Should the PhD program be an "ethical" program?

[rocketvarman]

As future PhD students and Professors I am interested in getting some opinions on whether we as a community would join and teach at places that are not so conscientious as they claim to be? Are we willing to overlook serious ethical breaches before joining a PhD program or teaching at a University. Would you join UCLA? Lynn Stout left UCLA to join Cornell as she was unhappy about UCLA receiving money from a rogue trader named Lowell Milken. Would you join University of Texas at Dallas now renamed the Navin Jindal School. The man and his company, the OP Jindal group has had a history of human rights and environmental abuses in India. Should we as a community slowly begin to act as activists? Or should we remain mute? These are merely two examples that come to mind. I am pretty certain that the program I am joining will also have some issues, just that I havent been able to find any.Thoughts welcome!

[doingfine]

Oh jeez.

[gc98835]

Would you join University of Texas at Dallas now renamed the Navin Jindal School. The man and his company, the OP Jindal group has had a history of human rights and environmental abuses in India

 

This is very true. As an Indian, it would be very embarrassing for me to tell my family and friends where I am studying if I end up at UT Dallas next year (if I apply there). However this wouldn't stop me from applying there if I find a strong research fit, I don't think I have reached that stage yet where I can be choosy. Maybe a better alternative to be more ethical is to first reach that stage where your opinion matters (i.e. for eg. become the director of a school), and then when you can call the shots you can always refuse donations or make ethical decisions etc.

[sb29]

As an applicant, one should go to a place where one thinks that one will get the best training. As a prospective faculty, one should choose a place where one thinks one will be able to pursue their own research, have a good career and more importantly, have good colleagues. As state funding of universities (and especially business schools) diminish, schools have to increasingly turn to corporations for funding. That is what will sustain the schools (and hence our profession) in future. Now the thing with doing business is that you can't please everybody and every corporation has some issue or the other. Where do you draw the line? There are Coca-Cola professorships and chairs in some schools. Will you refuse to accept such a role because you feel that the company may be responsible for obesity in America? You may, if you feel strongly about obesity. But you can't expect the community' to boycott the company. Similarly, ISB in India is the only school in South Asia which has a proper research culture and pays its faculty members really well. Will you refuse an academic position there because the founding directors were Ramalinga Raju, Rajat Gupta and Anil Kumar? You may and that may be your personal choice. But expecting the academic community to boycott the institution is, in my opinion, immature.

[phdhope]

Getting the academy to do anything is like herding cats. I think this decision really depends on what the individual researcher finds important to their career and what they find unethical/ethical behavior to be. Some people would leave their institution if they felt it was unethical, some wouldn't. Some would view your examples as unethical behavior by the institution, some wouldn't. For me personally, I have a long list of things to worry about before I worry about whether the funding of the institution comes from ethical sources. I wouldn't degrade anyone who has that higher on their list, but I think it is pointless to try and get the entire academy on board with this philosophy.

[HorsesInVA]

I think life rarely presents anyone with unambiguous moral choices. The name of the school or where it gets its money from is just one of many issues people in academia have to deal with, assuming they choose to care about that sort of thing. (Plagiarism, tenure fights, whether one should do what's good for the "school") The businses ethicists like to emphasize at the end of the day, there isn't usually a check list of moral considerations that must be passed before a decision can be approved, and most of the time it's a bad idea to have such a check-list. Sometimes the best we can do is just have a broad moral imagination that allows one to understand the concerns others might have and make our own judgments about whether or not we share those concerns.

[Syous]

There's a post on the OrgTheory blog titled "why activism and academia don’t mix"; you should give it a read.

[ffsmaster]

Interesting idea. Maybe you should tell all Harvard applicant about the Shleifer case.

[rsaylors]

As future PhD students and Professors I am interested in getting some opinions on whether we as a community would join and teach at places that are not so conscientious as they claim to be? Are we willing to overlook serious ethical breaches before joining a PhD program or teaching at a University. Would you join UCLA? Lynn Stout left UCLA to join Cornell as she was unhappy about UCLA receiving money from a rogue trader named Lowell Milken. Would you join University of Texas at Dallas now renamed the Navin Jindal School. The man and his company, the OP Jindal group has had a history of human rights and environmental abuses in India. Should we as a community slowly begin to act as activists? Or should we remain mute? These are merely two examples that come to mind. I am pretty certain that the program I am joining will also have some issues, just that I havent been able to find any.Thoughts welcome!

 

I'm a critical post-modern historical materialist... and I think this 'discussion' is stupid. Ever investigate any real human rights abuses?

 

yea, no.

 

I'll bet anything that anyone that's accumulated any reasonable level wealth (read, can get a business school named after them) also has something you can nail them on; particularly given that corporations often do not do exactly what the CEO would want them to do.

Edited April 5, 2013 by rsaylors

[possible_phd]

Nope. Don't care.

[XanthusARES]

Oh jeez.

 

This.

[TheAmazingSteve]

I am surprised by the pragmatism expressed so far. If you have an ethical objection to a school or program that you feel strongly about, you should absolutely leave/avoid that program/try to change things. Whether or not the scenarios you described constitute ethical lapses is left to the individual to decide.

 

As an example I would not join a program I felt was bigoted or discriminatory.

[rsaylors]

As an example I would not join a program I felt was bigoted or discriminatory.

Surely. I wouldn't work at BYU, for example.

 

But if the OP had facts to support the arguments made; instead of typical "business is evil" jabber, then there would be a point.

 

But as is, the negativity about Jindal is so poorly supported by credible sources it doesn't reach wikipedia standards.

 

As I said, a real human rights abuse is much different than not going to a program because it accepted money from a rich person that did what rich people do in order to reach that level in society.

 

Most importantly, the examples given do not bring us to an answer to the question "Should the PhD program be an "ethical" program?"; nor does it justify the nearly insulting stance that we "remain mute" if we don't see the world the OP does and speak out as such.

 

I'm with you Steve. It's not pragmatism I'm objecting with; it's the low quality of the argumentation for action presented by the OP.

[HorsesInVA]

It accepted money from a rich person that did what rich people do in order to reach that level in society.

 

One of the things I learned from my economic sociology course was that it is not very often that firms and their founders make it to the top of their industry by following the rules of "legitimate" business behavior of their time. It's only after they make it is the behavior either legitimated or even further de-legitimated so it can't be used by other potential young turks. Kicking the ladder as one person put it. Some of the examples we discussed were LBOs in the 80's (controversial when first implemented but now just par for the course) and 19th century industrialization that was environmentally destructive combined with the absence of labor rights, which developing nations (*cough* China *cough*) are now tut-tutted for practicing. Knowing that, do we teach in class that one of the most successful, though admittedly risky, strategies is to disregard the norms and rules of conduct to get ahead?

 

Assuming everyone here aspires to be a B-school professor and teach MBA or undergraduate business students at some point in their lives, and knowing that students come out of these programs with a certain value system, e.g. 69% of graduating MBAs say they believe the only purpose of a business is to maximize shareholder value, then what is the ethical role of B-schools and their professors with regard to shaping the world-views of their students?

 

For example, if you teach at a place like Booth, do you mark the kid who writes on his exam that markets aren't the answer to every problem, as not understanding the material? (No disrespect to Chicago, but they take in the fact they're the house Friedman built) Or specific to the place I work at, do you grade a kid taking a class on work place diversity who on the final who argues that racial privilege does not exist except when it's put upon by the government like in affirmative action, as not understanding the material? (True story, from a professor who was teaching a diversity course. The prof. ultimately gave the kid a bad grade for not making a good enough argument)

 

Most of us, put on our applications that the reason we want a PhD is because we want to do research. However, there's no escaping the fact if we end up placing somewhere, at some point we're going to find ourselves in front of a classroom. And some of the people we'll be teaching will probably find themselves in a position of influence that in turn affects the lives of many others. What is our obligation (if any) to the education of these people?

 

Some of the prof.'s at where I work just run through the material they receive from the last person who taught the course, others take a quasi-pulpit to the material. Some grade harder for deviation from course material, others are more understanding. Some offer personally crafted small seminars and essentially mentor a cadre of students and really mold them in their image. Others don't do anything beyond what is expected of them. I imagine that's the situation in a lot of places.

 

I certainly can't speak in general about which of these engagement styles is the most appropriate, though I think certain styles turn out better than others for our particular school. People like to talk about the big ethical breaches like Enron or dodgy behavior like AIG giving bonuses with bail out money. But I think the moral dilemmas most people face are local and personally conflicting. A hypothetical I sometimes wonder about is, "If you suspect (or perhaps know) one of your co-workers is abusing their spouse, what would you do about it?"

 

One of my best friends who's at top3 MBA program, when I asked them this question answered without blinking an eye, "I don't really care unless this person's behavior is affecting the company's image or my job security. If it becomes important to me for some reason, then I'll gather evidence in such a way that does not implicate myself and does not interfere with my work and report it to HR in a way that doesn't get back to me. Otherwise it's none of my business and they should work it out between themselves." Another, said, "Honestly, I can't say without knowing more about the situation." Should they come out of their education in business administration prepared to answer a question like this? And if so, do we have any responsibility to that process?

 

(Just random thoughts on B-school ethics)

[rocketvarman]

Thanks members for multiple views. Let me set some things clear.

 

1) Firstly my post does not indicate that I believe business is evil. If anyone thinks that, he or she is mistaken or it is perhaps a symptom of being part of this forum for too long and acting like a self declared czar of PhD admissions.

2) Secondly I don't need to speak your language. It seems to me that the only language (having gathered this from multiple posts and threads) that seems acceptable to many threads is a language spoken by the 'experts'. This is terrible for a forum where multiple views must be encouraged even if they cant be expressed in grammatically correct English.

3) Thirdly, as HorsesinVA and Steve have mentioned, there is a great danger. If we only have aims of publishing in top journals and working at Ivy League schools and earning great salaries and writing books, business professors are going to always be just that and nothing more. We are going to made fun of by MBA and Undergraduate students and sneered at by PhD students and hated by our colleagues. Of course if we just want to publish and write books then it doesn't matter.

4) Thirdly with respect to Jindal, I have been to Jindal Nagar t (a place very close to where I did my MBA and where the plants of the Jindal Group are located) as part of a Labour Relations project three years ago. If you go there, try and breathe the air and tell me there is no human rights abuse. Also talk to a contract miner who hasn't been paid for 4 months. I don't need a Caravan magazine (which did a very kind profile of OP Jindal) or the NY times or the AMJ to provide me that information to make it credible. Yes with reference to Lynn Stout my credible source is the internet.

 

My intention was to get some views on things we think about when we have hard ethical or moral dilemmas, so let me provide my personal views even if it is absolutely insignificant to most members of this forum.I would certainly try and be an activist as much as I can if I were to find out something 'sinister' about the college or my program. If I were teaching and an unethical businessman came to get my views, I would tell him to change. Not because it makes business sense because its the sensible thing to do. We seem to have lost our innocence and idealism. The world is not going to change much unless we who will teach business to those who will run the world change.But again, we are all entitled to act or not act.

[Indus]

Assuming everyone here aspires to be a B-school professor and teach MBA or undergraduate business students at some point in their lives, and knowing that students come out of these programs with a certain value system, e.g. 69% of graduating MBAs say they believe the only purpose of a business is to maximize shareholder value, then what is the ethical role of B-schools and their professors with regard to shaping the world-views of their students?

I appreciate the issue you are trying to highlight, but this one made me pause. Why do you think such a high proportion of graduating MBAs believe that the only purpose of a business is to maximize shareholder value (and nothing else, implicit)? Well, shareholder value is a relatively new concept, circa 1970s & 1980s, linked to the rise of the Chicago School (free-market ideology). Wasn't it Milton Friedman who is credited with claiming that "the only proper purpose of business was maximizing profits". If someone would have asked the business school graduates the same question in 1970s, they might have given a different answer. The point I am trying to make is that students might espouse values and mechanisms we (academia/media/"star exemplars").

I do believe though that OP should have explained the questions better and avoided couple of insinuations. But having seen the way bauxite mines in Orissa have destroyed underground water; open cast mining in Rajasthan has created massive air pollution (both India); and how rivers in the industrial belts of China are more or less dead, appreciate his thought. For instance, there are reasons why manufacturing, especially the more polluting type, has moved to global south. The reason you will home on will depend on your ideological orientation and global exposure.

[HorsesInVA]

I appreciate the issue you are trying to highlight, but this one made me pause. Why do you think such a high proportion of graduating MBAs believe that the only purpose of a business is to maximize shareholder value (and nothing else, implicit)? Well, shareholder value is a relatively new concept, circa 1970s & 1980s, linked to the rise of the Chicago School (free-market ideology). Wasn't it Milton Friedman who is credited with claiming that "the only proper purpose of business was maximizing profits". If someone would have asked the business school graduates the same question in 1970s, they might have given a different answer. The point I am trying to make is that students might espouse values and mechanisms we (academia/media/"star exemplars").

 

For many there is absolutely nothing wrong with that statement. Peter Drucker said something similar, "The first social imperative of any firm is to make a profit." As you highlight this is a view that was born out of the Chicago school in the 70's and has spread its way into modern management education, until it's reached taken-for-granted status. A prof. at my school who used to work with Drucker liked to add, "The first biological imperative of mammals is to breathe. But just because we are breathing doesn't mean there isn't anything else we could be doing."

 

That is a point I'd like to ask, should B-school prof's critique the shareholder mentality, since it was academia that also created it? (In my school the finance prof.s and management/ethics prof's don't generally share the same opinion on this point) The 69% is apparently higher then a few years ago when it was 60%. Moreover, it's not simply B-school prof's who have propagated this view, wall-street culture, modern politics, all have a role. The system of reinforcing beliefs is deep.

 

That industrialization generates negative externalities is well known and for those who can afford it, you try not to have it in your backyard. However, the point is there is trade-off, many people will accept a higher income for other unpleasantness. Or as Deng Xiao Ping said, if you open the window flies will come in. Or in some cases the externalities can be positive. For example, sweat shops were set up by Japanese firms in the early 90's in rural China. They paid the villagers a few dollars a day for 10+ hour work days making plastic trinkets. For the villagers the pay was very high, the factory had AC, and it was the first time the village had electricity and plumbing. (The factory owners had to set up generators and plumbing for the factory to get it running)

 

Nor would simply taking it away make it better. Coal Mining is a pollution intensive and dangerous form of labor. Try to take it from W. VA. A milder example of this is, fmr NYC mayor Rudolph Giuliani saying we in VA should be grateful that NY is paying us millions to accept its garbage. Industrialization is without a doubt problematic but we all know it exists for a reason. The critique levelled at it now a days is very similar to the one Marxists make, and let it be said, Marx (who was never a complete Marxist) himself admired capitalism, he also felt it created alienation and was incomplete.

 

But my own thought on this is, most of us aren't going to be writing broad critiques of global capitalism. Many of our students won't be front-line supervisors at Foxconn. The issues they deal with will be small and particular. A friend of mine's who studies theology says, the "fall of man" is not that we are outside of the good. It's that we're not exclusive within it. As a result our choices lack total moral clarity. A subordinate of yours is being sexually harassed by another co-worker. Do you bring that person into your office and give them a talking to or shame them in public? (In studies, either, though especially the latter, can be a very bad choice because it embitters the perpetrator against the victm. The perpetrator then taps into their social network to alienate the victim and in general makes the victim seem like someone who is a jerk to be around.) Do you move the people into different groups?

 

For consultants, do you do what the client wants or do you do what you think they need? (It varies case by case, so I'm told) If you work in a non-profit (like say poverty reduction) is it a problem if you take a mid 6-figure salary?

 

Business ethics is one of the core-courses that's taught in the school I work at. For a lot of places, it's an elective, assuming it's even offered. The lesson they try to promote is that, there are no check lists, no bright yellow-line tests and be wary if they exist. The best one can do is cultivate a moral imagination that makes one appreciate the circumstances of others. Because sometimes it's tempting to go into "let them eat cake" kind of attitude as well regarding the circumstances of others. To say the world has problems is one thing, it's quite another to respond by saying I won't work in a field that promotes that. This is wonderful if you have that option, but what about the people who don't? Have they morally compromised themselves? It's like hearing an aspiring lawyer who says, I'll only defend the innocent. Ok, but in the US court of law, everyone, including the very "guilty", has a right to a good legal defense. If their attourney does anything less than what is expected of that standard, then have they failed or is it in being successful that the other party did?

 

Sometimes all you can do is be humble, assume you don't know what's best, and own up to the consequences of your decisions.

Edited April 6, 2013 by HorsesInVA

[qwang]

@OP: I think you made a mistake in assuming that doing management research, publishing papers in management-related journals, and writing management books is not adding value to society, and I think that's perhaps why you have gotten some of the negative responses by some of the others here. Just because UT Dallas accepted money from Jindal does not necessarily mean that they are working for Jindal. Yes, that money is being used to pay for the salaries of faculty, but it does not state explicitly or implicitly that they are in any shape or form being manipulated by Jindal. In a different scenario, what if he had donated that same money towards cancer research? Or maybe towards environmental protection? Or maybe as scholarship fund for some poor kids in India? How should that be viewed? Should the donation be accepted? Putting aside public perception, does that same money spent on cancer research, environmental protection, or scholarships add more overall value to society than management-related research at UT Dallas? I think that's debatable. Your examples don't necessarily describe a valid ethical problem. If someone is offering you money to solve some of the world's greatest challenges, does it really matter where this money came from?

 

To be honest, I think most PhD programs are already highly ethical. The measures of your success come from the impact of your work towards academia, which is in turn beneficial to societal's greater good. If you can find the cure for cancer or develop a reliable source of alternative energy, you will win a Nobel prize because you've just saved many lives. If you can develop the most efficient queuing algorithm for allocating hospital and emergency room beds you will have a high paying professorship at any university of your choice also because you've just saved many lives. Please understand that publishing in top journals and writing books is not valueless. These journals are peer reviewed, and you're not going to be publishing anything if your work does not have any positive impact towards society. Leave the activism to activists because that's what they do best. Let researchers do research because that's what we do best. Sometimes you'll have a researcher is can also be a successful activist, but that's not true of everybody and it would be unfair to expect it of everybody.

[gc98835]

Agree with qwang. Same point explained by this author who argues that activism and academia are two different things which require different skills and reward you for different kinds of achievements, therefore they don't mix together: why activism and academia don’t mix | orgtheory.net

[HorsesInVA]

If someone is offering you money to solve some of the world's greatest challenges, does it really matter where this money came from?

 

Yes.

 

To say it doesn't would be very similar to saying the ends justify the means.

 

Going another step, is it even money you should have? If Bernie Madoff gave you money to research some noble cause, would you take it? Whenever transactions occur, both parties ostensibly benefit from the exchange. Institutions of learning exchange the goodwill of their prestige when they accept a donation.

 

Furthermore, since this is the more typical case, should a school accept money to fund research the donor finds interesting, not what the university or faculty does, if they can skim some of it to fund things they actually care about?

 

Moreover, it's interesting to hear the positive impact to society argument at play, because one of the things that's discussed frequently here is people should do a PhD because they like research, not because they want to make the world a better place, (no one's offended if that's their goal), but it should be and only be because they want to do research.

 

I've heard from more than one faculty member at the school I work at and other B-schools argue that practicality is not in the interest of the faculty. In fact, practical applications of research are discouraged. (Along with good teaching) Some people have been denied tenure because their research was "too practical oriented" or lacking in "theoretical contribution."

 

Is a paper on why firms name themselves after their founders a better paper then research on the financial burdens of running a fish farm? (One is likely to be found in an SMJ or AMJ, but is difficult to imagine having any great relevance to most business owners and the other would be found in some regional journal, but would be of interest to actual fish farmers.)

 

If academics claim credit for the positive outcomes of research, should they also be willing to accept responsibility for bad uses of it as well? I don't take the view that publishing is valueless, but I also don't agree that ipso facto, a tier 1 publication has immediate positive value. If anything academic research feels more value-neutral. It just is. And it is generally agreed academics should not bear responsibility for how their ideas are used. (good or bad)

 

I certainly agree that academics make poor activists. (Noam Chomsky was (maybe still is) a great linguist, but hasn't done much to change economic inequality. Linus Pauling was a great chemist, but didn't help end the cold war). I do not think we should so be so eager to annoint ourselves into the halls of the righteous just because we work in academia. If anything, that should make us more willing to interrogate and reflect on that view point.

[rsaylors]

Agree with qwang. Same point explained by this author who argues that activism and academia are two different things which require different skills and reward you for different kinds of achievements, therefore they don't mix together: why activism and academia don’t mix | orgtheory.net

 

Social Science research IS activism (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987).

 

If you are not aware that your choice of research question, the way you go about solving it, and the conclusion you draw from your research is all a matter of sociologically embedded assumptions (pierce 1878); then you may fail to see this.

 

Physics is a different animal; In the social sciences we often create the meaning we are looking for (Weick, 1979).

 

Being ignorant of this just makes you more heavily biased, because you don't even know what your biases are (Gephart 1988).

 

 

Participant action research, research intended to give voice to the disenfranchised can also offer stunning theoretical insights; but those theoretical insights may be 'disgusting' to post-positivist-abstractionists (Rosil, Boje, Carlon, Downs, Saylors, in press), which is just fine by me because the concept of the social science researcher as objective is the first step in the modern move to "annoint ourselves into the halls of the righteous just because we work in academia" (HorsesInVA, 2013 p. 20).

 

 

 

Peirce, C. S. (1878). How to make our ideas clear.

 

Weick, K. E. (1979). The social psychology of organizing (Topics in social psychology series).

 

Gephart, R. P. (1988). Ethnostatistics: Qualitative foundations for quantitative research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

 

Rosile, Boje, Carlon, Downs, Saylors (In Press). Storytelling Diamond: An Antenarrative Integration of the Six Facets of Storytelling in Organization Research Design. Organizational Research Methods

 

Cooperrider, D. L., & Srivastva, S. (1987). Appreciative inquiry in organizational life. Research in organizational change and development, 1(1), 129-169.

 

HorsesInVA (2013) "does it really matter where this money came from? YES" Retrieved from the web at :http://www.www.urch.com/forums/phd-business/147304-should-phd-program-be-ethical-program.html#post947761

Edited April 7, 2013 by rsaylors

[qwang]

Yes.

 

To say it doesn't would be very similar to saying the ends justify the means.

 

What I wanted to get at is that we cannot know beforehand if the ends justify the means, and therefore we can't accurately judge the recipient's choice of accepting or rejecting a donation from a questionable character.

 

Going another step, is it even money you should have? If Bernie Madoff gave you money to research some noble cause, would you take it? Whenever transactions occur, both parties ostensibly benefit from the exchange. Institutions of learning exchange the goodwill of their prestige when they accept a donation.

 

Is it even money you should have? I'm assuming that you're implying that the money is perhaps obtained illegitimately and therefore could actually rightfully belong to someone else. In that case, I think the most responsible thing to do is to first determine how the money was obtained, and if indeed it was illegitimate it should be reported to some form of authority with the power to decide what to do with that money. However, if you cannot determine whether the money was legitimate or not, there would be a certain amount of risk attached to the money which then could be evaluated to make an informed decision. I would not accept money from Bernie Madoff because I know that the money has an extremely high amount of risk attached to it. But if it's money from say, Bill Gates, then I would certainly be more likely to accept it.

 

Furthermore, since this is the more typical case, should a school accept money to fund research the donor finds interesting, not what the university or faculty does, if they can skim some of it to fund things they actually care about?

 

I think this has to do with the formal agreement of the donation and how much of it goes to funding the specific problem that the donor finds interesting and how much goes to other causes. Different people, under different situations will value the donation differently. If a school is close to going broke then they'd probably take money to do any kind of research just to keep their jobs. Alternatively, if a school has plenty of money then they probably wouldn't waste time on an uninteresting or unimportant research problem for a donation that doesn't provide significant amounts of money towards research that they think is worthwhile. I can't judge if a school should or shouldn't accept the donation in this case because I don't know what kind of effects that money would have towards the recipients. If a military research grant on creating a more accurate heat tracking device is the only option that a foreign student has at supporting his/her pursuit of an American PhD which will eventually lead to an infinitely better life for him and his extended family, what right does anyone else have to say that he shouldn't accept it?

 

Moreover, it's interesting to hear the positive impact to society argument at play, because one of the things that's discussed frequently here is people should do a PhD because they like research, not because they want to make the world a better place, (no one's offended if that's their goal), but it should be and only be because they want to do research.

 

I think doing research eventually does make the world a better place, for more documented knowledge is always better than less knowledge. What can eventually be done using this knowledge is often unforeseeable and the responsible use of this knowledge should be the burden of the eventual user.

 

I've heard from more than one faculty member at the school I work at and other B-schools argue that practicality is not in the interest of the faculty. In fact, practical applications of research are discouraged. (Along with good teaching) Some people have been denied tenure because their research was "too practical oriented" or lacking in "theoretical contribution."

 

That's interesting. The first response I always got when I asked B-school operations faculty about the difference of being in a B-school versus IEOR departments in engineering schools is that all of their research is driven by practical applications, whereas IEOR departments are OK with making purely theoretical contributions. Furthermore, I have been told that the business school dean would have a much harder time selling their school to potential donors and students if their research did not have much use in practice. Finally, I was told a number of times the following: "if you want to do theoretical research, then this program isn't for you". Perhaps there is a difference in the understanding of what constitutes as practical or theoretical across different fields of business research. But I would find it odd if a business school is interested in research that wasn't directly applicable to business.

 

If academics claim credit for the positive outcomes of research, should they also be willing to accept responsibility for bad uses of it as well? I don't take the view that publishing is valueless, but I also don't agree that ipso facto, a tier 1 publication has immediate positive value. If anything academic research feels more value-neutral. It just is. And it is generally agreed academics should not bear responsibility for how their ideas are used. (good or bad)

 

I agree, but as stated earlier my definition of positive value includes knowledge. The world's most challenging problems already are problems that cannot be solved in one attempt by one research group. When cancer is cured, it will be because of everyone's efforts at new developments to eventually reach the discovery of a specific treatment to stop this disease. At a time when we don't know the answer, any reasonable suggestion should have the value of potentially being the solution.

[rsaylors]

What I wanted to get at is that we cannot know beforehand if the ends justify the means,

Positive ends do not justify immoral means. /Kant

 

IEOR departments are OK with making purely theoretical contributions.

theory in ops is writing out a math equations. Theory in organizational research is extending our understanding of the psychological, sociological, and anthropological within the context of organizations.

 

But I would find it odd if a business school is interested in research that wasn't directly applicable to business.

Most practitioner/applied level journals don't count for tenure and promotion. The UTD rankings do not include practitioner level journals.

 

It sounds like you're coming from an IEOR perspective and they have a generally poor understanding of what business school research does.

 

When cancer is cured, it will

have nothing to do with our pinning into the night about the benefits of work-place-hugs (WPH).

[qwang]

Positive ends do not justify immoral means. /Kant

 

You can say that, but then how would we be able to even justify our existences? We raise and kill animals to provide food and clothing for us when it's not necessary. We buy goods that are produced under unfair conditions where people are exploited and paid an unfair wage. We live on land that used to belong to another group of people who have been unethically forced out for the benefits of our ancestors. I think ends that eventually improves the lives of those whom we've exploited should be justified because that's the only way we can even justify our lives as is.

 

Most practitioner/applied level journals don't count for tenure and promotion. The UTD rankings do not include practitioner level journals.

 

Practitioner/applied level journals is an extreme in terms of applied research. Most of the flagship management science journal publications are high on practical applications and low on developing or improving theory. In management science, the practitioner journals are not well-regarded because they're viewed as "not rigorous enough".

 

It sounds like you're coming from an IEOR perspective and they have a generally poor understanding of what business school research does.

 

I don't understand why you're accusing me of coming from an IEOR perspective when the people who told me these things are faculty members of highly-ranked operations programs in business schools. You're free to accuse that faculty member or maybe the whole field of having a poor understanding of business school research, but it has nothing to do with my perspective as I've never been a part of an IEOR department nor will I ever be in one.

[rsaylors]

What I mean, then, is that you are coming from an IEOR perspective as to what is theory and what is practice. This is because the professor telling you this was telling you this inorder to explain the ideas of theory and practice from your perspective as an IEOR person. I say this because in other threads you've offered advice entirely situated in an IEOR perspective; just as your existing misunderstanding of management is situated from the perspective of a more 'basic' researcher.

 

While OM is likely one of our most aplicable fields, it is not a place where contributions to practice-only are acceptable. Just because you ground your research in outcomes that are related to a real phenomenon, does not mean that you are doing jack, or squat, that the person within that phenomenon would care about.

 

Similarly, you will never (no never), oh never (yes NEVER), publish in a top 4(maybe top 40) management journal without a strong contribution to theory*.

 

You can say that, but then how would we be able to even justify our existences?

I don't try to justify your existence.

 

I don't think that 'the greater good' justified the slaughter of the native americans. Nor do I think that 'low low prices' justifies the abhorrent working conditions of those in the third world. But I can only be responsable for 'justifying' my own existence, no one else's, and within my own ability to locally optimize and my overall ability to do some-little good in the world: I do.

 

We raise and kill animals to provide food and clothing for us when it's not necessary.

I don't see animals as people. If I did, then I wouldn't eat meat or wear fur. If you DO see them as people and still eat meat and wear fur then the only thing keeping you from slicing off my back-skin and making a silence of the lambs style flesh suit is your fear of getting caught... which is rather disturbing.

 

 

*Theory: 1) Whatever 3 reviewers and 1 associate editor calls theory. 2) What you are 'missing' when an article is rejected 3) Synonym for fashion.

Edited April 8, 2013 by rsaylors