Taking Stock of the Criteria We Use to Evaluate One Another's Work: ASQ 50 Years Out

Taking Stock of the Criteria We Use to Evaluate One Another's Work: ASQ 50 Years OutAuthor(s): Donald PalmerSource: Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Dec., 2006), pp. 535-559Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the Johnson Graduate School of Management,Cornell UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20109887 .

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Taking Stock of the Criteria We Use to Evaluate One Another's

Work: ASQ 50 Years Out

Donald Palmer

University of California,

Davis;

Editor ASQ

This essay initiates a stock taking conversation with the Administrative Science Quarterly's broad community of scholars?its editors, editorial board members, reviewers, authors, submitters, and readers?about the criteria that

organization studies scholars use in evaluating one another's work. I review ASQ's founding editors' vision for the field of organization studies, as articulated in

essays by Edward Litchfield and James Thompson that

appeared in the first issue of the journal in 1956. Then I outline seven concerns that have been voiced about the state of the field or ASQ in the subsequent 50 years, indi

cating how ASQ's content in recent years stacks up vis ? vis these concerns. Then I offer my own thoughts on these concerns. I argue that we should remain open to diverse modes of inquiry, but I also acknowledge signifi cant challenges to doing so. I close with a list of ques tions to which readers might respond, in the hope of gen erating a dialog that can make ASGs role in the social construction of the field of organizational studies more self-conscious and fruitful.*

I am writing to initiate a stock-taking conversation with the Administrative Science Quarterly's broad community of scholars?its editors, editorial board members, ad hoc

reviewers, submitters, and readers?regarding the criteria we use when evaluating one another's work. This is a propitious time for stock taking for symbolic reasons. In 2006, ASQ cel ebrated its 50th anniversary. It is also a propitious time for substantive reasons. The last two decades have witnessed the proliferation of new peer-reviewed journals and annual edited volumes that have garnered loyal followings. This pro liferation of new publication outlets is undoubtedly due partly

to the growth and associated differentiation of the field of

organization studies. But it is also likely due partly to the belief on the part of some that the field of organizational studies, of which ASQ is a contributor and reflection, is in need of a course correction.

Karl Weick (1996: 301), who served as ASQ's editor from 1977 to 1985, characterized stock taking as "a complex mix ture of appreciation, wariness, anticipation, regret, and pride, all fused into thoughts of renewal." I embrace this view. The last 50 years has witnessed the publication of many impor

tant pieces in the field of organization studies, a good num ber of which have appeared in ASQ. Thus there is much to

appreciate and of which to be proud in our field's and ASQ's

history. But the field also has been subject to criticism. Thus there are reasons to be wary as well. Criticisms, though, pro vide the foundation for renewal. And I look forward to this renewal with much anticipation. Karl Weick (1996: 309) also characterized stock taking as an endeavor that raises ques tions that should "be discussed in the organizational commu

nity at large, not... answered in a single essay." I embrace this view as well. Thus I invite all interested members of

ASQ's broad community of scholars to respond to this essay and promise to make public all submitted responses (in a

manner described below).

I focus this stock-taking conversation on the criteria we use to evaluate one another's work. The field of organizational studies is socially constructed, and the publication of scholar

535/Administrative Science Quarterly, 51 (2006): 535-559

? 2006 by Johnson Graduate School, Cornell University. 0001-8392/06/5104-0535/33.00.

This essay has benefited from comments

provided by Steve Barley, Nicole Biggart, Jerry Davis, Brian Dick, Royston Green

wood, Tom Lodahl, Chris Marquis, Joanne

Martin, Keith Mumighan, Kim Pawlick, Charles Perrow, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Michael

Schwartz, Dick Scott, Bill Starbuck, Karl

Weick, and Mayer Zald. It has also benefited from the comments of ASQ's associate editors (Dan Brass, Huggy Rao, Elaine Romanelli, and John Wagner), consulting editors (Mauro Guillen and Kathleen McGinn), book review editor (David Strang), and managing editor (Linda Johanson), none of whom, though, are responsible for its contents. I am very grateful for comments provided by the

participants of seminars at the University of Alberta, INSEAD, and Boston College.



ly work is an important part of this social construction

process. Authors decide what to produce?which topics to

address, which theories to embrace, and which methods to

employ. But editors and reviewers dictate which authorial

products see the light of day. The leaders of scholarly jour nals such as ASQ attempt to guide this process in a self

conscious way. They select editors who they believe possess

"appropriate" ideas about the criteria used to evaluate sub

mitted manuscripts. These editors in turn select associate

editors, editorial board members, and reviewers whom they believe embrace these criteria. And they prepare notices to

contributors and guidelines for reviewers that state the crite

ria according to which they would like associate editors, edi

torial board members, and ad hoc reviewers to evaluate

submissions.

But editors' ideas about the criteria that should be used to

evaluate submitted work are often imprecise. And notices to

contributors and guidelines for reviewers are typically vague

and, partly for this reason, frequently overlooked. And, of

course, associate editors, editorial board members, and

reviewers exercise independent judgment when evaluating

manuscripts. Thus, although the criteria by which we evalu

ate one another's work play an important role in the social

construction of the field, these criteria remain incompletely articulated and relatively unexamined. By making the criteria

according to which we evaluate each other's work more

explicit and subjecting these criteria to scrutiny, I think we

might be able to make ASQ's role in the social construction

of the field more self-conscious and thus perhaps more

fruitful.

I initiate this stock-taking conversation in four steps. First, I

review the vision of organization studies espoused by ASQ's

founding editors 50 years ago, which articulates a set of ends to which organizational scholars should aspire and the means

through which they should attain them. I think ASQ's com

munity of scholars is consciously or unconsciously guided by their affinity for or their opposition to key elements of this

vision. Second, I identify seven controversies about the

appropriate ends and means of organizational studies that

have arisen over the subsequent 50 years. I think that these

concerns in large part amount to worries that ASQ's commu

nity of scholars has clung too closely to the vision of the jour nal's founders or strayed too far from it. At the same time, I

indicate how ASQ's recent content stacks up vis ? vis these

concerns. Finally, I offer my own thoughts on these concerns

and identify a series of challenges that I think contemporary

organization studies scholars, as evaluators of one another's

work, might do well to contemplate as the journal begins its

fifty-first year of operation.

Before I begin this stock taking, though, I offer two caveats.

First, to reduce terminological complexity, I use the term

"organization studies" to denote all lines of inquiry devoted

to understanding the causes and consequences of behavior

in and of organizations. I realize, though, that other terms

(e.g., administrative science, organizational science, organiza tional behavior, and organizational theory) have been used to

denote our field over the last 50 years. And shifts in the

536/ASQ, December 2006



ASQ 50 Years Out

terms used to denote our field reflect changes in the ways scholars have thought about our field over time. Second, to delimit scope, I focus on ideas about the ends to which orga nization studies scholars should aspire and the means

through which they should pursue them. I realize, though, that organizational structures and processes (e.g., editorial

practices) translate ideas about the appropriate ends and means of organizational scholarship into decisions about what does and does not get published in our field. And what does and does not get published likely shapes our ideas about the appropriate ends and means of organizational scholarship. A more complete treatment of the subject would

analyze how organizational scholars construct their identities and how editors, editorial board members, and ad hoc reviewers think about, organize, and actually do their work.

ASQ'S FOUNDING EDITORS' VISION OF THE FIELD OF ORGANIZATION STUDIES

The first issue of ASQ contained essays by two of its founders. Edward Litchfield, a political scientist with consid erable government and university administrative experience,

was a member of the journal's board. James Thompson, a

sociologist and author of the classic Organizations in Action, was the journal's editor. The essays, despite their differ

ences, can be viewed as elaborating a common vision of what the field could and should aspire to become in the future. This common vision implied criteria according to

which ASQ's community of scholars should evaluate one

another's work. I articulate the broad contours of this vision below in terms that I think are meaningful for the contempo rary period.

Litchfield and Thompson (hereafter L&T) thought that organi zation studies scholars should pursue improved understand

ing of the administrative process, which Litchfield (1956: 12) characterized as a "cycle of action which includes the follow

ing specific activities: decision making, programming, com

municating, controlling and reappraising." L&T thought that

organization studies should be an applied field, by which they meant two things. First, organization studies should be built on the foundation of the basic social science disciplines, in

particular, psychology, sociology, political science, anthropolo gy, and economics. Second, organization studies should be devoted to the improvement of the human endeavor that

was its object of inquiry, the administration of organizations. In Thompson's (1956: 107) words, organization studies

should be an area of inquiry that is "implicitly or by design ...

focused on achievement, utility, or service values." To clarify what they had in mind, L&T identified academic medicine,

law, and engineering as models for the emerging field.

L&T exhorted scholars to build a cumulative, comprehensive, general body of theory about administration. They character ized theory relatively simply as composed of abstract con

structs and claims about the relationships among these con

structs. General theory applies to all kinds of organizations and, implicitly, in all places and at all points in time. Compre hensive theory explains all aspects of administrative behavior, for example, decision making, decision implementation, and




performance evaluation. Finally, cumulative theory builds on

itself.

L&T believed that the theory of administration should take into account three levels of analysis: the individual, the orga

nization, and the environment. These levels of analysis were

understood to be nested, such that the environment provides the context within which organizations and individuals oper ate, and the organization provides the context within which individuals operate. Talcott Parsons' (1956) work in sociology

was singled out as a model of the kind of general, compre hensive, cumulative, multilevel theory to which organizational studies scholars should aspire. L&T identified three purposes to which this kind of theory of administration should be put: to organize knowledge, guide future research, and inform

practice.

L&T believed that administrative theory should be scientific. In their relatively uncomplicated formulation, "Scientific theo ries are simplified models of relationships, which appear to account for experience" (Thompson, 1956: 104). Theories achieve this status when (1) the constructs they apprehend can be operationalized, (2) the correspondence between the

relationships they articulate and the world as we know it can

be empirically evaluated, and (3) they are modified, in a

process called "reappraisal," to take into account observed

discrepancies between theory and "reality." L&T thought sci entific theories could be built deductively, whereby relation

ships are identified by logical analysis, perhaps informed and aided by mathematical formalism. Or they could be built

inductively, whereby relationships are identified through empirical analysis. And they were agnostic about the relative

merits of qualitative and quantitative analysis.

In L&T's view, organization studies circa 1950 was far from

realizing their vision. It was composed of many different spe cific theories, with separate fields of study for hospitals, the

military, business, and public administration. And it focused on isolated parts of the administrative process, with separate theories of decision making, worker motivation, and so on.

Organization studies primarily operated at the individual and

organizational levels of analysis. And even the narrow bits of

theory that isolated parts of the administrative process within

single types of organizations and that operated at the individ ual and/or organizational levels were relatively undeveloped, exhibiting considerable conceptual and terminological confu

sion, which L&T believed hampered progress. From the

standpoint of disciplinary foundations, scholars of administra tion had not much drawn on the work of economists. From the standpoint of method, scholars had not much utilized for

mal mathematics. Finally, practical advice for administrators tended to come out of the experience of practitioners, rather than the scientific investigations of scholars.

Over the last 50 years, organization studies scholars have made substantial progress toward fulfilling L&T's vision. A

large number of new theoretical approaches have been artic

ulated that elaborate measurable variables and the relation

ships among them, new research methods have been devel

oped that increase the mathematical formalism of our




ASQ 50 Years Out

theoretical formulations, some of these approaches are derived from social sciences such as economics that had lit tle influence in L&T's time, and many are elaborated at the environmental level of analysis that was not much explored in their time. Over this same 50-year period, though, a num

ber of scholars have voiced concerns about the state of the field. I think many of these concerns amount to a fear either that the field has clung too closely to L&T's vision or that the field has strayed too far from it. And most of these concerns hold implications for the kinds of criteria we use when evalu

ating one another's work.

CONCERNS ABOUT THE FIELD OF ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Below I identify seven concerns voiced about the field of

organization studies, drawing heavily on commentary written

by ASQ authors and/or about ASQ's content. I also present evidence on ASQ's recent content as it relates to these con cerns. I focus on ASQ authors and content because I assume that the work of ASQ's authors and the nature of its content is of particular interest to ASQ's broad community of schol

ars, to which this essay is directed. The data on ASQ's recent content come from two sources. The first is a com

prehensive study conducted by Christine Oliver (1999), who served as the journal's editor from 1997 to 2002. She collect ed data on all articles published by ASQ between 1978 and

1998, but only tracked a few of the article characteristics of interest here. The second is a much less comprehensive

study that I conducted, which only followed the recipients of the ASQ Award for Scholarly Contribution between 1995 (the award's inaugural year) and 2006 but tracked all of the article characteristics of interest here. Together, these data give us an idea of the types of articles that ASQ has published in recent years and thus an idea of the types of manuscripts the

journal's editors, associate editors, editorial board members, and ad hoc reviewers have preferred. Both studies, though, only track manuscripts submitted to the journal and accepted for publication. Thus their data reflect the preferences of sub

mitting authors as well as the tastes of the journal's editors, board members, and ad hoc reviewers. Further, the second

study only tracks published articles that the journal's awards committees (composed of editorial board members) judged to have had the greatest impact on the field of organization studies in the five years since their publication (based on cita tion rates and expert opinion). Thus its data reflect the retro

spective judgments of scholars in the field (in particular, citing authors) as well as the taste of the journal's representatives.

A more thorough study of the journal's content over its com

plete history is currently underway.

Number 1: Concerns about the Field's Object of Inquiry

L&T thought the field of organization studies should be devoted to the development of knowledge about the admin istrative process. Some believe that the field has not stuck

closely enough to this mission. One year into their tenure, the editors of ASQ observed with some disappointment that the work published in the journal to that point examined a

range of organizational phenomena (e.g., "the internal adjust




ment and coordination of the enterprise" and "the formation of groups") but that the "relationships between these phe nomena and the processes of administration have occasional

ly been explicit, but more often implicit" (Thompson et al., 1957: 53). Recently, Bennis and O'Toole (2005: 1) contended that some of the research published by business school pro fessors in top journals is "excellent," but "little of it is

grounded in actual business practice." The field's tendency to

define its object of inquiry more broadly as "organizations" or even as "organization" has become institutionalized over

time. While the field's longest standing journals retain "administration" or "management" in their titles (e.g., the

Administrative Science Quarterly the Academy of Manage ment Journal, and the Academy of Management Review),

many of the more recent entries do not include either

"administration" or "management" in their titles but, rather, use broader designators (e.g., Organization Studies, Organiza tion Science, and Strategic Organization).

Others, though, believe that we have become hamstrung by L&T's conception of the field's object of inquiry. Some believe that the field has implicitly adopted the managers of

for-profit enterprise as its constituency (a concern in its own

right, discussed below). And some of those who hold this

position think that this has led the field to pursue a more lim

ited range of topics and approaches than it otherwise should. Porter (1996: 268) expressed this concern in general terms.

Discussing the "interaction between scholar and practition er," he wrote, "The challenge here is to develop that interac tion for the benefit of the advancement of knowledge in the

field of organization studies, without at the same time being co-opted by the immediate needs of the practitioner. In recent years, business schools in the U.S. have been getting increasingly closer to the world of business practice.... The

downside of this developing circumstance ... is that we

become too familiar and lose an independent and critical per

spective."

Hinings and Greenwood (2002) made this concern more con

crete, contending that the implicit adoption of the managerial constituency has distorted theory building and research, lead

ing scholars to ignore matters of power and politics. Augier, March, and Sullivan (2005) contended that the focus on man

agerial concerns, which they attributed to the development of organization studies as a quasi-discipline housed in gradu ate schools of business, influences the level of analysis pur sued (e.g., the organization rather than society), the kinds of

organizations studied (for-profit rather than not-for-profit), and

the kinds of dependent variables modeled (e.g., organization al performance rather than other organizational phenomena). Perrow (2000) made a similar point, attributing the associa tion between the institutional context of organization studies scholars and the topical and theoretical emphasis of their

scholarship to organizational imperatives that faced business

schools in the 1980s.

Oliver (1999) did not track the object of inquiry of ASQ arti cles published between 1978 and 1998. I found that only two

of the twelve recipients of the ASQ Award for Scholarly Con tribution from 1995 to 2006 focused on the administrative




ASQ 50 Years Out

process as characterized by L&T (e.g., Eisenhardt and

Tabrizi's 1995 paper on fast product development in the com

puter industry). I found that as many as five of the twelve

ASQ Award recipients could be characterized as focusing on

the administrative process, if one enlarges the definition of this process to encompass activities in which subsequent observational studies (Mintzberg, 1971; Kotter, 1982) indicate administrators actually engage or subsequent theoretical

work (Pfeffer, 1976) indicates administrators should engage

(e.g., Uzzi's 1997 article on the creation of social networks

among buyers and suppliers in the garment industry). Thus, seven of the twelve recipients of the ASQ Award for Scholar

ly Contribution focused on aspects of organizational behavior

that could not be considered part of the administrative

process, even using a broad definition of this process (e.g., Dutton, Dukerich, and Harquail, 1994; Tsui, Egan, and

O'Reilly, 1992; and O'Reilly, Caldwell, and Barnett, 1989, all

of which examine the attachment between workers and their

organizations). This is consistent with the conclusion that in

recent years ASQ has welcomed much work whose object of

inquiry is best characterized as organizations or organization.

Number 2: Concerns about the Field's Devotion to Theory

Building L&T believed that the field of organization studies should be devoted to building general theory about organizations. But some scholars have called into question the objective of

developing general theory. In 1958, Boulding expressed con

cern about the general character of organization theory pub lished in the first two volumes of ASQ and advocated that

researchers be more sensitive to the context within which

organizational phenomena are embedded. In a sense, he

argued that general theory can be like a map drawn at too

large a scale. At best, it does not do its subject justice, miss

ing important details, and at worst, it produces misleading inferences, missing crucial twists and turns in the road.

Recently, Davis and Marquis (2005: 335; Davis, 2005: 115) offered a more scathing critique of general theory building,

likening it to "na?ve scientism" and contending that "organi zations simply are not the kind of thing amenable to general theory" because they "are better construed not as timeless

'things' but as adaptable tools for which change is intrinsic."

Consistent with this view, writing about contemporary organi zation theory, they contend that "the explanatory power of

old theories has broken down" because "the world has

changed in ways that outstrip the ability of organization theo

ry to explain it" (Davis, 2005: 115; Davis and Marquis, 2005). In other remarks, Davis and Marquis seem to question the

wisdom of developing theory of any kind. They advocate

instead drawing on existing theory to identify "social mecha

nisms" that provide the basis of "middle range explanations"

(importantly, not predictions) of organizational phenomena (Davis and Marquis, 2005; Davis, 2005: 479). Davis (2005)

conducted an informal analysis of the last 10 volumes of ASQ and found that authors who study organization and envi ronment relations have already moved in this direction,

embracing a "problem-driven" approach in which multiple




theories are drawn upon to analyze specific instances of

organizational behavior.

Some have suggested an even more radical departure from

theory building. They suggest that organizational studies scholars should focus on developing descriptions of organiza tional phenomena. Boulding (1958), in his review of ASQ's first two volumes, implored scholars to devote more time to

describing organizations and organizational behavior, presum

ably at the expense of theorizing about them, because he believed we did not yet know enough about extant organiza tions and behaviors to develop generalizations about them. Davis and Marquis (2005) offer the same prescription for con

temporary students of organization and environment rela tions. They contend that organizations and their environ

ments are very different today than they were in the 1970s when the major theoretical orientations that currently guide work in the area were developed. And they urge researchers to concentrate on documenting the ways in which economic institutions have changed. Although there are not many

explicit critiques of theory building per se, I suspect that

many find the requirement to make theoretical contributions with their work an unwelcome constraint. Indeed, one of the most respected figures in organization studies, John Van Maanen (1995a: 133), has characterized himself as a "con

fessed anti-theorist."

Oliver (1999) did not track the extent to which ASQ published articles that were theory driven as opposed to problem driven or descriptive. I found that of the twelve articles that won the ASQ Award for Scholarly Contribution between 1994 and

2006, nine were motivated by the desire to build general the

ory as characterized by L&T, namely, the elaboration of abstract constructs (e.g., Dutton, Dukerich, and Harquail's 1994 article on organizational identification) and the specifica tion of relationships between them that apply in all types of

organizations (e.g., Tsui, Egan, and O'Reilly's 1992 article on

the relationship between organizational demography and worker attachment). Three of the twelve award-winning arti cles primarily motivated their study by a desire to explain a

particular organizational phenomenon (e.g., Eisenhardt and Tabrizi's 1995 article on the factors regulating fast product

innovation). Only one motivated its study even partly by the desire to describe a particular phenomenon (Powell, Koput, and Smith-Doerr's 1996 study of strategic alliances in

biotechnology). This is consistent with the conclusion that in recent years ASQ has primarily promoted theory building, at

least of the sort L&T advocated.

Number 3: Concerns about the Field's Paradigmatic Heterogeneity

L&T believed that organization studies scholars should build

general theory in a comprehensive and cumulative way. This belief is consistent with Pfeffer's (1993, 1995) characteriza tion of the numerous and substantial advantages that para

digmatic development brings to fields of inquiry. Pfeffer con

tends that paradigmatic development provides a framework within which normal science can be conducted and allows for the acquisition and efficient allocation of monetary, symbolic,




ASQ 50 Years Out

and human resources that fuel normal science progress? both of which further the expansion of knowledge. Pfeffer maintains that organization studies is a low-paradigm field, characterized by the proliferation of multiple theoretical orien tations that tend to examine different research questions

with different research methods and come to different con clusions about the nature, causes, and consequences of

organizational behavior. And he suggests that this low state

of paradigmatic development has delayed the onset of nor

mal science and the acquisition of resources, which has inhibited progress in our understanding of administration.

Recently, Pfeffer and Fong (2005) demonstrated what schol

arship devoted to promoting paradigmatic integration might look like.

Many scholars since L&T, however, have questioned the goal of paradigmatic homogeneity. Some even appear to view par

adigmatic consensus as a form of scholarly totalitarianism. Daft and Lewin (1990), when launching the new journal Orga nization Science, contended that contemporary organizational scholarship is trapped in a "normal science straightjacket" that restricts scholarship to a "limited set of topics," "estab lished theories," and "legitimate methods" and has "pro

duced incremental contributions." In their view, the field's future development hinges on expanding the range of para

digms that can be employed, because organizational phe nomena are "complex, variable rich," and "unpredictable" and because organization studies is still in its infancy. They promised that Organization Science would welcome research on "topics outside the mainstream," put forward "radical

ideas," utilize "heretical methods," and generate "significant discoveries" that are "interesting" and "surprising."

Few other scholars have embraced Daft and Lewin's charac terization of contemporary organizational studies as having reached the stage of normal science. Yet many share their

view that contemporary organizational scholarship is too nar

row and certainly should not be made narrower. Perrow

(1994) and Cannella and Paetzold (1994), who wrote rebuttals to Pfeffer, argue that different theoretical lenses apprehend different dimensions of organizational reality. And they con

tend that attempts to reduce the number of theoretical lens es through which we examine organizational phenomena are at best premature, citing, as did Daft and Lewin (1990), the

complexity of organizational phenomena and the infancy of the field. Van Maanen (1995b: 689), also writing in response to Pfeffer, offered a similar analysis, celebrating the diversity of perspectives that populate contemporary organization the

ory and contending that a narrowing of that diversity would "inhibit "substantive progress and knowledge accumulation."

And he added that it was not only inadvisable but also impos sible to develop a single dominant paradigm in organization studies, pointing out that despite much effort to pit theories

against one another, no progress has been made toward

achieving this goal. Consistent with this contention, Davis and Marquis argue that "macro-organizational scholars since 1990 have largely abandoned the idea of cumulative work

within a particular paradigm" (Davis and Marquis, 2005: 3; see also Davis, 2005: 481).




Despite the relatively widespread and sometimes vitriolic

rejection of Pfeffer's implicit call for more devoted pursuit of

paradigmatic consensus, the opposition appears to see itself as being on the defensive and perhaps losing ground. For

example, despite 15 years of dedication to publish work that breaks out of the "normal science straightjacket," the editors of OS recently convened a two-volume special issue of the

journal on the state of the field by lamenting that "we have become stuck in theories developed in the latter half of the twentieth century" (Schoonhoven, Meyer, and Walsh, 2005). To paraphrase Yosarian in Joseph Heller's Catch 22, that's some straightjacket, that normal science straightjacket.

Oliver (1999) did not track the extent to which ASQ published articles that seek to develop established paradigms. I found that only two of the twelve ASQ Scholarly Contribution

Award recipients were primarily motivated by the explicit desire to test and/or extend a particular theory or theories

(e.g., Uzzi's 1997 article, which extends and deepens the embeddedness perspective on economic action). This is con

sistent with the conclusion that ASQ has not done much to

promote increased paradigmatic homogeneity in recent

years?which, of course, is not to say that it has fostered

paradigmatic heterogeneity.

Number 4: Concerns about the Field's Mode of Building Theory and Conducting Research

Concerns about the field's mode of building theory and con

ducting research can be separated into a general concern about the scientific method and more specific concerns

about deductive theory building and quantitative empirical analysis. L&T advocated use of the scientific method, con

ceptualizing this method loosely as the explanation of observed regularities through theoretical supposition and

empirical verification. Over the years, though, critics have fretted about the field's propensity to rely on the scientific

method. Boulding (1958), reflecting on the first two volumes of ASQ, and Daft (1980), analyzing the first 25 years of the

journal, contended that an increasing number of articles used

quantitative empirical methods. And both equated these methods with "science." As Daft (1980: 631) put it, "the

early articles were almost all qualitative, but the notion of a

science gradually developed. By 1969, most articles were

systematic analyses of organizations and by 1979 most stud ies utilized linear statistics of some form." Daft called for

greater use of qualitative methods, which, by implication, he considered a non-scientific approach. Boulding lamented the

declining proportion of papers utilizing historical methods, which he explicitly characterized as derived from the humani ties and thus implicitly considered non-scientific. Zald (1993, 1996) later embraced this lament and called for greater use

of methods derived from the humanities, which included not

just historical methods but narrative, textual, and rhetorical methods associated with the cultural turn and philosophical analysis. Over the last several decades, a more fundamental

critique of the scientific method and more explicit characteri zation of an alternative mode of understanding have gained popularity in the social sciences. Van Maanen (1995a, 1995b) is perhaps the foremost proponent of the alternative mode of




ASQ 50 Years Out

understanding in organization studies, a mode of inquiry that assumes that organizational reality and organization studies scholars are mutually constitutive. In this view, organization studies scholars create organizational realities as much as

they apprehend them.

Part of this more fundamental critique of organizational analy sis focuses on the language that scholars use to develop the

ory and report research. Daft (1980) contended that the first 25 years of ASQ evinced an increasing use of "low variety" languages, which he contended were ill-equipped to appre

hend the complexities of organizational realities. Van Maanen

(1995a, 1995b) elaborated this line of argument, maintaining that the scientific mode of inquiry is associated with an

"aggressive," "objective," "impersonal," and "rigid" lan

guage that obscures more than it reveals. He characterized the alternative mode of inquiry as using a more "allegorical," "subjective," "intimate," and "flexible" language style,

which affords the reader greater latitude in interpretation and allows for more thorough understanding. Describing the alter native approach, Van Maanen (1995a: 139) wrote, "... semantic clarity and distinctiveness is achieved only to the extent that we allow statements to depend on the identity of the writer, that we allow the circumstances that surround dis course to enter into our consideration of what is being said, that we allow ambiguous statements to stand without ques tion in the hope that future remarks will clarify their meaning, and so on (and so on)."

The field's growing unease with the scientific method is reflected in the titles of its newer journals. These titles

decreasingly include the word "science," opting for more

ambiguous referents (e.g., Organization Studies and Strategic Organization). With this said, there is sometimes ambiguity about the extent to which critics are calling into question the scientific method or the way organization studies scholars use this method. For example, Van Maanen (1995a: 133) con tends that Pfeffer is "extraordinarily na?ve as to how science

actually works," and he characterizes organization studies' dominant mode of inquiry as "mock science."

L&T did not address the relative merits of deductive and inductive approaches to theory building. Rather, they explicit ly exhorted organization studies scholars to use both deduc

tive and inductive methods to advance understanding of administration. Some, though, believe that the field of organi zation studies privileges deductive work over inductive work. It is useful to distinguish between two types of deductive

work. The first, which might be called systematic deductive

work, entails developing propositions and hypotheses from the formal logical analysis of existing theories. There is rela

tively little such work in organization studies. The second, which might be called unsystematic deductive work, identi fies gaps and contradictions in and between theories and then draws on existing theory and empirical evidence to

develop propositions and hypotheses that fill these gaps or resolve these contradictions. This unsystematic deductive

approach dominates the major journals. Some believe that this approach constrains the range of available theoretical ideas because it requires that all new ideas be modifications




of existing ones as opposed to major departures from prior

thinking. For example, Kogut (2006), in introducing his editor

ship of the European Management Review, explicitly indi

cates that under his stewardship EMR will welcome work

that gets into its topic without first taking account of existing

theory on the topic. In his words, "We do not require that

every article considers what the current theory is in order to

frame ... an investigation" (Kogut, 2006: 2). I suspect that

this promise taps a deep and considerable well of resent

ment on the part of some organization studies scholars about

the theoretical path dependence fostered by the field's major

publications.

L&T also did not address the relative merits of quantitative and qualitative methods. Over the years, though, many have

noted and expressed concern about the increasing predomi nance of quantitative empirical methods. As noted above,

Boulding (1958), reflecting on the first two volumes of ASQ, observed an increasing tendency of researchers to conduct

quantitative empirical analyses of data. He contended that

too many practitioners of this method exhibited what he

called "data fixation," a tendency to take insufficient account

of the larger totality from which their data were taken, con

fusing (implicitly, equating) the data with that larger reality. And he called on practitioners of quantitative methods to go back and forth between their data and the context from

which they were drawn, adjusting their data collection proto cols to develop data that more faithfully represented the reali

ty they hoped to capture. Boulding also lamented the relative

ly small number of articles in ASQ's first two volumes that

were devoted to methodological issues. He took this to indi

cate a premature convergence on a single limited mode of

analysis. And he called on organization studies scholars to

use a wider variety of methods to provide a deeper under

standing of organizations.

As noted above, Daft (1980) offered very similar observations

about the first 25 volumes of ASQ. He categorized ASQ arti

cles according to the variety of research language they

employed, which ranged from analytical mathematics (low

variety) to nonverbal, imaginative (high variety), concluding that ASQ authors increasingly relied on low-variety lan

guages, specifically, quantitative empirical analyses and, even

more specifically, "linear statistics." Daft also categorized ASQ articles according to the complexity of the theoretical

models they elaborated, and he concluded that ASQ authors

increasingly elaborated simple models. Daft worried that the

decline in model complexity was partly due to the decline in

language variety, speculating that low-variety languages restrict our ability to apprehend complex organizational reali

ties, such as emotional phenomena. In a somewhat lyrical

passage he wrote, "high variety languages may enable us to

hear the music and poetry of organizations and to capture and communicate subtle and intuitive insights about organiza tions" (1980: 633). He called for greater use of qualitative

methods and pointed to the (then) recent 1979 ASQ special issue devoted to papers that utilized this method as a posi

tive step in this direction.




ASQ 50 Years Out

Oliver did not track the percentage of papers that built theory inductively between 1978 and 1998. I found that three (27

percent) of the ASQ Award for Scholarly Contribution recipi ents used inductive methods (e.g., Barker's 1993 article on

self-managed teams). Oliver (1999) found that in 1978 only about 10 percent of the articles published in ASQ employed qualitative methods but that by 1998, over 30 percent of the articles published by the journal employed such methods, the increase coming primarily at the expense of pure theory

papers, which declined from about 35 percent to under 10

percent over the period. I found that of the twelve empirical papers that won the ASQ Award for Scholarly Contribution since 1995, four (36 percent) used qualitative methods (e.g., Zbaracki's 1998 paper on the adoption of total quality man

agement). One paper, Dutton, Dukerich, and Harquail's (1994) article on organizational identification, was purely theoretical. These results are consistent with the conclusion that ASQ

privileges deductive and quantitative work, but by no means to the exclusion of inductive and qualitative work.

Number 5: Concerns about the Field's Disciplinary Status and Foundation

L&T believed that organization studies should rely on the basic social sciences for its theoretical ideas. They contended that applied sciences require the broadest possible discipli nary base on which to build a sound superstructure. Further,

they identified several social sciences that were particularly ripe for mining at the time that ASQ was founded, perhaps

most notably economics. Organization studies scholars have

expressed two concerns about this part of L&T's vision.

The first concern pertains to the extent to which the field continues to draw on the basic disciplines for theoretical raw

material. Some lament the field's growing separation from the disciplines. In their history of the Anglophone North

American branch of organization studies, Augier, March, and Sullivan (2005) contended that organization studies has devel

oped into a "quasi-discipline" that is increasingly independent of the social sciences from which it sprang. And they con

tended that this quasi-independence cuts the field off from a

valuable source of intellectual sustenance. Others applaud the field's growing disciplinary independence and even

lament the slow pace at which that independence is being earned. At the founding of Organization Science, its editors

wrote with noticeable excitement, "We sense that a new

discipline of organization science is evolving and we envision that a new journal can become a forum for a discipline defined more broadly" (Daft and Lewin, 1990). And Pfeffer

(1993) lamented the fact that while authors publishing in

organization studies journals often cite work published in the

disciplinary journals, authors publishing in the disciplinary journals much less frequently cite work appearing in organiza tion studies journals.

The second concern pertains to the extent to which the field has drawn on some disciplines more than others for its theo retical ideas. One year into their tenure, the editors of ASQ criticized the journal's first volume as containing "relatively few articles [that] dealt with the individual or personal charac




teristics of those engaged in administration or with the ways in which such characteristics may affect the process" (Thompson et al., 1957: 531). A year later, Boulding (1958) reiterated the belief that organization studies should draw on

the full range of social sciences and expressed concern that the articles in the first two volumes of ASQ were rooted in

sociological theory. As a corrective, he exhorted scholars to

draw on other disciplines, such as political science. Forty years later, Porter (1996: 263) observed that through the 1950s the field of organization studies was dominated by

psychologists and asserted that ASQ was "a major force" in

broadening the field beyond its psychological roots. This observation and assertion is consistent with what I believe is a sense among many contemporary scholars that the major journals are reluctant to publish micro work, by which is

meant work that draws on the discipline of psychology and addresses phenomena at the individual or group level of

analysis. More recently, Hirsch and associates (Hirsch, Michaels, and Friedman, 1987; Hirsch, Friedman, and Koza,

1990) and Pfeffer (1993, 1995) have expressed concern

about the growing influence of economic theory in organiza tion studies, giving rise to the so-called "dirty hands versus

clean models" debate. It would appear that while organiza tion studies operates under a big tent, some members of the scout troop feel that they have been unfairly and injudiciously given less bunk space than others at particular points in time.

Oliver (1999) found that about 35 percent of the articles pub lished by ASQ between 1978 and 1998 were micro in charac

ter, a percentage that changed little over the 20-year period. I

found that six of the twelve papers to win the ASQ Award for

Scholarly Contribution since 1995 can be classified as micro

(O'Reilly, Caldwell, and Barnett, 1989; Chatman, 1991; Tsui,

Egan, and O'Reilly, 1992; Barker, 1993; Dutton, Dukerich, and

Harquail, 1994; Zbaracki, 1998). This is consistent with the conclusion that ASQ favors macro scholarship, but by no

means to the exclusion of micro work.

Number 6: Concerns about the Field's Relevance to Practitioners

L&T thought that organization studies should be devoted to

the production of knowledge that could be used by practition ers, in particular, administrators, to improve their perfor

mance. Organization studies scholars have expressed four concerns about this part of L&T's vision.

The first concern pertains to the extent to which the field of

organization studies should be devoted to generating knowl

edge that is of use to practitioners of any kind. I think there is a group of scholars that might be aptly labeled the "silent

majority" that advocates disinterest in practical matters as a means to achieve objectivity, scientific or otherwise. Mem bers of this group tend not to voice this position too loudly, perhaps for fear of biting the hand that feeds them?the pro fessional schools, in particular, the business schools that

employ many of them. Because I am unaware of a program matic statement along these lines, though, I will say no more

about it here.




ASQ 50 Years Out

The second concern pertains to the extent to which the field of organization studies should adopt practitioners other than administrators as their constituency. In a review of the first two volumes of ASQ, Boulding (1958) attributed an expan sive practical agenda to the journal. He characterized the arti cles appearing in the first two volumes as a "concerted effort to solve a problem of great practical relevance to human wel fare." And he characterized this problem as "how can organi zations be built, and by what principles shall they be conduct

ed, which will serve to free and not enslave the individual and which shall be protected against the gangrene of corrup tion which besets all human institutions?" (Boulding, 1958:

19). Almost 40 years later, Selznick (1996: 277) proposed, albeit less passionately, a similar practical program, writing "the agenda should include a thoughtful attention to the poli cy relevance of organizational ... theory." Others have fault ed the field of organization studies for ignoring specific con

stituencies other than management within the organization, such as labor and the communities in which firms are situat ed. For example, Hickson and his co-editors (1980: 2) intro duced the new journal Organization Studies as "devoted both to those who are organized and those who do the organiz ing."

The third concern pertains to the extent to which the field of

organization studies has in fact generated knowledge of value to practitioners of any kind. This concern is expressed bluntly in Daft and Lewin's (1990: 1) claim that the field of

organizations studies has virtually "no audience in business or government." Others have made similar claims with

respect to business school scholars and the managers of for

profit enterprise in particular (Bennis and OToole, 2005).

The fourth concern pertains to the reasons why the field of

organization studies has failed to generate knowledge consid ered relevant to its constituency, however defined. Interest

ingly, L&T foreshadowed the difficulties of developing the

practical implications of organization studies for administra tors. They noted that in order to develop practical insights for

administrators, one had to develop a metric according to which alternative organizational interventions might be com

pared. But they contended that it is difficult to develop such a metric, because it is difficult to make competing administra tive values (i.e., costs, quality, and profit) commensurable.

The problem of developing the practical implications of orga nization studies for a wider range of constituencies is more severe. The more stakeholders that are recognized (e.g.,

workers and community members) and the more diverse the values that must be considered (e.g., workplace justice and social responsibility), the more difficult it is to make these values commensurable.

The five major concerns outlined above have been causally linked to the field's irrelevance to practitioners of all sorts.

Some attribute the field's irrelevance to its failure to focus on

the administrative process (Bennis and OToole, 2005). Some attribute it to the field's overemphasis on theory building as

opposed to substantively important topics. Selznick (1996: 277) alluded to this explanation when he wrote of institution al theorists, "Concern for policy is an important source of




intellectual discipline.... It directs our attention to genuine problems of institutional life, which may not be the same as

the problems that intrigue institutional theorists." Some attribute the field's irrelevance to its adoption of "the faulty assumption that business is an academic discipline like

chemistry or geology," which provides the foundation for research that is disconnected from practitioners' concerns

(Bennis and OToole, 2005: 2). Others attribute the field's irrelevance to its paradigmatic heterogeneity, which prohibits

practitioners from developing clear policy implications from its theory and research (Pfeffer, 1993, 1995). Some locate

the field's irrelevance in its romance with methodological sophistication, in particular, with its use of archival data and state-of-the-art statistical techniques. Bennis and OToole

(2005: 3) complained that business school scholars have

adopted a "model of science" that entails spending "minimal time in the field" and using "statistical and methodological

wizardry [that can] blind rather than illuminate."

Oliver (1999) did not track the extent to which ASQ published articles that developed the practical implications of their results. I found that only two of the twelve papers that received the ASQ Award for Scholarly Contribution since 1995 included even brief remarks of this sort (e.g., Hansen's 1999 paper on knowledge sharing and new product develop

ment). This is consistent with the conclusion that ASQ does not give voice to much work motivated by the desire to

develop knowledge that can improve managerial or other

practice.

Number 7: Concerns about the Field's Anglocentrism

L&T did not comment on the geographic location of organiza tional scholars or the organizations they study. Early on,

though, commentators began to fret about the apparent North American parochialism of organizational scholarship. Boulding (1958) contended that the first two volumes of ASQ did not pay sufficient attention to organizations located out side the U.S. Forty years later, Hickson (1996) summarized research by Usdiken and Pasadeos (1995) showing that orga nizational scholarship was more developed in North America than elsewhere and that while organization scholars in other

parts of the world frequently cited their colleagues in North

America, the reverse did not often happen. Hickson also

reviewed research by Koza and Thoenig (1995) that showed that North American scholarship was different from organiza tional scholarship in other parts of the world, being more

devoted to theory construction than description and more

likely to use quantitative than qualitative methods. Augier, March, and Sullivan (2005) later provided a brief history of the evolution of organization studies in Anglophone North Ameri

ca, suggesting that, to all extents and purposes, this history was coterminous with the development of the field as a

whole.

Over the years, I think these insights have crystallized into a

perception that North American scholarship exerts hegemon ic influence over the field of organization studies, distorting

the ends it pursues, the means through which it pursues these ends, and thus the understandings it generates. David




ASQ 50 Years Out

Hickson and a group of his colleagues implicitly established

Organization Studies to remedy this situation. They sought to

create a publication outlet that was a "supranational forum

for ideas in the understanding of organizations" (Hickson et

al., 1980: 1). Organization Studies was created for organiza tion scholars situated in and outside of North America and

who studied organizations in and outside of North America.

Further, it was created in the hope of providing an outlet for

cross-national comparative research, that is, research geared to examine and explain differences between organizations situated in diverse countries. Further, the editors sought to

overcome what might be called the biases of Anglophone North American scholarship. They characterized the new jour nal as "flexible in content and style, open to a diversity of

paradigms, and to any and all of the disciplines which con

tribute to organization theory" (Hickson et al., 1980: 1). And

in addition to characterizing their constituency broadly (as noted above), they characterized their substantive interests

broadly, promising to "look at organizations as both the

implements of societies and as institutions which shape the

societies that use them" (1980: 2). More recently, Anne Tsui

and her colleagues launched Management and Organization Review with the same intentions, focusing on the Chinese

context. And Joel Baum and his colleagues launched Strate

gic Organization partially to provide a "forum for advancing ... an international conversation" in its area of focus, strate

gy and organization (Baum, Greenwood, and Jennings, 2003: 6).

Oliver (1999) found that about 12 percent of the articles pub lished by ASQ between 1978 and 1998 had at least one

coauthor who was situated outside of the United States, a

percentage that changed little over the 20-year period (she did not calculate the percentage of these non-U.S. papers that were non-North-American). I found that none of the

twelve articles to receive the ASQ Award for Scholarly Contri

bution since 1995 were written by an author situated outside

the United States. The discrepancy between the two studies was not due to a recent decline in ASQ's openness to non

North-American scholarship. If anything, the reverse is the

case. A supplemental data collection effort indicates that 24

percent of all articles published from 1999 through 2005 had

at least one coauthor who was situated outside the U.S., and

about 17 percent had at least one coauthor who was situated

outside North America.1 Four of the eleven empirical papers to win the ASQ Award used some data from organizations situated outside the U.S. But none conducted analyses in

which the geographic location of their data was taken into

account in the analysis. This is consistent with the conclusion

that ASQ primarily publishes work by U.S. and North Ameri

can authors about U.S. and North American organizations but

is by no means closed to work by non-U.S. and non-North

American authors about non-U.S. and non-North-American

organizations.


1 It is possible that the discrepancy

between Oliver's study of all papers pub lished between 1978 and 1998 and my

study of ASQ Award recipients from 1995 to 2006 reflects the fact that papers authored by non-U.S. authors are less

likely to win the ASQ Award for Scholarly Contribution, partly because they are less

frequently cited. It is also possible, though, that this discrepancy simply reflects the fact that variables exhibit high variance in small samples. For example, if Morton Hansen, situated at Harvard at the time he wrote his award-winning paper in 1999 but located at INSEAD

when he won the award in 2005, had been coded as being situated outside the U.S. and North America, the percentage of award recipients authored by non-U.S. and non-North-American authors would have been 8 percent.



MY THOUGHTS ON THE CONCERNS

Embracing a Diversity of Approaches to the Study of

Organizations I think that ASQ's editors, editorial board members, and ad

hoc reviewers should remain open to scholarship that falls on

both sides of the seven divides identified above. I offer this

opinion partly because I think that diverse ways of appre

hending behavior in and of organizations will expand the

range and depth of our understanding of organizational behavior. Some might legitimately judge the influence of

some ways of apprehending organizational phenomena to be

insufficient and the influence of others to be excessive at

particular points of time, perhaps because the perceived imbalance leads to insufficient consideration of particular top ics, theories, explanations, and/or methods. But the imbal

ance should be addressed by theoretical and empirical work

that advances and/or critiques analyses rooted in the under or overrepresented ways of apprehending organizational phe nomena in question, not by editorial policy. This position

might be considered so obvious that it need not be articulat

ed. I state it explicitly here, though, because I often hear

complaints to the effect that ASQ does not look favorably on

scholarship of one kind or another. And to the extent that

authors of these kinds of scholarship share this perception,

they will not submit their work to ASQ for review. This is a

problem of great concern to me and to ASQ's other editors, because we wish to publish the best work of all kinds, and

we cannot publish work that we do not receive as submis

sions.

I also offer this opinion, though, because I think that scholar

ship that falls on opposite sides of the seven divides identi

fied above are in many instances compatible and/or comple mentary. For example, focusing on organizations and

organizing more generally is not incompatible with focusing on the administrative process. The more we understand

about the organizational context in which administrative

behavior is situated, the better we understand the adminis

trative process as well. Dutton, Dukerich, and Harquail's (1994) article on organizational identification, which analyzes the relationship between workers' self-concept and their

organization's image, suggests that correspondence between

workers' self-concept and organizational image increases

workers' attachment to the firm, and workers' increased

attachment boosts their motivation and reduces turnover.

Insofar as increased motivation and reduced turnover are

often objectives of the administrative process, this study sug

gests that regulation of the relationship between self-concept and organizational image should be included as part of the

administrative process.

Similarly, building general theory about organizations is not

inconsistent with constructing context-specific theory. A the

ory can only aspire to generality to the extent that it accom

modates contextual variation. L&T lamented the fact that in

their time there were separate theories for different kinds of

organizations. But they did not dispute the fact that organiza tions differed according to the context in which they were

situated. Instead, they advocated that scholars explicitly rec




ASQ 50 Years Out

ognize this fact and identify the factors that might explain those differences. Ruef and Scott's (1998) article on the evo

lution of health care provider organizations in the San Francis co Bay Area is an excellent example of work that attempts to

understand variation in organizational behavior over time.

Guler, Guillen, and Macpherson's (2002) article on the diffu sion of ISO 9000 quality certificates is a wonderful example of work that attempts to understand variation in organization al behavior across geopolitical boundaries.

Further, efforts to build theory, general or otherwise, is not

incompatible with attempts to develop explanations of partic ular instances of organizational behavior. Theoretical analysis of previously unanalyzed behavior in and of organizations pro vides an opportunity for what L&T characterized as "reap praisal." It is through such efforts that theories are tested

against reality, as we know it, and either found adequate or

found wanting and in need of reformulation. Barker's (1993)

analysis of a new organizational form, self-managed teams, confirms and updates Weber's decades old predictions about the consequences of the increasing rationalization of adminis

tration, encapsulated by the phrase the "iron cage." And, of

course, one cannot draw a clear line between theory and

description. As Boulding (1958) and Davis (2005) pointed out,

descriptive evidence is an important foundation of theory building. Further, less often recognized, description is predi cated on at least rudimentary theory about what is salient

and worth noting. One could even say that good description must be predicated on more substantial theory (Homans,

1967).

Similarly, the distinction between so-called scientific and non

scientific methods is in some respects blurry. Perhaps most

obviously, scientific and non-scientific methods are some

times complementary. For example, historical methods can

be used to generate data from which theoretical generaliza tions can be derived and with which theoretical ideas can be

tested. Shenhav and Kalev's (2007) forthcoming study of pro

ductivity councils in Israel provides an excellent example of such work. Less obviously, some methods characterized as

"non-scientific" are, at least in some uses, as "scientific" as

the methods conventionally employed by the social sciences. Weber (1946) advocated that sociologists adopt science as

their vocation and argued that historical and interpretative work is central to this vocation. Importantly, Weber consid ered all social action to be "meaningful action." For this rea

son, he contended that those seeking to understand social action must seek to understand the meanings that guide it. I

think Zbaracki's (1998) study of the adoption of total quality management provides a wonderful example of work that

fruitfully examines how meanings shape behavior in organiza tions.

Further, the more specific contrast between inductive theory building and qualitative research, on the one hand, and

deductive and quantitative work, on the other, is false. Quali tative methods can be used in conjunction with what is

undoubtedly the unsystematic deductive approach to theory building (e.g., Cole, 1985; Guillen, 1997). And quantitative empirical techniques can be employed in an inductive way




(e.g., data mining). What is more, qualitative and quantita tive research methods and inductive and deductive theory building are frequently complementary. Qualitative methods are particularly appropriate for apprehending dimensions of

organizational behavior that cannot be easily measured. For

example, because it is difficult to measure the emotional states of organizational participants, research on emotions in organizations has been conducted with qualitative meth

ods (e.g., Huy, 2002).2 And much of what passes for deduc tive theory building in our field has a substantial inductive

component, insofar as identifying the inadequacies of exist

ing theory is often inspired by empirical observations. The fact that rigorous protocols now exist for conducting qualita tive research (e.g., Rangin, 2000) and building inductive the

ory (e.g., Eisenhardt, 1989) puts these kinds of work on

firm ground.

Similarly, I don't think tolerance of paradigmatic heterogene ity necessarily implies forgoing cumulative normal science. If paradigms can be considered complexes of topics, theo

ries, and methods, then one can see them as complemen tary approaches that apprehend different dimensions of the same organizational phenomenon. And one can aspire to

expand and deepen understanding of organizational phe nomena within each paradigm. Certainly this is the case in

other applied fields, such as those with which L&T com

pared organization studies. For example, academic medicine does not aspire to identify a single topic/theory/method

complex in connection with the analysis of heart disease.

Some in academic medicine seek to understand and treat

the problem using knowledge developed by electrical and mechanical engineers in designing pace makers and artifi cial hearts. Others use knowledge uncovered by physiolo gists in developing exercise regimens. Others use knowl

edge generated by psychologists in crafting cognitive behavioral therapies to reduce and cope with stress. And still others draw on the work of chemists, some of whom

specialize in pharmacy, designing drugs, and others of whom specialize in nutrition, formulating diets. Within each

area, though, researchers seek paradigmatic consensus and

pursue normal science.

Finally, adopting administrators as the field's constituency is not inconsistent with conceptualizing the field's constituen

cy in broader terms. Organization studies scholars have

trained an army of consultants who travel the highways and

skies imparting wisdom to the world's businesses (McKen na, 2006). But organization studies scholars can at the same

time embrace constituencies other than private-sector man

agers and even administrators per se. Other applied fields have increasingly defined their constituencies broadly. For

example, the medical profession has increasingly averred not just to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of

physicians but also to improve the overall well-being and

experience of the patient.


2 Functional MRI technology promises to close the measurement gap with respect to emotions (Rilling et al., 2002), and I

hope ASQ will someday publish research that draws on this technology. But I doubt that this or any other technology will

completely close the gap in measuring emotions in the near future.



ASQ 50 Years Out

Challenges to Nurturing Diverse Scholarship on

Organizations

With this said, there are challenges to embracing a diversity of approaches to studying organizations. I identify some of these challenges, adopting the vantage point of what might be considered the mainstream perspective on organization studies and elaborating some difficulties associated with

embracing what might be considered less conventional

approaches to the field. For good or bad, including main stream ends and means in the field of organization studies is not problematic.

I suggest that we welcome problem-driven work that bor rows from existing theories to explain specific instances of

organizational behavior. But work that merely borrows from

existing theories to develop explanations of specific organi zational phenomenon does not, by definition, develop new

theory or test existing theory. To the extent that our field welcomes such work, it implicitly assumes that existing theories are sufficient to explain all organizational phenome na, a perspective that Davis and Marquis (2005: 479) explic itly endorse in the context of theories about organizations

and the environment. To the extent that our field embraces this assumption, it guarantees that no new theories will be

developed and no existing theories will be rejected or modi fied. And to the extent that new theories are not developed and existing ones are not rejected or modified, it reinforces the hegemony of existing theoretical formulations and fails to expand our ability to explain organizational phenomena. This presents the following challenge: Can researchers con

duct problem-driven research in a way that facilitates the extension and deepening of our existing corpus of theory?

Similarly, I suggest that we welcome work that is primarily descriptive, cataloging existing and emerging organizational forms and processes. But as I note, descriptive work is rooted in implicit theory about what is salient and worth

noting and what is irrelevant and worth overlooking in orga nizational settings. Sometimes scholars conducting descrip tive work fail to explicate the theory that underpins their

descriptions. When this is the case, they not only fail to contribute to the development of theory, they muddle the

enterprise. This presents the following challenge: Can scholars conduct descriptive research in a way that makes the theory that guides their work transparent and open to contestation?

I suggest that we welcome work that utilizes non-scientific methods. But work that utilizes non-scientific methods of the sort advocated by proponents of the cultural turn, the

linguistic turn, and interpretative methods generally honors the inherently subjective relationship between the researcher and his or her object of inquiry and typically adopts flexible linguistic styles. The more subjective the

relationship between the researcher and his or her subject and the more flexible the language used to communicate this relationship, the more difficult it is for other scholars to

accurately understand, rigorously evaluate, and systemati cally extend this work. This presents the following chal




lenge: Can researchers who embrace non-scientific meth ods develop knowledge that can be comprehended, evaluat

ed, and extended by other scholars; in a word, can

researchers develop knowledge that lays the foundation for

"inter-subjectivity"?

I also suggest that we welcome inductive work, in which the researcher immerses him- or herself in data in an

attempt to develop new concepts and elucidate new rela

tionships. But sometimes researchers adopt an inductive

approach without first sufficiently taking into account prior theory on their subject. And when this is the case, researchers can develop constructs and elaborate relation

ships that are redundant with or have an ambiguous rela

tionship to previously elaborated concepts and relation

ships. This presents the following challenge: Can researchers conduct inductive work that adds to what we

already know, rather than restates what we already know

using new terminology?

I suggest that the field remain open to a diversity of theo retical paradigms. But sometimes such openness takes the form of exhortations to develop "new" and "novel" and

"interesting" approaches to understanding organizational behavior. When this occurs, originality, novelty, and appeal are implicitly valued over validity. I think it is important that our ideas adequately apprehend organizational phenomena, even if those ideas are sometimes old, derivative, and bor

ing. This presents the following challenge: Can researchers

propose new ways of viewing organizational phenomena in a manner that provides or at least permits rigorous valida tion of those ways of viewing?

Finally, I suggest that the field embrace work from non

North-American scholars and focused on non-North-Ameri can organizations. At first glance, this would seem a simple

matter, inhibited only by practical challenges such as sur

mounting language barriers that limit the ability of North American scholars to study non-North-American contexts and limit the ability of non-North-American scholars to pre sent their work to the North American audience. But two

deeper problems inhibit our ability to incorporate non-North American scholarship into the mainstream. First, as noted, non-North-American scholars tend to favor non-mainstream

approaches. Thus all of the challenges already mentioned

apply here as well. Second, a growing number of the most

prominent non-North-American scholars have been trained in North America and thus embrace the approach to build

ing theory and conducting research dominant in North America. Thus we face the following challenge: Can we

embrace non-North-American scholarship without simulta

neously stripping it of its unique attributes?

I have taken the perspective of the mainstream in elaborating the challenges of welcoming a diversity of approaches to the

study of organizations because, from a pragmatic standpoint, the sustenance of mainstream approaches is not problemat ic. I do not wish, by adopting this perspective, to imply that

mainstream approaches do not confront challenges of their own. For example, I suggest that we welcome attempts to




ASQ 50 Years Out

promote paradigmatic homogeneity in the field. But some times such attempts take the form of grand integrations of alternative perspectives that devolve into semantic exercises. This presents the following challenge: Can researchers inte

grate theoretical frameworks in ways that produce a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts?

AN INVITATION TO RESPOND

I wrote this essay with the intent of initiating a stock-taking conversation with the Administrative Science Quarterly's broad community of scholars?its editors, editorial board

members, ad hoc reviewers, authors, submitters, and read ers. I began by summarizing Litchfield and Thompson's vision for the field of organization studies. Then I identified seven concerns about the state of the field that I contend stem from the belief either that we have strayed too far from L&T's vision or stuck to close to it, indicating how ASQ's recent content stacks up vis ? vis these concerns. I conclud ed by suggesting that we remain open to diverse modes of

inquiry, partly because these different modes of inquiry have more in common than we sometimes recognize and partly because, to the extent that they do diverge, they provide complementary ways to understand the same complex phe nomena. Yet I acknowledge that remaining open to divergent

modes of inquiry in the field of organization studies presents challenges.

I suspect that this essay will raise a variety of questions in the minds of readers. Have I misstated Litchfield and Thomp son's vision for the field of organization studies? Have I mis characterized any of the seven controversies in the field of

organization studies or misidentified their link to L&T's vision? Are there other important controversies in the field of organi zation studies regarding the ends and means of the enter

prise? Should we, as I recommend, welcome a multiplicity of modes of inquiry in organization studies? And if so, how can we meet the challenges of incorporating such a diverse array of scholarship? Are there other challenges that organization scholars and publication outlets face in their efforts to advance the field of organization studies and how can we

meet them? And most important, in light of the above, how can ASQ remain consistent with its most basic goal of pub lishing papers that, to quote from ASQ's Notice to Contribu

tors, "advance understanding" and hold the potential to

"improve practice"?

As Weick (1996: 309) noted, these and related questions should not be "answered by a single essay" but rather should be "discussed in the organizational community at

large." I invite interested readers to submit comments on

any topic related, no matter how tangentially, to the issues raised in this essay by clicking on the ASQ icon on my Web site at the Graduate School of Management, University of

California, Davis (www.gsm.ucdavis.edu/Faculty/Palmer). All submitted comments can be viewed by following the same

procedure. The editors of the journal will monitor the feed back contained in these comments, and we will use it to inform our stewardship of the journal in the coming years. I look forward to a lively exchange of ideas.




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Documents

Taking Stock of the Criteria We Use to Evaluate One Another's Work: ASQ 50 Years Out