These are the slides of the presentation delivered at AoM 2014 (The 74th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management - 4th August, 2014 - Philadelphia, PA) on a paper written with Colin Eden.

1. Implications for Management and Organization Research
Viktor Dörfler – Colin Eden
Understanding ‘Expert’ Scientists

2. model of knowledge levels
 how to investigate the cognitive
complexity of grandmasters?
talking to people at the highest level
 NLs: de facto grandmasters
 unstructured interviews
 simple outcomes of complex thinking
coping and rescoping
 emergent patterns of good research
 how these apply to management and
organisations research?
if researchers are similar
increasingly more scientistic

3. So, how would you
now argue that these
interviewees are
people at the highest
level of expertise?
not just another instance
of grounded theory

4. alongside rather than instead of ‘rational’
 the sacred gift that we neglect
we do not admit using intuition in reports
 ad-hoc, untidy, unsystematic
 are we discouraging ‘big leaps’ by doing so?
create intuition-friendly environments
 hear about, admit, act upon, reflect on, discuss
 include in doctoral schools’ methodology courses
 principle of mutual control – interpersonal verification
 how to handle the excessive mass of journal papers?
intuition is, in fact, almost completely sacrificed to
intellect (Henri Bergson)
“I mean, you know,
where I’ve been
successful is in
seeing very simple
patterns in
complicated
situations. So, I’m
good at that, and
my wife [Ann
Treisman] says I see
patterns in clouds
…”

5. seeing both the ‘big picture’ as well as the detail
 switching between the two fast, frequently, with ease
 seeing the essence (a special cue in sensemaking)
we cut ourselves with Occam’s razor
 no access to context and history – no ‘big picture’
 easy to understand, easy to publish – but is it worth?
complexify yourself! (based on Weick)
 explore, understand and describe process and change
in context over time – immerse yourself
 study experience rather than audio file and transcript
it is the essence not the relevance that is missing
(Jim March on relevance vs. rigour)
“… we do not know
much about ‘dark
energy’, we do know
that it is certainly
not dark and it may
not be energy at
all…”

6. it is necessary to have a master to become one
 one-on-one traditional highly asymmetric relationship
 ‘hot spot’: where there is something in the walls
over-democratising the roles
 we are confusing equality with sameness
 adherence to ‘the method’ restricts freedom
weaker ‘community’ – stronger workshop
 PhD students should not be thinking about papers
 tell the stories of legendary hot spots and masters
 see breakthroughs and aim for some
 get out of the vicious circle and create a virtuous one
you people write for journals you only read (Larry
Prusak)
“… there are a few
centers where you
have unique
individuals and
preferably more
than one such
individual and then
remarkable things
happen there…”

7. by becoming more and more scientistic
we are actually less and less scientific
 we rarely create interesting theories
 writing academic papers became more
important than creating new knowledge
 instead of nurturing their interest and talent
we put PhDs on the production line
perhaps it is more important to learn the
use of intuition, seeing the essence, and
develop the new generation of
researchers in ‘hot spots’ than focusing
solely on how to be rigorous, quantitative,
and systematic
“… I propose that the
goal of science is to
make the wonderful
and the complex
understandable and
simple – but not less
wonderful.”