For each question 15 – 20 , mark one letter (A, B, C or D ) on your Answer Sheet for the answer you choose.

     In terms of pure quantity of research and debate, business schools have performed amazingly in promoting management as a distinctive activity. No other discipline has produced as much in such a short period. It is unclear yet how much of it will stand the test of time, but for sheer industry, the business school deserve credit. Not a day goes by without another wave of research papers, books, articles, and journals.

     In these terms, schools have produced a generally accepted theoretical basis for management. When it comes to knowledge creation, however, they find themselves in difficulties. They are caught between the need for academic rigour and for real-world business relevance, which tend to pull in opposite directions. The desire to establish management as a credible discipline leads to research that panders to traditional academic criteria. The problem for business school researchers is that they seek the approval of their academic peers rather than the business community. In the United States this has led to the sort of grand ‘paper clip counting’ exercises that meet demands for academic rigour but fail to add one iota to the real sum of human knowledge.

     Business schools have too often allowed the constraints of the academic world to cloud their view of the real world. Business school researchers seek provable theories – rather than helpful theories. They have championed a prescriptive approach to management based on analysis and, more recently, on fashionable ideas that soon disappear into the ether. The ‘one best way’ approach encourages researchers to mould the idiosyncrasies of managerial reality into their tightly defined models of behaviour. Figures and statistics are fitted into linear equations and tidy models. Economists and other social scientists label this cure smoothing. Meanwhile, reality continually refuses to co-operate.

     Central to this is the tension between relevance and rigour. In a perfect world, there would be no need to choose between the two. But in the business school world, the need to satisfy academic criteria and be published in journals often tilts the balance away from relevance. In other words, it is often easier to pursue quantifiable objectives than it is to add anything useful to the debate about management. To a large extent, the entire business school system works against useful, knowledge-creating research. Academics have five years in which to prove themselves if they are to make the academic grade. It seems long enough. But it can take two or even three years to get into a suitable journal. They therefore have around three years, probably less, to come up with an area of interest and carry out meaningful and original research. This is a demanding timescale. The temptation must be to slice up old data in new ways rather than pursue genuinely groundbreaking, innovative research.