Promoting Scholarship that Matters: The Uselessness of Useful Research and the Usefulness of Useless Research

Learmonth, M.; Lockett, A.; Dowd, K.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00754.x

Promoting Scholarship that Matters: The Uselessness of Useful Research and the Usefulness of Useless Research

Learmonth, M.; Lockett, A.; Dowd, K.

Authors

M. Learmonth

A. Lockett

Professor Kevin Dowd kevin.dowd@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

Our ambition in this essay is to challenge received wisdoms about the importance of ‘useful’ management scholarship. Suggesting that usefulness and uselessness are contingent on issues of temporality and power, we advocate caution in assigning terms such as useful and relevant – they are inherently problematic, we argue, and should be viewed more as ideology than as empirical statements. We conclude by a call for reflexivity about what it is we are doing when we do ‘useful’ research, along with a greater concern for the values for which business schools stand.

Citation

Learmonth, M., Lockett, A., & Dowd, K. (2012). Promoting Scholarship that Matters: The Uselessness of Useful Research and the Usefulness of Useless Research. British Journal of Management, 23(1), 35-44. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00754.x

Journal Article Type	Article
Online Publication Date	Aug 25, 2011
Publication Date	Mar 1, 2012
Deposit Date	May 8, 2013
Publicly Available Date	Mar 1, 2014
Journal	British Journal of Management
Print ISSN	1045-3172
Electronic ISSN	1467-8551
Publisher	Wiley
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	23
Issue	1
Pages	35-44
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00754.x
Keywords	Business schools, Contingent, Power, Reflexivity, Relevance, Temporality, Usefulness.
Public URL	https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1485742