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Management Inquiry

Directions for a Troubled Discipline: Strategy Research, Teaching, and Practice−−Introduction to the
Dialog
Paula Jarzabkowski and Richard Whittington
Journal of Management Inquiry 2008 17: 266 originally published online 12 May 2008
DOI: 10.1177/1056492608318148

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Editor’s Special Journal Of Management Inquiry
Volume 17 Number 4
December 2008 266-268
© 2008 Sage Publications
10.1177/1056492608318148
Directions for a Troubled Discipline http://jmi.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com

Strategy Research, Teaching, and

Practice—Introduction to the Dialog

Paula Jarzabkowski
Aston Business School, University of Aston
Richard Whittington
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

This Dialog responds to a growing debate about the relevance of business schools generally and the value of strategy theory
and research for strategic management practice. The authors propose that academic theory and management practice can be
better connected through management education. The academy researches practice, derives theory, and returns it to prac-
tice through the development of teaching materials and the teaching of current and future practitioners. The three articles in
this Dialog examine how different approaches to strategy research inform strategy teaching and its application to practice.
Joseph Bower explains the rise of business policy and the process research approach that informed that teaching tradition
at Harvard Business School. Robert Grant responds by emphasizing the economic theory underpinnings of strategic man-
agement research and its impact on teaching. Paula Jarzabkowski and Richard Whittington conclude by proposing a strategy-
as-practice perspective and suggesting ways to better incorporate strategy-as-practice research into strategy teaching.

T his Dialog responds to a growing debate within the

academy about the relevance of business schools
generally and, within that, the value of strategy theory
and research for strategic management practice. As we
detail below, demand for business school education is
changing, and academic strategy seems to have been
wrong-footed by both the rise and the fall of the recent
dot.com era. This is the challenging background that
motivates our invitations to two leading scholars in the
strategy field: Joseph Bower, who combines a position as
a founding scholar of strategy process research with four
decades of teaching experience at one of the pioneering
institutions of strategy education, Harvard Business
School; and Robert Grant, who has been a leading
scholar on the content of strategy for many years and is
also author of a widely used textbook, Contemporary
Strategy Analysis, now in its sixth edition. We have asked
them to comment on the evolving relationship between
strategy research and practice, with an eye particularly to
the role of business education, a key link between the
two. Bower and Grant have very different views of where
research and education should go, but each sees positive
ways forward for what is currently a troubled discipline
(Hambrick, 2004; Mahoney & McGahan, 2007). We too
see an exciting future for strategy research and conclude
this Dialog with our own view on the possibilities for
synthesis between research, practice, and education.
The perception that strategy theory is poor at keeping
pace with the changing nature of the business environment
is a long-standing one (Farjoun, 2007). Going back more
than a decade, Prahalad and Hamel (1994) attributed a
breakdown in the relevance of strategy theory to the spe-
cific competitive conditions of the 1990s, such as deregu-
lation and advances in information technology. Calling for
a new paradigm for strategy research, they claimed that
practitioners ‘‘are abandoning traditional approaches to
strategy’’ and academics ‘‘are re-examining the relevance
of the concepts and tools of the strategy field’’ (Prahalad &
Hamel, 1994, p. 5). This rhetoric gained momentum in the
burgeoning dot.com era, as leading academics and man-
agement gurus claimed that new models were needed for
the new economy and that strategy as a discipline irrevoca-
bly had changed (e.g., D’Aveni, 1999; Eisenhardt & Sull,
2001; Hax & Wilde, 1999). Strategic management theory
appeared to be stuck in an old paradigm that was irrelevant
to a more competitive and dynamic environment.
However, in the sober light of the “dot.bomb” period
and the disillusion with big corporations after the Enron

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 Jarzabkowski, Whittington / Strategy Research, Teaching, and Practice 267
and Worldcom scandals, it turned out that strategy theory
was again to blame. Whereas once it had been seen as
irrelevant to practice in a changing business environ-
ment, it was now held responsible for the excesses of that
environment. Strategy theory, with its excessive focus on
profit maximization had taught managers to be oppor-
tunistic, personally profit seeking, and morally bereft
(Ghoshal, 2005). Others claimed that the problem was
not the theories themselves that led to bad practice but
that strategy theory and management education did not
constitute a profession, with approved professional tech-
niques, frameworks, and accountability, so that strategy
practitioners and, indeed, strategy teachers, consultants,
and gurus were less able to recognize and challenge bad
practice (e.g., Whittington et al., 2003). At any rate, there
was still a problem that strategy theory was not keeping
pace with the changing business environment, as it failed
to be relevant to the new, more accountable world.
Part of this changing environment is substantial shifts
in the managerial labor market and the status of manage-
ment education (Keep & Westwood, 2003). As Joseph
Bower will comment, the rise of employment opportuni-
ties in fields such as consulting, investment banking, and
more recently, entrepreneurship has substantial implica-
tions for the sorts of students who enter business schools
and the expectations that they bring. Furthermore, the
surge in management education during some 20 years
appears to have eased, or even reversed, during the first
decade of the 21st century, particularly in traditional forms
of business school education (Advanced Institute of
Management, 2006; Thomas, 2006). Many of those who
need business education have either got it already or are
pursuing alternatives to the traditional MBA qualification.
The changing demand for management education has
been accompanied by considerable soul searching and
angst within the business school community, as evi-
denced by numerous articles and special issues question-
ing the business school purpose and its future (e.g.,
Brocklehurst, Sturdy, Winstanley, & Driver 2007;
Mintzberg, 2004; Pfeffer & Fong, 2002; Shareef, 2007).
These authors raise a second kind of concern about the
relevance of business education to practice. Here, the
issue is not so much keeping up with practice as being
more effective in shaping it. The theoretical basis of
business education is reported to be excessively con-
cerned with the normal science paradigm and its associ-
ated academic output, to the exclusion of practice
(Bennis & O’Toole, 2005). Strategic management in par-
ticular has been seduced by the normal science of eco-
nomic theory. This predilection for economics has had
negative implications for practical relevance: “rules of
Downloaded from jmi.sagepub.com at SEIR on November 9, 2014
behaviour prescribed by economic models, however log-
ical, cannot be normative if managers are not capable of
implementing them or if the assumptions on which the
models are built do not apply” (Masten, 1993, p. 127,
as quoted in Ghoshal & Moran, 1996, p. 16). Thus,
whether because it is seen as out-of-date or ineffective in
influencing practice or because it is theoretically too
detached from implementation, strategy now occupies a
precarious position within business schools, institutions
that themselves are now full of self-doubt. Mahoney
and McGahan (2007) reported that students in top busi-
ness schools are increasingly opting for courses such as
entrepreneurship or finance and no longer giving their
strategy courses the top ratings that were routine a
decade or so ago.
These various concerns about the relationship
between strategy theory and strategy practice are rein-
forced by a canonical belief that academic theory and
management practice are separate endeavors, involving
different communities (Dunn, 1980). However, such
beliefs underestimate the interdependencies involved in
the construction and use of strategy knowledge. A good
deal of academic research is itself derived from practice,
albeit frequently abstracted to a level of generic concep-
tualization that is hard to trace to the context in which it
was derived (Jarzabkowski & Wilson, 2006). The inter-
dependency between research and practice can be illus-
trated by the case of corporate culture, a concept that
infused academic work in strategy and organization dur-
ing the 1980s and early 1990s. The stimulus for much
of the academic interest was a book, In Search of
Excellence, produced by two McKinsey & Co. consul-
tants, Peters and Waterman, who cleverly brought
together the experience of their clients out in the market-
place and the insights of friendly academics such as Karl
Weick (Colville, Waterman, & Weick, 1999). Indeed,
sometimes it is even teaching the MBA courses that crys-
tallizes the connections between research and practice:
Michael Porter developed his industry structure
approach through the need to communicate his research
to Harvard MBA strategy students and was then able to
implement his concepts through his own consulting firm,
Monitor (Argyres & McGahan, 2002). Thus, the abstrac-
tions drawn from research can soon find their way back
into practice through concepts and techniques that are
taught in MBA courses, incorporated in both academic
strategy texts and popular management books and still
further promulgated through consulting (Tsoukas &
Knudsen, 2002).
In other words, instead of a separation between acade-
mic theory and management practice, research, practice,
268 Journal Of Management Inquiry
and education can be intimately connected. The academy
researches practice, derives theory, and returns it to prac-
tice through the development of teaching materials and
the teaching of current and future practitioners within
the classroom. Teaching is, therefore, a vehicle through
which the academy can be relevant to practice as long as
it can master the appropriate means of generating “user-
friendly” theory for consumption and the pedagogical
techniques to aid in this consumption.
The current angst about the nature of strategy theory
and the relevance of strategic management education to
practice motivates this Dialog. Our two protagonists are
both leaders in strategic management research and educa-
tion and have strong views. Each sees different ways
forward for strategic management—with Joseph Bower
advocating a return to the practice-centered strategy
teaching originating in the Harvard general management
tradition and Robert Grant arguing for a theory-based
focus on analytical tools. We shall let each make their
case before we conclude this Dialog with our own pro-
posals for bridging the theory–practice divide.
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