Producing and socializing relevant management knowledge: re‐turn to pragmatism
Abstract
Purpose
Management practice is progressing at unprecedented pace and often academia is lagging behind, if not totally irrelevant, both in management research and in education. This paper strives to show how principles of pragmatism and action research are likely to increase the relevance of management research and education.
Design/methodology/approach
A reflection based on a broad review of ontological and epistemological issues leads to a call for philosophical re‐foundation of management academia.
Findings
Pragmatism defines truth seeking as reducing doubt, and therefore necessarily includes the notion of a client for the research effort. Action research is a practical embodiment of this approach and deserves a more prominent role.
Research limitations/implications
The research limitations and implications are inherent in the chosen methodology/approach: a viewpoint that hopefully stimulates others.
Practical implications
This paper makes concrete suggestions as to how to bring research and education closer to the client to permit cross‐fertilization and improve problem‐solving processes.
Originality/value
The paper offers a meta‐synthesis of ontological and epistemological approaches to the theory‐praxis gap. It outlines the imminent pertinence of pragmatism as a philosophy and as a practice of management science and relates pragmatism to theory of action, purporting pragmatist paradigms of management knowledge socialization.
Keywords
Citation
Fendt, J., Kaminska‐Labbé, R. and Sachs, W.M. (2008), "Producing and socializing relevant management knowledge: re‐turn to pragmatism", European Business Review, Vol. 20 No. 6, pp. 471-491. https://doi.org/10.1108/09555340810913502
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2008, Emerald Group Publishing Limited