Abstract

The special purpose of a business school is to "provide a portal for interactions" between academia and business, thus adding value to both, by synthesizing academic rigor with managerial relevance. Yet, in its research at least, this mission remains largely unfulfilled. Hence, this dissertation seeks to rethink the nature and purpose of management knowledge. ;Part I discusses the crisis in management knowledge that separates the practitioners of business from its theoreticians. This gap is an unintended consequence of the "scientific revolution" during the '50-'60s, when business schools desiring academic rigor, took the prevailing social science epistemology for their intellectual foundation. ;Part II examines the nature and purpose of management knowledge as conceived by those doing the research and by those seeking to make use of it. It undertakes an empirical investigation of important criteria for exemplary research for four major groups in the management knowledge value chain: academics, deans, executive MBAs, and executives. Purposive samples from these four groups were surveyed for their conception of what constitutes exemplary management knowledge. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the survey data reveals the existence of a gap between the producers and the consumers of management knowledge, that is both wide and deep. ;Part III synthesizes the managerially relevant critique from Part I with the academically rigorous findings from Part II. It frames the crisis within the context of two incompatible models for management knowledge--the academic model and the executive model. However, a deeper analysis of the data also reveals the outline of a third model--the "guru" model--which has the potential to lead management knowledge out of its present crisis. The guru model, in serving as a bridge between the academic and the executive worlds, proposes five touchstones for management knowledge: criticality, clarity, verifiability, validity, and utility. The theory and practice of this model are briefly discussed. ;Business schools have been urged by some of their more thoughtful leaders to rethink their mission, role, structure, intellectual foundations, and curriculum. Hence, for those so inclined, several hypotheses are offered in the areas of leadership, policy, strategy, and structure, based on concepts from Management Policy