of science. Pragmatic Science is research that is high on rigor and high on relevance. Popularist Science is low on rigor but high on relevance. Research that is high on rigor but low on relevance is termed as Pedantic Science, while Puerile Science is research that is low on both dimensions. According to Anderson et al. (2001), there is a drift from Pragmatic Science toward Pedantic and Popularist forms of science. Specifically, the academic community, by means of peer reviews, academic journal requirements, and tenure processes, pushed for Pedantic Science. At the same time, stakeholders mainly interested in quick solutions on practical issues were a catalyst for Popularist Science” (Tkachenko et al., 2017).
Category 2: the ingredient concepts of the management research relevance topic  (idea 2.7)	“Researchers and practitioners belong to separate discourse communities with very different perspectives and ideologies and these differences impede utilization (Beyer & Trice, 1982). Others argue that the lack of newness negatively affects the curiosity of managers (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2013; Daft & Lewin, 1990), while concurrently the fragmentation of the organizational study field is said to lead to confusion (Pfeffer, 1993, 2007), a viewpoint that from a different line of reasoning is shared by Lex Donaldson (Donaldson, 1995). Normal science which stands for formal research design, quantitative data, validation, reliability, and replicability and a steady accumulation and building of empirically generated knowledge on the one hand is contrasted with contra science or postpositivism such as social constructionism and action research (Beer, 2001; Marsden & Townley, 1996), since it is assumed that the positivist traits of managerial research do not fit the organizational reality, a viewpoint shared by the proponents of mode 2 research (Bartunek, 2011a, 2011b; MacLean, MacIntosh, & Grant, 2002; van Aken, 2001)” (Vermeylen, 2014).
Category 2: the ingredient concepts of the management research relevance topic  (idea 2.8)	“We define engaged scholarship as a collaborative form of inquiry in which academics and practitioners leverage their different perspectives and competencies to coproduce knowledge about a complex problem or phenomenon that exists under conditions of uncertainty found in the world. Engaged scholarship is consistent with an evolutionary realist philosophy of science, which is a pluralistic methodology for advancing knowledge by leveraging the relative contributions and conceptual frameworks of researchers and practitioners. Engaged scholarship also frames a given problem as an instance of a more general case so that theoretical propositions can be developed and applied in specific contexts of practice” (Van de Ven and Johnson, 2006).
Category 2: the ingredient concepts of the management research relevance topic  (idea 2.9)	“Our argument for engaged scholarship is based on the concept of arbitrage—a strategy of exploiting differences in the kinds of knowledge that scholars and practitioners can contribute on a problem of interest. Arbitrage is commonly known in financial circles as the exploitation of price differentials (Harrison, 1997). But, as noted by Friedman (2000), one can do arbitrage in literature as well as in markets. In his analysis, Friedman goes on to show how arbitrage can lie at the heart of sensemaking in a world of diverse and distributed knowledge” (Van de Ven and Johnson, 2006).
Category 2: the ingredient concepts of the management research relevance topic  (idea 2.10)	“Embodying the scholastic focus on abstract knowledge, modern educational institutions emphasize theory and decontextualized practical skills. Knowing-of-practice tends to take precedence over knowing-in-practice (Lave, 1996). Knowing-in-practice, however, requires not only knowing-that and knowing-how (i.e. skills, techne) but also knowing-what-for and knowing-in-order-to (Heidegger, 1977; Roth, 2010)” (Roth et al., 2014).
Category 2: the ingredient concepts of the management research relevance topic  (idea 2.11)	“… research information is defined as, information that results from scientific research investigating underlying factors in management phenomena. By contrast, practice information is defined as information about events observed by practitioners during management work. These can exist along a continuum ranging from a report of longitudinal scientific research in a leading scientific periodical to a spontaneous short post on a company web site (Pettigrew, 1990; Venkatesh & Davis, 2000)” (Stefan and Groesser, 2016).
Category 3: the solution considerations of the management research relevance topic (idea 3.1)	“Proponents of this view [the popularization view] are concerned with how existing academic knowledge can be transferred to practitioners. They regard the inaccessibility of research and the use of academic jargon as the most important barriers to relevance (e.g. Bansal, Bertels, Ewart, MacConnachie, & O’Brien, 2012; Duncan, 1974; Hambrick, 1994; Ryan, 1977; Steffens, Weeks, Davidsson, & Isaak, 2014). While the advocates of this view do not doubt the practical value of academic research—“We could help” says Hambrick (1994, p. 15; italics added)—they identify a problem in transporting the valuable knowledge from academia to practice. Accordingly, popularization is the key to narrowing or “bridging” the relevance “gap” (Kieser et al., 2015).
Category 3: the solution considerations of the management research relevance topic (idea 3.2)	“Proponents of the institutional view ….  are concerned with the practical relevance of research institutions— particularly business schools—as a whole rather than with the relevance of management research in particular. Typically, this literature does not focus on scholarly research but speaks about “the business school” or “the business professor” in general (e.g. Behrman & Levin, 1984; Bennis & O’Toole, 2005; Porter & McKibbin, 1988). Accordingly, the relevance issue is treated as a problem of the business schools’ strategic planning, leadership, human resource development, quality management, stakeholder management, incentive structures, and so on” (Kieser et al., 2015).
Category 3: the solution considerations of the management research relevance topic (idea 3.3)	“In the past few decades, the field of marketing has evolved into a distinct academic discipline and a profession for practitioners. The field has produced many important theories and concepts (e.g., segmentation, positioning) and developed methodologies for translating them into practice (e.g., focus groups, perceptual maps). Yet, many senior managers believe that marketing is intrinsically art and experience, and is not amenable to the systematic approach to decision making that characterizes such management disciplines as finance, production, and logistics. This belief suggests that there is a gap between marketing theory and marketing practice” (Liliena et al., 2002).
Category 3: the solution considerations of the management research relevance topic (idea 3.4)	“There are not set divisions between management scholars and management practitioners. Instead, during portfolio careers, people can spend some time working as management scholars, as management consultants, and as management practitioners (Platman, 2004). Furthermore, management scholars and management practitioners are not dependent upon each other for the production of useful information” (Fox and Groesser, 2016).

 

Regarding Table 1, there are three categories of academic ideas on management research relevance. They are (1) the underlying issue of management research relevance, (2) the ingredient concepts of the management research relevance topic, and (3) the solution considerations of the management research relevance topic. A concise recap of their ideas is as follows:

On “the underlying issue of management research relevance” (category 1), the prime issue is that such irrelevance implies the uselessness of knowledge produced form management research due to its divorce from real-world managerial problems.

On “the ingredient concepts of the management research relevance topic” (category 2), the main ingredient notions include: (i) the attributes of the management research field (soft, applied, divergent and rural), (ii) the long-term aim of the management research community, (iii) the rigor and relevance trade-off, (iv) the value of experience and responsibility bias, (v) the Anderson et al.’s model of research typology, (vi) the discourse communities with different perspectives, (vii) engaged scholarship, (viii) knowing-of-practice and knowledge-in-practice, and (ix) research and practice information.

On “the solution considerations of the management research relevance topic” (category 3), some of the main topics are (i) the popularization and the institutional views, (ii) marketing as art and experience, and (iii) the portfolio careers of management scholars and practitioners.

On the whole, the academic literature on management research relevance offers a conceptually rich repository of ideas that point to certain issues in managerial intellectual learning (MIL). The MIL discussion with regard to management research relevance is provided in the next section.

 

Enriching the comprehension on the managerial intellectual learning (MIL) process model with the management research relevance literature

The research theme on managerial intellectual learning (MIL) was initiated by the writer in 2014 (Ho, 2014; 2021). It is primarily about personally developing intellectual competence by learning and reflecting on management disciplines via the critical systems thinking lens and real-world managerial practices. The concomitant life-goal for the learners in this respect is to be a scholar-practitioner in business management. The sketch of the MIL scope of study is the MIL process view as depicted in Figure 1.

(re: Ho, 2014)

 

Figure 1 portrays a systematic, evolutionary process view on MIL, covering the managerial intellectual learning capability-building mechanism (MILCBM), the MIL learning process, the feedback look as well as the external supporting and constraining factors (Ho, 2014). It also acknowledges the prime roles of (i) the critical systems and the multi-perspective, systems-based (MPSB) intellectual lens for conducting literature review on the academic literature on management disciplines and (ii) reflection on real-world practices (re: the items of “Phase* practice-based intellectual learning, the world of management practices, and feedback in Figure 1). With reference to the MIL process model (Figure 1), the issues raised by the academic literature on management research relevance will inevitably be encountered in “Phase 3: the MPSB knowledge compilation”, “Phase*: Practice-based intellectual learning”, and “feedback” from “the world of management practices”. In this regard, the agile literature review findings of management research relevance (re: Table 1) contributes to a more sophisticated comprehension of the MIL research topic.

 

Concluding remarks

The agile literature review exercise, as demonstrated in this article, is a lightweight method of particular advantage for busy part-time students to use (e.g., for doing course assignments and final-year dissertation projects). It enables them to engage in intellectual learning more conveniently. The literature review output on management research relevance (re: Table 1) makes for a useful reading for learners on this topic. Lastly, this literature review output also contributes to the conceptual enhancement of the MIL research theme.

 

References

Fox, S. and Groesser, S.N. 2016. “Reframing the relevance of research to practice” European Management Journal 34: 457-465.

Ho, J.K.K. 2014. “An empirical study on managerial intellectual learning (MIL) and managerial intellectual learning capability-building mechanism (MILCBM)” European Academic Research 2(8) November: 10564-10577.

Ho, J.K.K. 2021. “An updated account of the research theme status of managerial intellectual learning (MIL)” Joseph KK Ho e-resources March 4 (url address:  https://josephho33.blogspot.com/2021/03/an-updated-account-of-research-theme.html).

Kieser, A. and Nicolai, A.. 2005. “Success Factor Research Overcoming the Trade-Off Between Rigor and Relevance?” Journal of Management Inquiry 14(3) September: 275-279.

Kieser, A., Nicolai, A. and Seidl, D. 2015. “The Practical Relevance of Management Research: Turning the Debate on Relevance into a Rigorous Scientific Research Program” The Academy of Management Annals 9(1): 143-233, DOI: 10.1080/19416520.2015.1011853.

Liliena, G.L., Rangaswamya, A., van Bruggenb, G.H. and Wierenga, B. 2002. “Bridging the marketing theory–practice gap with marketing engineering” Journal of Business Research 55: 111– 121.

Roth, W.M., Mavin, T. and Dekker, S. 2014. "The theory-practice gap: epistemology, identity, and education" Education + Training 56(6): 521- 536.

Salvatore Vicari. 2013. “Is the Problem Only Ours? A Question of Relevance in Management Research” European Management Review, Vol. 10, 173–181.

Tkachenko, O., Hahn, H.J. and Peterson, S.L. 2017. “Research–Practice Gap in Applied Fields: An Integrative Literature Review” Human Resource Development Review 16(3): 235–262.

Tranfield, D. 2002. “Formulating the Nature of Management Research” European Management Journal 20(4): 378–382.

Van De Ven, A.H. and Johnson, P.E. 2006. “Knowledge for theory and practice” Academy of Management Review 31(4): 802–821.

Vermeylen, S. 2014. "The Theory–Practice Gap: Redefining Relevance" In A Focused Issue on Building New Competences in Dynamic Environments. Published online: 29 Oct.:  271-335. DOI: 10.1108/S1744-211720140000007010

Vicari, S. 2013. “Is the Problem Only Ours? A Question of Relevance in Management Research” European Management Review 10(4): 173–181.