The distinctiveness of European management scholarship
About common sense scholarship that prefers artistic rigour over technical rigour
This blogpost's paper - timed to coincide with the 2017 meeting of the European Academy of Management - can hardly be called a classic in the proper sense of the word as it is only 3 years old. However, I do consider it to be a very significant paper, not least because Chia describes the type of scholarship I have always aspired to: "not simply technically rigorous, but imaginatively interesting and often counterintuitive".
- Chia, R. (2014). Reflections on the distinctiveness of European management scholarship. European Management Journal, 32(5), 683-688.
Robert Chia’s vision of management scholarship
Robert Chia, a research professor at the University of Glasgow, UK, presents a very spirited defense of the distinctiveness of European scholarship. He argues that the best management scholarship relies on common sense rather than adhering to procedural protocols. He prefers artistic rigour over technical rigour, with “openness, empirical sensitivity and the capacity for achieving ‘flying leaps’ of imagination” (Chia, 2014:683). Chia is full of optimism about the potential of European scholarship, ending his article with the following sentence:
This is where European management scholarship has immense potential in actively reshaping the intellectual landscape, priorities and parameters of management research by encouraging this kind of scholarly contributions that is not simply technically rigorous, but imaginatively interesting and often counterintuitive; contributions that reveal opportunities for making fresh connections and reconfiguring relationships to produce important novel insights previously unthought or unthinkable. (Chia, 2014:688)
Read European management scholarship
You can read the entire paper here on Robert Chia’s Researchgate site. If you want to see some more of Robert Chia’s recent work, you might be interested in his 2015 keynote speech at EGOS
Related YouTube video
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Anne-Wil Harzing is Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London and visiting professor of International Management at Tilburg University. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.
