Management Research After Modernism (original) (raw)
2001, British Journal of Management
's report 'Bridging the Relevance Gap' offers some topical insight into a long-running issue where there are no easy answers. For most of the twentieth century, social scientists have debated 'knowledge for what purpose' (Lynd, 1939). As these debates have moved in and out of fashion so they have been mirrored by changing social and economic contexts, altering expectations of science and a greater variety of conduct of science in different natural and social science disciplines (Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons, 2001). One of the lessons from the natural history of development of the social sciences is that there can be no one best way of framing, producing, disseminating and using knowledge. The changing contexts and content of knowledge in the social sciences and management will pierce any bubble of conventionality which claimed universal appeal and applicability. In this sense, Gibbons et al.'s (1994) Mode 2 form of knowledge production is no more the answer to contemporary doubts about the relevance of management and social science research than any of its predecessors. In the sequel to The New Production of Knowledge (Gibbons et al., 1994), Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons seek to reframe and widen their message in order to condition and contextualize it. In locating the development of Mode 2 knowledge production in a co-evolutionary process with the development of a Mode 2 society, Nowotny et al. encourage a much more theoretical treatment of science in an age of uncertainty. In so doing they also seek to counter two criticisms of their earlier influential book. They have clearly been stung by the view that The New Production of Knowledge has become an apologia for applied science. They also wanted to shift the ground of the debate in this new book to counter the view that The New Production of Knowledge could be assessed purely in empirical terms. The danger and the promise in the Mode 1-Mode 2 knowledge production debate lies in the dichotomous form of the argument. There is a long tradition in the social sciences and management of using bi-polar modes of thinking. These bi-polar concepts are variously portrayed and used as dichotomies, paradoxes, contradictions and dualities. Dichotomies are remembered. They are powerful simplifiers and attention directors as the influence of Burns and Stalker's (1961) mechanistic and organic systems and Lawrence and Lorsch's
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