Dennis Tourish is a professor of leadership and organization studies at the University of Sussex Business School. Alex Fergnani is the co-founder and head of foresight at the Ideactio Centre for Foresight Research and Consulting (Singapore)  

Available in video format:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD5kuYFHg0w

CHAT OUTLINE: 

[02:35] Some statistics about the crisis in management studies 

[05:20] Summary of the many interlinked problems behind the crisis in management studies (overemphasis of theory, questionable research practices, lack of relevant research, overemphasis of journals' impact factors, etc.) 

[12:08] Taking a complexity view of the issue, what is/are the problem(s) that we absolutely have to address first? 

[15:40] Why we are underestimating our agency to solve the problem 

[18:20] Why referring to scientific publications by using the phrase “playing the game”  is deleterious 

[20:20] Taking a (simplified) foresight view of the issue, what is the best case future scenario and the worst case future scenario of management studies?

[24:06] Possible solutions, e.g., a shorter review process, grant lottery for researchers, etc. 

[28:57] Research malpractice, e.g.,  only positive results are shown, tautological hypotheses, etc. 

[31:37] The necessity of promoting abductive research and case studies 

[33:38] P-hacking and the crisis of reproducibility 

[34:26] How to address the problem collectively 

[39;28] Resistance to change 

[42:37] Why and how to do more relevant management research? 

[48:02] What has recently changed in the field about the problem  

MENTIONED SOURCES: 

Tourish (2019). Management Studies in Crisis: Fraud, Deception and Meaningless Research: https://www.amazon.com/Management-Studies-Crisis-Deception-Meaningless-ebook/dp/B07S7DWWDB/ref=sr_1_2?crid=DZBBU4AVB09C&keywords=dennis+tourish&qid=1668507482&sprefix=dennis+tourish%2Caps%2C141&sr=8-2 

Tourish (2020).The Triumph of Nonsense in Management Studies: https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amle.2019.0255 

Haley et al. (2022). In Search of Scholarly Impact (AMLE Editorial): https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amle.2022.0327 

Sharma et al (2022). Cocreating Forward: How Researchers and Managers Can Address Problems Together: https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amle.2021.0233 

Ramani et al. (2022). Defining, Measuring, and Rewarding Scholarly Impact: Mind the Level of Analysis: https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amle.2021.0177 

Fergnani & Chermack (2021). The resistance to scientific theory in futures and foresight, and what to do about it: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ffo2.61 

Responsible Research In Business and Management network: https://www.rrbm.network   

Support Alex's videos: https://www.patreon.com/alexfergnani 

Audio by Bensound