Business won't boom in ghetto

A free-standing research council will stifle management studies, argues Anthony Hopwood.

From time to time, there is pressure to create an independent Research Council for Management Research. The last such occasion was about a decade ago - it resulted in the establishment of a Commission on Management Research. After careful consideration, it decided there was no case for a declaration of independence. However, those very same pressures are at work again.

The Council for Excellence in Management and Leadership is summoning a consultation meeting on the topic next week.

Despite the enormous growth of management education in the United Kingdom, there is unease about the state of research. Indeed, the Commission on Management Research had difficulty naming any significant British contributions to management research since business schools were established in the mid-1960s. Management research had flourished, it seems, in traditional university research settings.

Many key management research developments have had similar origins:the rise of modern finance theory originated from linkages established between economics, finance and statistics at the University of Chicago. Insights into organisation theory developed from the works of political scientists and sociologists. Strategy has been shaped by its interconnections with history, sociology and economics.

This involvement with social sciences perhaps explains why one of the UK's foremost centres of management research is not at a business school but at the London School of Economics. The combined resources of the departments of accounting and finance, information systems and industrial relations; specialists in the economics department; staff in the law, international relations and government departments and its own Institute of Management, form a management knowledge powerhouse that is difficult for any business school to match.

Where management knowledge has developed in isolation, the results have been unimpressive - for research or practice.

In light of this, calls for a Research Council for Management Research need to be recognised for what they are. Rather than reflecting the needs of research, they stem from interests in autonomy, control and independent and guaranteed sources of finance.

The danger is that, rather than creating a powerhouse of new ideas, a Research Council for Management Research would become a ghetto, isolated from the diverse intellectual influences that are necessary for understanding informed management action. Management research may need help, but an isolation ward would be counter-productive.

Anthony Hopwood is director of the Said Business School, University of Oxford, and president of the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management, Brussels.