An Essay On Method With Attention To The Rigor-Relevance Debate And Its History

On Method v1 ‐ 22‐Mar‐15 Page 1 of 23
An Essay on Method; with Attention to the Rigor-Relevance ‘Debate’ and Its History
J.-C. Spender
Kozminski University, Warsaw, Poland
www.jcspender.com
Submitted to the Journal of Futurecast in Marketing and Management (JFM2)

An Essay on Method; with Attention to the Rigor-Relevance Debate and Its History
Few prizes are earned for suggesting our colleagues have mis-specified the problems looming largest in
our debates. But the rigor-relevance debate seems curious in that so much ink has been spilt with so little
clarification. Perhaps re-specification is in order. The present journal will probably side with most and
emphasize methodological rigor over managerial relevance. But this will not relieve authors from
attending to the growing pressure to ensure our research becomes more relevant than it is today (GMAC,
2013). To the extent our activity is publicly funded, taxpayers expect a voice in our affairs and a wide
range of relevance-improving incentives has been suggested, some more palatable than others. Public
opinion is clearly moving against our research practice and is converging with the rising financial
pressures on universities, forcing them to change their game. What is to be done? For many, education
has become branding and ranking, its pedagogical, curricular, and cost details being submerged. Business
as usual is no longer sufficient, especially in business schools. This essay examines the rigor-relevance
problem and re-specifies it by considering our industry’s history (Daniel, 1998; Engwall & Zamagni,
1998; Khurana, 2007). Ironically, the essay’s analysis is not rigorous - which is the whole point, for there
is no rigorous analysis of the real world that does not leave room for historical insights. Relevance
requires attachment to history.
In a recent Special Issue of Journal Applied Behavioral Science on the ‘scholar-practitioner divide’,
Heracleous pointed to three classes of cause (a) institutional factors, such as the opposition of thought and
action that characterizes Western thought, (b) organizational factors, such as the universities’ desire to be
‘bastions of knowledge’ rather than of professional practice, or (c) individual and personal factors, which
would include the divergent incentives for academics versus managers (Heracleous, 2011). In the same
issue Markides expressed amazement at the persistence of the gap after ‘literally hundreds of ideas have
been proposed to close it’ (Markides, 2011:121). Most of the proposals fall under (c), finding ways of
getting academics to focus on managers’ questions rather than on those they find in their journals, and on
writing that is accessible to managers who might then take that research into account. The (b) solutions
might lead universities to push back against academics’ tendencies to focus narrowly on their disciplinary
goals, on publication, and pressure them to embrace broader social and professional aims.
This essay moves in the (a) direction by considering the relationships between method and the knowledge
produced. In a nutshell, I presume the processes of academic knowledge production differ from those of
managers, and that the differences have become institutionalized in that academics reap rewards and
suffer no costs for focusing on scientific rigor and overlooking managerial relevance. Framing us as

producers of knowledge, scientific or otherwise, which management practitioners are then supposed to
use gets the whole discussion off on the wrong foot, it is preaching rather than productive dialog. These
sentiments are not new (Brown, 2011). But looking at their philosophical and historical context may
yield new insights. A different way of putting this is that we need to be more reflexive and appreciate
that all of us, academics, practitioners, and everyone else, are perpetually engaged in knowledge-
production, for it is an ineradicable aspect of the human condition. We need ‘method’ to help us
distinguish the knowledge generated from ‘mere opinion’, guesswork by a politer name. We all have ‘our
methods’ and there is no rigorous basis for judging academics’ methods superior without first
appreciating their particular aims and whether they differ from managers’ or not. Managers’ aims are
clearly not those of academics, nor are their methods. While this smacks of relativism, it reframes the
rigor-relevance gap as one of method, not simply one of substance; about how we know as well as what
we know. Can this help or does it simply complicate things further?
Methodological Pluralism
Many of the rigor-relevance debate’s confusions arise from inattention to writer’s the implicit notions of
knowledge and human knowing and clarifying these can help move the discussion forward. Bartunek &
Rynes’s exhaustive overview of the rigor-relevance debate in the contemporary management literature
offers categories that differ from Heracleous’s. They suggest managers and practitioners adopt differing
logics, time dimensions, communication practices, notions of rigor and relevance, and have different
interests and incentives (Bartunek & Rynes, 2014). Much of what follows examines and solidifies these
but adds attention to the history of management thought. Indeed, we point to the source of the debate, its
profoundly political nature, and the implications for management education today.
Asserting managers’ aims are not those of academics is tantamount to saying managers and academics do
not pursue the same type of knowledge and that rigor and relevance knowledges differ. This makes no
sense to colleagues who presume there is only one form of knowledge, epitomized as ‘rigorous science’.
All knowledge is thereby arranged along a scale from more to less ‘scientific’. There are many problems
with this, including with what can be ‘known’ about being at the non-scientific or non-knowing end of
this scale. Bypassing such technicalities, the rigor-relevance discussion is often about the ’sweet spot’
where science’s notions and methods rule but not at the expense of detachment from the complexities of
practice - the managerially relevant. The complementary idea is that theorists assume practice can be
defined and measured as the correct enactment of scientific knowledge, while managers ‘satisfice’ and

seek only the ‘good enough’. ‘Bad practice’ fails to conform to the dictates of science either because ‘bad
science’ was executed correctly or because ‘good science’ was executed badly. From this point of view
practice is not a different mode of knowing to be judged in some other way, merely the same knowledge
located in a different context, in practice rather than in thought. Dualism is assumed. Managers
overwhelmed by the ‘buzzing, blooming confusion’ of practice can be helped towards ‘greater rigor’ by
focusing on the objective science of the situation, to think more scientifically about what they are doing.
There is some interplay of cost and benefit, of exploitation versus exploration, so the sweet spot has both
methodological and cost-benefit connotations. Some use the the term ‘pragmatic’ to point towards this
balance between scientific rigor and situational pressures and constraints. Many authors assume the
balance can be determined with reasonable rigor, though it is not clear how this is supposed to work. In
the JABS issue mentioned Markides takes a different stand as he argues for a division of labor between
those specializing in knowledge generation and those specializing in its application (Markides, 2011).
They traffic in the same knowledge hence trade-offs are computable. But the suggestion obscures the
coordination task, as often happens when discussing the division of labor. Either there is a meaningful
division of labor and the different actors know different things, in which case coordination is a serious
problem, or there is not, in which case there is neither coordination problem nor benefit. Note the idea of
a rigorous scientifically determined trade off is similar to that which some principal-agent theorists
suggest, a similar framing of a different managerial problem.
If there are significant differences between the academic and managerial modes knowing there can be no
end to the rigor-relevance debate so long as we persist in measuring managerial practice ‘objectively’
against scientific rationality. Note rationality is not the same as logic because while logic is mathematical
and abstract, science needs axioms beneath all its theories. These bring scientific ideas into the world of
practice and experience. Thus objective is not the same as logical. The formula force = mass *
acceleration stands on axioms (fundamental assumptions) that give these terms their meaning, especially
how they can be measured. Each underpinning axiom gives the variable a kind ‘certainty’, puts it beyond
criticism, and we feel sure about what acceleration means and that it differs from mass. This defines the
terms as different, ex assumptio. In practice we face two problems, neither central to this essay. First,
while we treat our terms as if they were objective and precise, we cannot ever measure anything with
complete certainty. This is not complicated and has nothing to do with quantum mechanics or
Schrödinger’s cat. It is that all measurement is comparison and we have nothing certain to compare
anything else against. The speed of light may well be constant, but we do not know it precisely. Trickier
is the quip that only death and taxes are certain. Can we be certain before their arrival?

Second, scientific terms are more problematic that we management writers normally admit. The college-
level obviousness of the difference between mass and acceleration collapses under close examination.
How can we measure mass apart from a gravitational field? The axioms we use to define managerial
practice are even more problematic than those of mechanics. One classic puzzle is ‘management
decision’. In practice the clearest decision is somewhat plastic until the resources necessary to its
execution have been consumed, thereby assigning it to a past where it seems unchangeable. But we may
have misunderstood what happened and excavating further facts may change our knowledge. It is also
tricky to determine when a decision is made. We might be mathematically sure about the statistics but
can never be sure what they refer to. This is especially obvious when sampling large numbers of firms.
We know firms and their circumstances differ, yet blithely assume never in ways material to our research.
Neither accident nor idiosyncrasy is considered material - yet, as individuals, we assume (axiomatically)
that we are materially different and realize that accidents - and luck - matter greatly to our personal
histories. So what notion of firms can we have that makes the histories of the individuals comprising
them irrelevant? Or rather, why do we assume we can know anything about a firm and what it does with
‘objective’ scientific confidence? All of which makes the possibility of saying anything truly scientific
about management rather remote.
Limits to Science
Analyzing managerial activity as if it takes place in a scientifically knowable world is of limited use. It is
not easy to understand these limits and little in the rigor-relevance debate admits them, let alone explores
them. It is easier to assume them away and presume all managerial phenomena can be analyzed in a
scientific way. The vast majority of our journals are committed to this belief; so later in the essay I argue
this is a fatal methodological error, one that causes us to miss the very essence of managerial practice.
But this is not an easy or trivial point, it needs to be developed cautiously. It may be more productive to
approach it by exploring the boundary between phenomena that can be analyzed scientifically and those
that cannot. We all know phenomena of the second type from our personal lives. The first type includes
those we feel confident about sampling. For instance, if we are studying the CEO appointment process do
we expect categorizing aspirants by sex, religion, academic qualification (such as holding an MBA or a
PhD), professional background (lawyer or accountant), time with the firm, and so on will yield a robust
‘useful model’? Even if we sort out the ceteris paribus clauses there are likely to be too many viable
explanatory factors for a statistically valid finding. We can simplify to fewer factors by ignoring some,
but with what result - or rather, what would the result be useful for and when would it differ from mere

dogma? What should we conclude from sampling senior Wall Street bankers and finding they are
predominantly WASP, tall, and grey haired (patrician)? A rule of thumb for qualitative research is that
the sample size should substantially exceed the number of different factor combinations, and in the real
world this quickly gets out of hand. Simplifying keeps the analysis ‘in hand’ but removes it from the
world of ‘relevance’.
While there is a literature on ‘samples of one’ a very different move is to switch from ‘scientific methods’
- hypothesis, sampling, and test - to historical methods. These may be less than clear; to the point many
would deny they are ‘methods’ at all. They clearly fall into two categories; first, inductive, second,
subjective. Deriving generalizations from history’s events inductively, such as ‘rags to riches and back
again in three generations’, denies the significance of the phenomena’s particulars; the rule does not
always apply. Historical methods presuppose the particulars are always significant, and some call this
‘particularism’. History’s ‘stories’ turn on particulars rather than on generalizations under which
particulars are submerged. The particulars’ significance is more than fact; a list of the dates of kings and
queens is not history. Note there can be a history of inanimate facts. The geological history of the Earth
is a list of facts awaiting scientific (causal) interpretation using generalizations; for instance, a story about
why the Caribbean tectonic plate moved as it did. History treats time as a particular, an integral part of
every answer that will be specific to a chosen time, even though it is framed and illustrated by general
categories - such as ‘tectonic plate’ - and abstract principles - such as movement in meters per
millennium. The natural sciences are less attentive to the specifics of time since its explanations aspire to
being time and space independent or ‘invariant’.
There is also a history of the animate, about us as actors, stories about why we behave as we do. This
kind of history does not reduce the complexity of the human experience to a few variables such as wealth,
age, or gender. It eschews general principles in favor of a subjective approach that seeks to enter into the
actor’s particular space, time, and world in ways that we sense as relevant to the complexity of our own
world. Why did Napoleon invade Russia? The answer is historical not scientific, more about Napoleon’s
idiosyncrasies, nature and circumstances than a generalization about dictators’ expansionist tendencies.
Historical methods prioritize the particular over the general and presume phenomena are in the world,
time-full rather than time-less, particular, and therefore incompletely known. This contrasts with
generalizations that inhabit the mind, taken to be certain, ex assumptio.
The contrast of scientific and historical modes of knowing implies multiple types of knowledge and a
resulting methodological pluralism. But how are multiple types of knowledge to be related so that the

analysis is coherent rather than chaotic? Realists presume all knowledge is about a real and coherent
world ‘out there’. But knowing is a human condition - the opposite, perhaps, of ignorance or un-
knowing. Naïve realists presume reality ‘speaks for itself’, that we see things as they are, and that there
are no illogical anomalies. This position, however popular, became untenable after Descartes’s proposal
of ‘radical doubt’, his argument that the only knowing we can be certain of is our own consciousness -
cogito ergo sum. Again, this is the certainty of assumption and not of our experience or knowledge of the
world. In which case one kind of pluralism arises through the different ways in which we might apply
our consciousness. One is ‘analytic’, deductive reasoning within the mind; the other is ‘making sense’ of
the data we have received through our senses, assessing its meaning. Descartes’s doubt arises because
our senses can deceive, so we cannot see things ‘as they are’ and the meaning of sense data is never given
to us. Ultimately ‘meaning’ is a fruit of the human imagination, our own or of others communicated to
us. We use our minds to attach meaning to sense data, for data does not carry its own meaning, even
though meaning reflects the particulars of our situation and experience. If data is one mode of knowing,
meaning is a second, categorically distinct. The axioms we choose give meaning to our deductions.
Analytic knowing is precise - rigorous - but related to sense data through an act of imagination. Impelled
by doubting the given-ness of the world, we arrive at the mind’s interplay of perception, imagination, and
memory; a mode of knowing that contrasts with the rigorous, abstracted, and space and time independent
mode of knowing based on axioms and logical deduction.
Predictability, which can be thought of as deduction attached to the world with axiomatic abstractions, is
the conventional measure of scientific knowledge. Historical knowledge is different and to think it as
reversed prediction is to push historical knowing into science’s framing. Science’s generalizations apply
across multiple occurrences of the phenomena. Historical knowledge of the inanimate moves in this
direction without detaching itself from the space and time specifics of the phenomena being considered;
the focus is on the Caribbean plate not the Australian place, and at a particular time in the Earth’s history.
Historical knowing of the animate can be similar; Napoleon’s background, training, and experience can
be considered causal to his decision to invade Russia at the same time as accepting that the factors and
their conjunction were unique, different from Wellington’s or Rommel’s. But as the focus moves inwards
from quasi-causal external factors and towards the interplay of the actor’s perception, imagination, and
memory, so it moves from ‘objective’ to ‘subjective’. Ultimately historical analysis of the animate
attempts to enter into the actor’s mind to discover the particular explaining set of factors was selected and
conjoined into ‘reasoned practice’ (Collingwood, 1999). We presume the actor’s world did not ‘speak for
itself’ and that the selection and conjunction process, which some label ‘synthesis’, was idiosyncratic to
the actor’s space and time, and to the actor’s nature.

This kind of explanation may be of little interest to those who pursue ‘science’ but appeals to those who
find scientific explanations wanting. The shortfall arises in two ways. First, in terms of ‘the degree of
variance explained’, the rigorous theorist’s metric of theorizing success or failure. But second, in terms
of relevance, whether the actor/practitioner can identify with the theorist’s model. How might theorists
arrive at their model except by assumption? This seems to be the least considered aspect of the rigor-
relevance debate, largely because the theorist’s axioms are seldom discussed. Why and how they differ
from managers’ is not considered. This is a form of intellectual hubris and disrespect. Since, post-
Descartes, we must accept that things do not speak for themselves, axioms have to be chosen. The
literature research is part of the process of justifying choosing some axioms rather than others. Theorists
have little interest in the axioms managers choose.
The crucial point here is that the justification is rhetorical, a matter of judgment, rather than rigorous or
proven. Yet this is where the theorist’s and the practitioner’s practices converge; both must choose
axioms (or categories) to construct the language in which they make statements about the phenomena of
interest. The theorist labels her/himself by choosing academic language. The practitioner typically
chooses the language of the ‘community of practice’ inhabited. At which point the rigor-relevance gap
lies between languages and closing the gap means persuading theorists to talk like practitioners or, more
likely, vice versa. The last century of management research may - or may not - have produced a
significant body of theory about managerial practice - our journals are full and ever expanding - but it has
certainly not led to many practitioners adopting the language we use. Practitioners persist in their own
way of talking - so the rigor-relevance debate boils down to “Why?”
Uncertainty and Creative Synthesis
One way to think of Descartes’s insight is that he saw Mind as certain by definition, while the world
viewed through sense-data was exposed to doubt and so irremediably uncertain. Some use the term
God’s Eye view - wherein everything is certain, being seen ‘as it is’. Descartes presumed it was not
possible for mortals to enter God’s Mind and so achieve a God’s Eye view. Being thus ‘ejected’ from the
Eden of certainty, many theorists’ project is to ‘re-enter’, which leads theorists and practitioners to have
different ways of dealing with the uncertainty of the human condition. Theorists make assumptions about
the world (axioms) and seek generalizations about their interaction (covering laws). They deal with the
Cartesian uncertainties by judging axioms tenable, then they seek certainty in rigorously derived
statements about the chosen axioms’ interactions. The analytic focus is on the derivations, seeking

clarification though greater rigor in the manner of generating mathematical proof. The synthetic process
is to construct fresh domains of rigorous discourse that push uncertainties out, beyond their boundaries as
‘taken-for-granted’ or ‘boundary conditions’. The process of making sense of sense data exposes the
axioms chosen, perhaps falsifying them to be replaced with better axioms chosen in an act of imagination
that produces a different discourse. The scientific spoils go to those creating the new discourses that
populate the academic journals’ pages. Again, the synthesizing dimension of the theorists’ project is to
diminish the uncertainty gathered up by the discourse’s choices of axioms and boundary conditions, to
come up with more general statements that are both more rigorous and encompass more phenomena,
leading to ‘advancing’ the research program (Lakatos & Musgrave, 1970).
Of course practitioners have very different objectives; which is why the rigor-relevance gap is ultimately
a matter of diverging knowledge management objectives. The naïve theorist’s view is that science is
Truth, the outcome of correct application of the scientific method, and that managers should know this
Truth better to know their situation and options better. The more sophisticated scientist knows this is
hopelessly off the mark. Generalizations are the academics’ mode of simplification and may well be
useful to practitioners, but only to the extent the generalization is predictably determining. Inhabiting an
uncertain world, practitioners are inclined to presume it irremediably complex rather than inherently
simple. They shun the theorist’s simplifications because they lead to overlooking factors judged relevant
to practice. Instead of judging things to be simple, so pushing uncertainties beyond the boundary of the
analysis, they work in the contrary direction, gathering up the uncertainties and synthesizing them into a
discourse that is thereby contextualized to time, place, and synthesizer. Again the question is “Why?”
This is the nub of this essay. Historical methods direct attention to the practitioner’s synthesizing, the
selection of factors judged relevant, because that explores the manager’s perception, memory, and
imagination processes through which s/he is revealed as a creative agent in an uncertain world. The
theorist’s creativity is very different. S/he intuits new axioms, seeking fuller grasp of a reality presumed
rigorous and coherent, awaiting their improvement through falsification. Instead of creating new science
about what already exists, practitioners presume they can bring something new into the world. Theorists
presume reality exists already, though things can be moved around and transformed from one state to
another. Management is not so restricted, it admits the possibility that human agency can lead to
something new - entrepreneurship. This is crucial because without entrepreneurship management seems
neither interesting nor viable. Thus one reformulation of the rigor-relevance gap is between non-
entrepreneurial and entrepreneurial management thinking. This gap can only be closed with a rigorous
determinative theory of entrepreneurship - a contradiction in terms. Entrepreneurship prioritizes the

perception-memory-imagination mode of engaging an uncertain world over the axiomatizing-falsifying
mode of theorizing it, focusing on the imaginative response to what is not known.
Clearly management theorists want to situate managing in a rigorous discourse by pushing what is not
known beyond the discourse’s boundaries. Uncertainties and knowledge-absences are an impediment to
abstracting and generalizing. In contrast entrepreneurship presupposes there are good reasons for doing
the opposite, for pulling what is not known into the discourse where it triggers the imagination to create
something new that is not simply awaiting discovery, which will only exist as a consequence of a
particularized act of imagination. Instead of presupposing a stable reality to be discovered methodically
through application of the scientific method, entrepreneurship presumes a create-able potential of
particular but numerous possibilities. The challenge is to say something meaningful about this and its
unknowns, bearing in mind that imagination is no more than a term for a human subjectively-framed act
that cannot be explained by reasoned causal analysis. So what can be said about it? Historical methods
come into play because they focus on the constraints to the actor’s imaginings, and these can be known
more generally. Napoleon imagined the invasion, knowing that the possibilities of bringing it to a
satisfactory conclusion would be limited by his Army’s resources, technologies, etc. - as well as by the
geography, climate, and the unpredictable activities of the Russian defenders. These are framed with
generalizations - such as horses and cannon - particularized as boundary conditions - 2000 horses and 120
cannon. Historians specialize in drawing out the particular constraints to a particular actor’s perception,
memory, and imagination to tell a particular story.
Managing Relevant to ‘The Firm’
The argument is that management writers face conflicting discourses, one rational, another imaginative.
While managing might well be thought a generic human process of getting resources and processes
organized and people motivated, not much useful can be said about it without paying attention to the
particular circumstances of the resulting practice. The rigor-relevance debate persists because, as yet,
there seems no useful discussion of managing ‘in general’ detached from the particulars of circumstance.
Likewise it seems important to distinguish Napoleon’s military management on the battlefield from
Churchill’s managing the politics of a nation. To argue that ‘leadership is leadership’ or that ‘managing
is managing’ is both tautological and flies in the face of what we know about variability and significance
of the historical facts. From the practical point of view there is not much useful to be said that applies to
both. Most of our discussion concerns managing private firms, a specific context in which we should

probably talk about entrepreneurship rather than leadership. Military and political ‘entrepreneurship’ are
different. One discourse turns on the leader’s personal ‘capabilities’, leading to the ever-persistent ‘trait’
theories that seek causal explanations of leader’s effectiveness. The traitist project continues to fail
because imagination cannot be included as a ‘cause’. A switch to historical methods admits imagination
and agency, and shifts the analysis onto the constraints to the leader’s imagination and away from its
‘causes’. Again, if these constraints could be established with certainty they would determine the leader’s
choice and behavior and so a rigorous theory, and no doubt many seek this. But it may be a chimera.
There is a serious impediment to a rigorous theory of the firm - it is not possible to explain why private
firms exist in a rigorously knowable socio-economy such as most economists presuppose. Put differently,
the classical economist’s choice of axioms leads to a discourse that is rigorous but in which there is no
meaningful rendering of the private firm. Or rather, if the exchanges within firms are rigorous they can
take place equally well in markets. If the transactions within firms are not exchanges, they cannot be
spoken about rigorously. The implication of not being able to speak rigorously about firms means we
require a different discourse in which to speak about managing them. Put differently again, if managing
is a rigorous process managers are not essential to firms or their processes, they can be replaced by expert
systems. Frank Knight and Ronald Coase, among others, suggested very different discourses (Coase,
1937; Knight, 1921). Coase’s notion of ‘transaction costs’ is an economist’s parallel to the physicists’
2nd Law of Thermodynamics that real processes lead to an increase of entropy, nothing is perfectly
efficient and there is always waste. Eventually our universe’s energy will be evenly distributed, and time
and motion will come to an end - ‘heat death’. Transaction costs mean firms are ‘entropic’ with internal
frictions and waste. At the same time we know the synthesizing processes that we label ‘organic’ can
reduce entropy. Flowers create order (and beauty) from scattered nutrients, they do not simply ‘consume’
them. Physics offers no rigorous theory of entropic processes.
Consequently one mode of firm practice points towards the consumption of resources and energy in the
pursuit of particular transformations - from inputs into outputs. But another is organic and deals with
entropy and the creation of new order - getting organized. Managers’ role differs according to the mode
presumed. Knight’s intuition was that creating order in a context of disorder - uncertainty - could reduce
entropy and thereby become the source of all economic value. This is an intuition, of course, not a
theory. Put differently, the practice of engaging the world’s uncertainties with managerial imagination
raises the possibility of ‘pure profit’ for which there is no rigorous explanation. The intuition is that
imagination is central to the firm’s profit making but inessential to its consumption processes, for these
can be optimized rationally. Any rational decision making device, like an expert system, can supplant

managers’ second role. Knight saw profit as the return to the socio-economically effective exercise of the
imagination, to be distinguished from returns to re-ordering the known. By definition, the application of
imagination cannot be theorized - so ‘agency’ is sometimes defined as the ‘cause without a cause’ - but it
can be discussed by identifying the constraints to the entrepreneur’s imaginative practice. Resources
seem to be ‘facts of the situation’ that set limits. But, as Penrose pointed out so tartly, it is not so much
the resources themselves that matter as the management team’s understanding of what can be done with
them (Penrose, 1959:25). She showed the important constraint was the managers’ knowledge and
imagination, not ‘the firm’s resources’.
Any discussion of the constraints to the imagination stands on presuppositions. First, the imagination
cannot engage reality directly as some naive science might suggest. Rather, being an aspect of a
conscious individual it can only engage the world via that individual’s unknowns - what some call
‘puzzles’. Second, these cannot be discussed until framed by what is known so that something can be
said and thought about them. As Wittgenstein helped clarify, the intuition of some puzzling phenomena
lying ‘in the void’ beyond the edge of what is known can only be probed with what is known. This is less
complicated than it may sound. Consider the scientific method; a hypothesis - a puzzle or conjecture -
must be framed by what is (a) known and (b) observable. In the beginning is knowledge, not ignorance or
an unframed knowledge-absence of the real. More precisely, the beginning is our own consciousness and
it has to be of something thereby ‘known’ - hunger, cold, lost wallet, etc. The scientific method frames
the puzzle between a proposition based on what is known and can be observed. Third, these are not just
any knowns; the (a) and (b) knowns must not be collinear, otherwise we have a tautology. So at least two
different things must be known before we can make a statement about an unknown. Fourth, as noted
above, generalizations differ from particularizations. An observation is particular, so in addition to
knowing some generalizations that frame it, treating the event as a member of a class of events, the
event’s time and place have to be taken into account if an observation is to be related to a proposition.
A different way to think about the interplay of proposition and observation is as syllogism. There are
many variants but the most familiar is the ‘categorical syllogism’; (p) All men are mortal, (q) Socrates is a
man, so (r) Socrates is mortal. Here three notions - men, mortality, and Socrates - are combined into a
conjecture. Alternatively, using Heidegger’s terminology, a conjecture is imagined and ‘thrown’ into a
lived world demarcated by the notions in the syllogism. It identifies a ‘space’ of a specific uncertainty
chosen imaginatively from among all the uncertainties findable. This ‘opportunity space’ can be ‘filled’
by the thrown conjecture and so known and brought into the universe of possible observations. The
known constrains or bounds the space. As the syllogism illustrates, constraints can be of different types

together forming an epistemology or conversely, the analyst’s chosen epistemology limits the kinds of
constraint that can be considered. Our discipline’s dominant epistemology is positivist - cause and effect,
theory and event. The opportunity space is constrained by initial conditions, covering laws, and
observable consequences. The space is abstract and time-independent and, in consequence, a poor way to
frame real-world economic events and managerial practice.
There are many epistemologies. Instead of getting bogged down in debates about knowledge and truth, it
is more productive to focus on judging (choosing) the epistemology that best illuminates the phenomena
of interest. Causality and positivist methods can only uncover generalities; hence necessarily miss profit
and managerial imagination - a fatal flaw if these are the essence of our discipline. Better attention to
firms and managing, and to the resulting economics, requires an epistemology that embraces the points
noted - puzzles, un-correlated constraints, analysis, imagination, particulars, practice - for firms are
unique contexts of mindful creative practice, not mere rational decision-making. The constraints vary
when the axioms they stand on are epistemologically dissimilar. For instance, one kind of constraint
might be framed by chemistry while another is framed by meteorology, different even as both are
established natural sciences. A manufacturing firm’s production process will also involve constraints
reflecting inorganic, material, and organic types of knowledge, as well as aspects of the social sciences.
Some knowing will be theoretical, some practical. Some knowing will contrast abstract scientific
knowing against historical knowing, modes that can be described as methodologically ‘orthogonal’. The
resulting ‘space’ is orders of magnitude richer and more complex than any captured by a positivist
epistemology that dismisses the relevance of time, history, and the tacit knowing of human practice.
Methodological Pluralism (Again)
The essay is argues for pluralism, pushing back against our discipline’s evident impulse to institutionalize
a single method, and a positivist one at that. Overall the rigor-relevance ‘problem’ follows from doing
this. On the one hand our chosen mono-method underpins claims to rigor, perhaps largely to wrap our
work in the mantle of natural science (physics envy, some call it), but on the other we dare not let go of
the Knightian insight that value-creation rather than order-creation is the core of the firm’s practice. By
presuming imagination is value’s source, we also presume it cannot be theorized rigorously. Thus the
tension between rigor and relevance arises from our own philosophizing, and from that alone. It has
nothing to do with the ‘native character’ of the phenomena of interest, firms or managing them. Indeed

we have no answer to Coase’s questions. We are stuck in a traffic-jam of our own discourses and there
can be no progress until we reverse away into clearer space.
History can help because academics’ methodological difficulties are not new. Note that the academics’
stock in trade in not ‘knowledge’ but method. It is often the case that non-academics know more about a
subject than any academic, especially when it comes to managing and ‘making a payroll’. The notion of
method originated, as far as Western philosophy is concerned, with Socrates. Plato outlined the academic
method’s possibilities and objectives, primarily to ensure reason underpinned knowing. The scientific
method was a subset developed later, first by medieval Islamic scientists and thence to Bacon and the
usual story. Note also that Augustine helped bridge reason and faith and so, in due course, argue for a
bridge between science and the humanities. This ‘two cultures’ gap is the most familiar of today’s
methodological disputes (Snow, 1959). It goes away, of course, as soon as one chooses to prioritize
science and dismiss faith as non-knowledge. But dismissal also ensures that one cannot evaluate the risks
or even the benefits of this epistemological move. Likewise, our discipline’s self-framing as science not
only raises the rigor-relevance question, but also prevents us from understanding the risks and benefits of
adopting this method. There are two points here. One is that mono-methods only ‘work’ because the
method is judged able to grasp everything essential about the phenomena of interest, nothing lies beyond
its boundary. Second, this position, clearly one of intellectual hubris, is indistinguishable from dogma.
Yet the history of academe is a salutary story about the intellectual, social, and political risks of dogma;
now rising again in the Middle East. Our efforts to institutionalize positivist methods fly in the face of
this history.
For instance we forget what has been learned about methodological disputes. Since they are the core of
an academic’s identity they raise great fervor and viciousness. One of the more famous was the
Methodenstreit among German economists in the 19th century, precipitated by Menger’s 1883 attack on
the German Historical School. Schmoller struck back. Even 30 years later the negative consequences
were still evident, especially the narrowed discourse and the destruction of several academic’s careers. J
Neville Keynes (father to the better known J Maynard) was concerned lest there would be a similar battle
of methods in Anglo-Saxon economics. So in 1891 he published a highly regarded text: The Scope and
Method of Political Economy. He favored methodological pluralism and argued an economics relevant to
the real world called for three complementary methods; (a) theorizing deduction from axioms, (b) an
ethical inductive approach, and (c) an artful practice (Keynes, 1904; Moore, 2003). He was explicitly
critical of those who would prioritize any one of these over the others. Plato and the Greek philosophers
lay at the core of Keynes’s thinking, yet he took an even humbler view of human knowing and its limits.

Theory could never fully embrace the idiosyncratic particulars of artful practice, just as induction could
never provide the security logical deduction provided. Keynes’s book is long forgotten, though it has
special resonance for those interested in today’s rigor-relevance discussion. This is because Friedman’s
highly influential 1953 Methodology of Positive Economics took off by criticizing Keynes. Friedman
dismissed (b) and (c), thereby providing the theoretical framing for the neoliberal economic theorizing for
which the Chicago School became famous (Friedman, 1953; Van Horn, Mirowski, & Stapleford, 2011).
There is a great deal more to it of course, but we can see how Keynes proposed pluralism as disciplinary
purgative to reinvigorate economics, prevent Methodenstreit, and so ensure economics’ usefulness to
non-economists. In contrast Friedman was ready to sacrifice relevance in pursuit of Platonic abstraction
because he believed the returns to advancing economics as a science would exceed those Keynes’s
program sought. Friedman’s target was the discipline (rigor) rather than usefulness (relevance). He, and
a string of like method-minded economists, were awarded Nobel Prizes. Only occasionally has the Nobel
Committee sought to reward relevance and even then couched in rigor (e.g. Ostrom and Roth).
Meanwhile the discipline Keynes labeled ‘Political Economy,’ following Adam Smith, divided into two
methodologically discontinuous camps, macro and micro. There is a wide variety of explanations for the
2008 economic collapse, suggesting macro economics has a way to go before mastering the challenges of
‘political economy’, but it is obvious that macro economics has become extremely useful and relevant to
governments around the globe (Lo, 2012). Macroeconomics reaches parts microeconomics does not. Yet
management researchers align with micro economists rather than with macro economists.
The March of Micro Economic Science
Keynes was taught and mentored by Marshall, one of the ‘fathers’ of marginalism and microeconomics,
but he cautioned against thinking of economics as an abstract science. Yet since his time, since WW2
especially, there has been a turn towards science and its mono-methods across all the social sciences;
management being but one. The causes of this methodological shift are much discussed but not much
agreed (Backhouse & Fontaine, 2010). The most obvious case for focusing narrowly on managing is that
scientific methods have produced or are producing a ‘science of management’ that leads to superior
performance. We certainly have many professors and journal papers but as noted earlier, not much
empirical evidence supports this; the rigor-relevance tension is alive and well. A different case is that a
science - in terms of Keynes’s (a) above - is easier to do, teach, and examine than either (b) or (c). This
elevates academic convenience above managerial value as the rigor-relevance gap’s cause. A third case is

that management academics have to struggle for legitimacy against the entrenched disciplines who sneer
at them as ‘trade’ (Kay, 2000). Given the academic’s essence lies in choice of method, the explanation is
that the community of academics pushed business schools to prioritize scientific methods - others did it, it
was not management researchers’ choice. Other cases can be made though none seems compelling. But
it is useful to see that the march of economics into other social sciences, what some call ‘colonizing’,
happens as economics’ rigorous methods (superior theoretical horsepower) overpower the demand to
attend to the subject matter (Fine & Green, 2000). We research into what can be legitimately researched,
rather than into what is most needed. We manage what we can count, not what is important. This
colonization accelerated after Gary Becker showed how to apply science’s methods to many of social
science’s core problematics - marriage, education, health care, and so on, thereby providing ‘objective’
ammunition to neoliberal political ‘reforms’ of the public arena. The contrary politics seems less
theoretically robust for we have no theory of ‘good society’.
To this point this essay has explored the nature of the rigor-relevance debate and argued its core is
methodological and epistemological. Mistakes in topic are not its cause. Repairing it requires major re-
thinking, and the re-training that enables that. Second, ‘relevance’ gets framed according to the context
of the activity’s impact. Many debaters assume the management researcher’s intent is to improve
managerial effectiveness; little justification is offered. The development of science is clearly a more
important objective for those in the neoliberal academic movement, perhaps supported by the assertion
that it will lead to greater efficiency sometime in the future. The easy way to deal with the rigor-
relevance gap is to deny it, to argue that good science leads to good management - no evidence required.
But given our failure to show this there is a curious question: “Why are we so unconcerned about our
discipline’s failures?” Perhaps the management education business is so good there is little time to be
concerned with the future, that today’s BSchool academics are so busy with the everyday they have little
time or energy left to reflect on our discipline’s deeper questions. Curious, given we are quick to justify
our research on the grounds that managers are over-consumed by their everyday.
In spite of the advances economic thinking has produced, the previous section points to the
complementary switch from methodological pluralism to mono-method; again “Why?” The pursuit of
‘causes’ may seem fun but must ultimately end in failure too. The questions and answers are probably
beyond being clarified definitively for not only are they philosophical and non-rigorous, they are also
self-reinforcing and protected from critique so long as they are not exposed to Baconian empiricism or,
more contemporaneously, Popperian falsification. They are tautological expressions of an ideology that
shapes our disciplinary thinking. These days the dominant ideology is positivist, ‘modernist’ may be a

more useful label, and this contrasts with ‘Continental’, fruits of philosophers’ struggles to escape
‘modernism’ (Bullough Jr., 2000; Critchley, 2001). These Continentals show there is no way to merely
‘revise’ or ‘redirect’ modernism as, for example, some business ethicists argue businesses can be
persuaded to ‘do well by doing good’, be less interested in profit and more in social benefits. The idea of
social benefit is laudable, but the intellectual means to frame it are completely lacking so long as the
modernist ideology dominates. Ironically, there is little evidence that managers’ thinking or practice falls
within the modernist ideology. Ultimately the rigor-relevance debate is about the incompatibility of the
prevailing managerial and academic ideologies.
We can conjecture the rigor-relevance debate creates such modest anxiety, given it points to serious
defects in our academic practice, because most of us intuit it is ideological, ‘hopeless’, beyond being dealt
with without an extensive paradigm shift that would completely restructure the profession of management
education. Given the highly satisfactory state of our business - the MBA being the most successful
degree of all time - most focus on pedaling harder. They cannot find time for the rigor-relevance anxiety.
The remedies being touted; business ethics, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, stakeholder
theory, and so on, are peripheral, addressing consequences rather than causes. Indeed these remedies are
increasingly ironic as researchers apply modernist methods to ‘researching’ them. As suggested above,
the modernist approach’s fatal weakness is its lack of a viable theory of economic value-creation.
Coase’s questions, which show the modernist program’s irrelevance to managerial practice, cause even
less anxiety than the rigor-relevance debate. The work of the post-Coasian micro economists like
Williamson, Fama, Hart, or Jensen has shown the difficulty of engaging this lack head-on, especially
when ideological questions are submerged as methodological and technical, beyond the boundaries to the
discussion (Williamson & Winter, 1991).
Cameralism
A more productive path is to surface the ideological issues and so prepare the ground for a paradigm shift.
Given we cannot research our ideology using rigorous methods the focus shifts to a history of the
ideology’s evolution. Where did the notion of a science of management enter the discourse? Where did
the ‘rigor virus’ jump from the natural sciences? The gap is clear. On one side the theorizing is fully
determinable, presuming a method of causality that is sufficient to explaining the entirety of the world.
On the other agentic practice, where causality is simply irrelevant for, by definition, the imagination
cannot be theorized. Alternatively, we can escape modernism by asserting historical methods will always

have something to add to whatever theorizing is done about the human condition because we are not fully
determinable (Pettigrew, 2001). This difference is itself ideological and axiomatic. There is no proving it
and many reject it. It is tied up with the long debate about whether there is a fundamental difference
between the natural and social sciences. The European history here goes back to the work of
Giambattista Vico and his critique of Descartes (Berlin, 2000; Fabiani, 2009). The ideological question is
whether the discussion puts imagination at its center or tries to exclude it as a fallen and flawed cousin to
reason. The discussion reflects the Enlightenment focus on reason to oppose religious authority, and to
reason’s gradual incursion into all aspects of European thought (Lecky, 1910).
There is a history of reason’s incursion into administrative thinking. But it begins in the public sector,
only later does it ‘jump’ to the private sector and its business schools. While the history of the private
firm as distinct from a sole trader is disputed and tangled - not the focus of this essay - it came into
general use in the 1700s. By then there were already many efforts to bring reason to bear in the public
sector. Among the earliest were Sir William Petty’s economic writings and use of statistics to survey
Ireland after Cromwell’s conquest. Perhaps the most crucial to the history of management education
arose in Germany in the mid 1700s. This was Cameralism. Its pursuit of a more rational and less purely
political (Machiavellian) approach to State affairs originated with Frederick William 1st of Prussia in the
early 1700s. The initiative led to the establishment of the first two university Chairs of Administration in
1727 at the Universities of Halle and Frankfurt-am-Oder (Wakefield, 2009:6). Cameralism
complemented the administrative reforms established in Austria by Empress Maria Theresa (1717- 1780)
who likewise sought more effective state management. Johann von Justi’s Staatswirthschaft (‘national
economizing’ or ‘state administration’), published in 1755 was Cameralism’s first widely influential
textbook.
Aside from the details of the content and history of Cameralism, several aspects relate to this essay. First,
the 18th century economists focused on the wealth of the State; microeconomics had yet to crystallize.
The French Physiocrats saw agriculture as the principal source of wealth. Adam Smith, leveraging anti-
Physiocrats’ observations of what was going on rather than reasoning from axioms, disagreed and made
the industrial operative’s imagination central. Mining’s extraction and purification processes bridged
these notions - and the French, German, and Austrian economies were all heavily dependent on mining.
The benefits of a scientific approach were becoming appreciated and made it possible to contrast the
traditional Mercantilist protectionism and seizure of wealth against its creation through ’technology’.
Rulers realized industry could be a major source of revenue. This complicated taxation and revenue
gathering, necessitating investment in mining and transport and making it essential to have competent and

corruption-free administrators. Both France and Germany developed methods to select and train better
bureaucrats, displacing court nepotism; Weber analyzed and codified these.
Second, while it is easy to imply direct links between the Cameralist schools, first established in the mid-
1700s, and the development of private sector management education in the 19th century, these links have
yet to be clarified. But clearly the success of the State administrative schools - and military schools -
established the possibility of educating managers for the private sector. This became more necessary as
parents sought their children’s entry into the new industrial economy, increasingly freed from the
traditional focus on agriculture and the strictures of the class system. Third, while there is some history
of European management education (Engwall & Danell, 2011; Engwall & Zamagni, 1998), the history of
US management education has yet to be clarified (Daniel, 1998; Khurana, 2007). While many presume it
originates with the founding of the Wharton School in 1881 this story neglects mention of Joseph
Wharton’s helping found Swarthmore in 1864 and his direct exposure to Cameralism and German
management education (Sass, 1982, 1985). It also neglects consideration of the pre-Civil War moves to
found ‘industrial universities’ for ‘farmers and mechanics’ that led, eventually, to the Morrill Act of 1862
and the US Land-Grant universities. American knowledge of European business education was
significantly extended by Edmund James’s 1893 report to the American Bankers Association (James,
1893). This provided US business educators with a college-level curriculum.
While Cameralism led to advances, it was much criticized. In 1764 an unnamed author wrote “What is
Cameralism? Is it a science? Is it an art?” - and that resonates with today’s discussion! Redlich explored
similar criticisms (Redlich, 1949, 1957). Wakefield’s detailed analysis suggests Cameralism aspired to
cloak the nasty realities of State revenue-getting with a discourse of calm rationality, systemic efficiency,
and political fairness. The actual practice of the Kammer, the State counting house, was carefully
divorced from the putative ‘science’, an aspiration but also a mask. Even if the science was sketchy and
nascent - as it remains today, 250 years later - it was teachable; effective practice less so. This early
interaction between the science of administration and its practice was our debate’s grandparent, but
showing the choice between methods was ultimately politically driven, not by theoretical or functional,
not rigor or relevance. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) identified a similar dichotomy of method
between analysis and synthesis. The Methodenstreit arose through the tendency Keynes identified;
academics preferring one method over all others. Thus, inasmuch as Cameralism informed the 18th and
19th century development of business schools in Europe, and later in the US, it helped put the rigor-
relevance gap into management education’s foundations whence it can only be extracted by rebuilding the
whole edifice from the philosophical foundations up.

Until that time, not likely to be soon given it presumes a new epistemology that will also radically shift
the positivist notion of science, the challenge is not to ‘close the gap’. Rather it is to manage the
persisting tension between, in Keynes’s terms (a), (b), and (c). As we see above, until we achieve a God’s
Eye view, there can be no useful analysis that does not stand on methodological pluralism. This is
relatively widely understood and there are many efforts to re-introduce (b) and (c) into management
discourse in the face of neoliberal dismissals (Crouch, 2011). The modernist academic pathology is to
dismiss all other methods (Pettigrew, 2001). Even the claim ‘managing is an art’ is often accompanied by
an implicit dismissal of (a) and (b). This gets us nowhere good. As Keynes argued, mono-method must
always lead to Methodenstreit. Yet the (a)-based program has been a failure in that it serves neither
managers-in-training nor empiricist academics. Note we have not yet established the reasons for the
business education industry’s huge success. All we know is that its selection and credentialing processes
serve employers well enough even if the students’ educational opportunity costs are high. Who knows
what BSchool students could learn to best effect; philosophy, another language, how to write well, the
history of our form of capitalism?
Managing as Mindful Practice
The plea for methodological pluralism re-articulates Simon’s famous article on BSchools as ‘a problem of
organizational design’. Simon prioritized training students in synthesizing practice (Khurana & Spender,
2012; Simon, 1967). He thought deeply about science’s application to management, of course, but not at
the expense of other kinds of understanding. His article’s focus was on the Dean’s job, how to hold a
methodologically diverse faculty i together n the face of the institutional pressures on them to bet on a
single methodology. The returns to multi-methods and cross-disciplinary teaching are low, and to
teaching synthesizing even lower. A notable exception is HBS’s commitment to case-teaching where the
objective is to nurture the students’ judgment (Christensen, Garvin, & Sweet, 1991). Not everyone uses
the case method the same way; indeed there is little ‘theory’ about how it works or should be used. The
discussion above offers some opinion. First, judgment is only required because an opportunity space has
been sensed. It must then be framed. Because the kinds of knowing required can span from scientifically
supported generalizations to tendencies identified historically as well as the ethics and aesthetics of
agentic choice, synthesizing is key. Yet it should be supported wherever possible by analysis. Von
Clausewitz helped explain how this might be done; key being the flash of imaginative insight that brings a
thorough analysis into the world of practice (Duggan, 2007; von Ghyczy, von Oetinger, & Bassford,
2001).

Calling managing ‘art’ does little to clarify how to do it, research it, or encourage students to improve
their craft. Indeed the term art is often introduced to cut the discussion short. Teachers of art cannot get
away with this so the history of art education is illuminating (Spender, 2007). The venerable field is no
less riven with methodological disputes than economics or management or history. The Discipline-Based
Art Education initiative is interesting for its attempt to propose structure and theory. Its pillars are art
history, art criticism, aesthetics, and art production; four distinct modes of ‘art knowing’ the student must
bring into mindful artful practice. Art history discusses what art is about, contextualizing its boundaries.
Art reflects the space and time of its practice. Students must find where the boundaries are before they
can be ‘entrepreneurial’ and push beyond them. Art criticism provides theory and language for bringing
others’ exploration of these into the analysis. Aesthetics points to the character and nature of the artist’s
imagination and agency, to what s/he adds of themselves into the discourse. In the end, of course, art is
the practice of projecting the Self into the world as mind-ful practice.
Overall this essay argues the rigor-relevance debate arises from our own choice of method. This is
hugely important to our professional identity. Unmanaged the choices present serious challenges to
BSchool Deans, as Simon argued. The interplay between methods can quickly get out of control and
become deeply destructive, as the Methodenstreit and more recent ‘faculty wars’ showed. But wishing
the contrasts away denies the history of our discipline. Instead of breast-beating that is much like
Canute’s attempt to quell the tide, we can use the contrasts between methods to gain escape velocity from
the vicious circles into which our discipline has been pulled, uselessly filling journals while credentialing
ever more students towards tasks we have yet to grasp. But we cannot turn the tensions into propulsive
force without grasping their inherently political nature (Kuhn, 1977). A reasonable objective is to learn to
live day-to-day with the tensions that arise from the various methods our academic institutions judge
relevant to management phenomena (Bartunek & Rynes, 2014). Denying the rigor-relevance gap,
wishing it away, berating the discipline for its existence, arguing we must do this or that without
explaining why, is futile. We do better to note how the gap pushes synthesizing to center stage and think
about how we might help our students enhance their God-given synthesizing capabilities.

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