Organizational

Psychology
Special forum on good theory Review

Organizational Psychology Review

3(2) 187–194
Organizational sciences’ ª The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/2041386613479963

interesting!’’: Consequences opr.sagepub.com

and an alternative

Madan M. Pillutla
London Business School, UK

Stefan Thau
London Business School, UK

Abstract
We suggest that the organizational science’s increasing preoccupation with ‘‘interesting’’ theories
and ‘‘counterintuitive’’ facts can lead to nonreplicable findings, fragmented theory, and irrelevance.
The focus on the interesting and novel reveals a profound misunderstanding of the scientific
enterprise. Organizational scholarship will be better off if it reverts to according primacy to the
problem being solved over novel theory development.

Keywords
methodology, philosophy of science, research problems

Paper received 30 January 2013; revised version accepted 30 January 2013.

In an essay published in the Organizational
Psychology Review, Ferris, Hochwarter, and
Buckley (2012) make the observation that our
discipline’s emphasis on ‘‘revelatory contribu-
tions’’ to theory has led to a fragmented and
disorganized body of research. They argue that
the organizational science is full of theoretical
models that do not build on one another. We
agree. The state of our field and its obsession with
novel theoretical contributions is antithetical to
the goals of the scientific method (cf. Russell,
1931). As an ideal, the scientific method consists
of a set of propositions arranged in a hierarchy,
with the lower level propositions being logical
deductions from higher level ones, and the higher
level propositions being logical inductions from

Corresponding author:
Madan M. Pillutla, Organizational Behavior Subject Area, London Business School, Sussex Place, London NW1 4SA, UK.
Email: mpillutla@london.edu

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188
the lower level ones. The hierarchy also requires
that the propositions are commensurable. As
Ferris et al. (2012) eloquently summarize, the
organizational sciences are far from this ideal and
the excessive desire for theoretical novelty is
largely to blame.
We offer a complementary view in this essay
by suggesting that the field’s focus on the
‘‘interesting’’ (Davis, 1971) both in reporting
on facts and in theories has also contributed to
the fragmented state of the field. The demand
that both theory and results should satisfy criteria
of what is interesting, we argue, is antithetical to
the scientific method and needs revisiting if we
want to make progress. In particular, we contend
that the focus on the ‘‘interesting’’ has mutated
into a focus on finding counterintuitive ‘‘facts’’
and theories. This, in turn, creates two incentives
to the scholarly community that are undesired
from the standpoint of a positivistic model of
science (Popper, 1935): (a) an incentive to
backward-engineer theories to explain counter-
intuitive facts. The problem with this approach
is that the resulting theories will have little
explanatory reach and (b) an incentive to find
facts that fit a counterintuitive theory. The prob-
lem with this approach is that the resulting facts
will have little chance of replication.
We argue that the focus on the interesting is
actually a misunderstanding of the scientific
process. We also suggest that the adoption of
Davis’s article as some kind of ‘‘how-to’’ conduct
research is restricted to the organizational
sciences. We believe that theories do not need to
be interesting, new, or full of counterintuitive
assumptions. Research problems, however,
should be interesting and their definition should
precede theory construction. We propose heur-
istics for how to define research problems.
The quest to be interesting
Davis’s (1971) article, ‘‘That’s Interesting:
Towards a Phenomenology of Sociology and a
Sociology of Phenomenology,’’ has been hailed
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Organizational Psychology Review 3(2)
as a classic and served as a basis for invigor-
ating much organizational sciences enquiry.
Arguing against what he considered to be
mediocre and uninspired research in the social
sciences, he exhorted scholars to understand
what makes for interesting theories. Davis
(1971, p. 328) claimed that,
Non-interesting social theories are often
asserted on purpose by those who think that
the business of social scientists is merely to
assert any theory that can be derived and
confirmed according to the text-book rules
of theory construction and verification.
He went on to claim, (Davis, 1971, p. 328), that
‘‘the mediocre in the social sciences and
(probably the natural sciences too) can be
defined as those who take the textbook rules of
scientific procedures too literally and too
exclusively.’’ Davis was right in noting that a
social scientist could have impact if they could
take on and challenge the assumptions of their
audience. But the seemingly casual dismissal of
the scientific method as the province of the
mediocre should provide a cautionary note
against the fulsome acceptance of his ideas.
Rather than being cautious consumers, we
think Davis’s exhortations have been taken on a
little too enthusiastically by organizational sci-
entists in general and editors and reviewers of
organizational journals in particular. It is note-
worthy that the organizational sciences seem to
be particularly swayed by his prescriptions.
Specifically, an analysis of citation patterns of
his article (Table 1) reveals that 71% of all
citations the article picked up (260 cites in total)
can be attributed to the organizational sciences.
A hefty 83% of editorials citing the article have
been published in organizational journals. This
analysis suggests that the Davis article appears to
have had a disproportionate impact on the
organizational sciences. And the impact appears
to be a function of the weight placed on the
criteria espoused in the article by the editors of
our journals. While some of these editorials (i.e.,
Pillutla and Thau
Table 1. Pattern of citations for the Davis article in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) as on the 22nd of
January 2013.
Discipline
Management
Business
Sociology
Psychology-applied
Information science-library science
Psychology-multidisciplinary
Social science-interdisciplinary
Computer science-information systems
Psychology social
Education-education research
Eden & Rynes, 2003; Gill & Bhattacherjee,
2009; Markoczy & Deeds, 2009; Pearce, 2007;
Schwarz & Huber, 2008) use the article to make
the point about the kind of theories that make an
impact, the others seem to understand it as a
guide to construct theory or develop research
problems. These editorials (e.g., Ahlstrom, 2011;
Colquitt & George, 2011; Daft & Lewin, 1990;
Reay & Whetten, 2011; Short, 2009) seem to
communicate that articles need to be interesting
in the Davis sense to warrant publication.
We agree that research problems must be
interesting and attract the curiosity of the reader.
But the interestingness comes about from
describing a problematic state that demands
explanation—for example, why is it that some
studies find that network centrality is positively
correlated with leadership success and others
find that it is negatively related to leadership
success? Mutually contradicting facts are an
example of interesting problems that demand
explanation as are facts that contradict theories.
Interesting theories are not, by themselves,
worthy of investigation unless they are put to the
service of explaining research problems.
We think that Davis’s (1971) recognition of
the distinction between interesting and truth—
he says (p. 343), ‘‘I believe it is as important to
learn why a theory is found interesting in some
audience as it is to ascertain the truth of its
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189
Number of citations Citations classified as editorial
133 24
95 18
22
19 4
9 2
9
9 1
8 2
8 1
7
content or the logic of its form.’’—suggests the
need to put his exhortation to be interesting in
perspective. We are scientists first and sales-
men second. If the order gets inverted, as we
argue has become the case when ‘‘interesting’’
becomes the goal, we run the risk of perverting
the scientific enterprise.
Our goal is not to argue for uninteresting
work. We want to examine some of the conse-
quences of the prevalent trend of elevating the
interesting over the truth (and robust) and to
sketch a route leading to a more balanced
organizational science that is both interesting
and robust. The time for reform is ripe because
the organizational sciences have an opportunity
to influence policy and practice in ways that we
could not do in the past (Hambrick, 1994).
Books based on scholarship in the organiza-
tional and other social sciences are becoming
bestsellers; a perusal of the New York Times
best-seller list for business books has Kahne-
man’s (2011) Thinking Fast and Slow at Num-
ber 3 and Chip and Dan Heath’s (2010) book
Switch at Number 13. However, this influence
is predicated on a robust body of knowledge
and our view is that the focus on the interesting
is preventing us from developing a replicable
knowledge that can inform practice.
The persistent emphasis on the interesting is
troublesome because research designed to
190
uncover counterintuitive results is sure to find
some (Nickerson, 1998). Without efforts to also
examine the replicability of these results and
their connections to theory, a distorted view of
reality emerges that yields an absurd view of the
world rather than usable guidance from thought
and practice. In fact, if the social world was
primarily counterintuitive, it would be an unin-
habitable place in which people would have
difficulty predicting what comes next. Surely,
this is not the case—people are not in a
permanent state of being puzzled by their
counterintuitive surroundings.
The scientific method
Bertrand Russell’s (1931) summary of the
scientific ideal is familiar to most readers of this
journal.1 But it bears repeating. Science, he says,
starts from an observation of the particular, but is
concerned essentially with the general. Empiri-
cal observation, no matter how interesting, is
significant only to the extent that it helps to
establish or refute some general law. Thus, the
significance of any observed fact is relative to
knowledge, and the validity of any law depends
on the strength of the empirical evidence.
According to Russell (1931), the ultimate
ideal of science is to have a set of propositions
arranged in a hierarchy, with the lowest level of
the hierarchy being concerned with particular
facts, and the highest with some general law.
The hierarchy is connected in upwards by
induction and downwards by deduction. Spe-
cifically, if facts, A, B, C, D, etc suggest, via
induction, a certain general law, then they are all
seen as specific instances of the general law if
the law was true. Similarly, another set of facts
suggests, via induction, another general law, and
so on. All these general laws suggest, by
induction, a law of a higher order of generality.
Now these laws are all instances of the more
general law. There will be many such stages in
passing from the particular facts observed to the
most general law as yet ascertained. From this
general law we proceed in turn deductively, until
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Organizational Psychology Review 3(2)
we arrive at the particular facts from which our
previous induction had started.
How many of the empirical observations and
theoretical propositions in the organizational
sciences attempt to build towards this ideal?
Not many. And a lot fewer with the current
focus on novelty and interestingness. As Ferris
et al., (2012) noted, the quest for revelatory
theoretical contributions has led to fragmenta-
tion. Theories that are fundamentally different
from one another cannot logically exist in the
same hierarchy. How would you judge the
significance of a theory if it is not being used
(along with other theories) to formulate a more
general theory? How would you also judge the
validity of a theory if journals and editors ask
for new theory in every paper rather than mul-
tiple tests of a theory?
Similarly, the quest for novelty and inter-
estingness of facts has infused them with sig-
nificance without any regard to the knowledge
that they generate. Counterintuitive empirical
findings are valued because they are counter-
intuitive rather than because they advance or
validate a theoretical perspective. Also, they
cannot be verified because our journals do not
publish independent replications. And finally,
their significance cannot be established as the
significance of the theoretical perspective they
advance can also not be verified as we already
noted.
We would like to note that not all counter-
intuitive facts are without basis or usefulness in
the social sciences. Quite the contrary! Some of
the best-known theories in the organizational
sciences and psychology have resulted from
examining counterintuitive facts. We examine
two of them in the next section and then explain
how current views towards counterintuitive
facts differ from the earlier research and why
this approach is leading us to a dead end.
The role of counterintuitive facts
Research in the organizational sciences has
resulted in a few stylized facts that inform
Pillutla and Thau
further research and practices. The idea that
individuals escalate commitment to a failing
course of action is one of the better known such
facts. Barry Staw’s (1976) classic paper on this
idea provides an outstanding example of how an
examination of the counterintuitive resulted in
the formulation of a general model of investment
behavior. Based on his observation that public
failures in a policy (e.g., the U.S. involvement in
Vietnam) appear to create pressure on the deci-
sion maker to justify their original decision,
Staw hypothesized and designed a study to
investigate the proposition that failures create a
larger impetus for further investment than suc-
cess. The results and the paper have had a lasting
impact on the way we view investment decisions
by managers and by organizations. They have
also spawned an entire field of enquiry as evi-
denced by the many academic studies across
different domains that followed from and built
on this paper. What accounts for this success?
First, the phenomenon was an interesting one
and worthy of understanding in its own right.
Understanding when people are likely to invest
(time, money, and effort) in situations—when
people increase investment in a decision despite
new evidence suggesting that the current cost of
continuing the decision outweighs the expected
benefit—is of great practical importance. Sec-
ond, many empirical studies that followed the
Staw study replicated the main findings and
extended them; journals and editors clearly
provided more leeway for replication than seems
to be the case now. And third, the theoretical
explanation for this phenomenon was a special
case of the well-established cognitive dissonance
model.
This brings us to cognitive dissonance the-
ory which is responsible for explaining some of
the most interesting findings in social
psychology. According to most accounts, the
theory has its origins in Festinger’s attempts to
explain the slightly bizarre set of circumstances
surrounding a doomsday cult members’ dee-
pening (rather than diminishing) faith following
the failure of a cult’s prophecy that a UFO
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191
landing was imminent. In their book, When
Prophecy Fails, Festinger, Riecken, and
Schachter (1956) document how the believers
met at a predetermined place and time, believ-
ing they alone would survive the earth’s
destruction. When the appointed time came and
passed without incident, rather than losing faith
in the prophecy, most chose to believe that the
aliens had given earth a second chance. Group
members now thought that the group was
empowered to spread the word that earth-
spoiling must stop. Festinger and his colleagues
concluded that when faced with acute cognitive
dissonance (Had they been gullible simpletons?
Had they given up their worldly ties and posses-
sions in vain?), most individuals simply
changed the meaning of the current set of cir-
cumstances and viewed the world failing to end
as a sign to reaffirm their faith.
Cognitive dissonance theory, which explains
this and other similar counterintuitive facts, has
been a very successful one in social psychology.
Why is this theory so successful? First, despite
being based on counterintuitive findings, the
theory itself is very intuitive as it posits that
individuals seek consonance between their
expectations and reality and that when dis-
sonance occurs, they do one of three things, (a)
lower the importance of one of the discordant
factors, (b) add consonant elements, or (c)
change one of the dissonant factors. Second, the
theory explains several otherwise puzzling and
seemingly irrational behaviors. And, finally, the
theory could explain a broad range of behaviors
ranging from reactions to unfair treatment at
work (cf. Adams, 1965) to escalation of com-
mitment to failing courses of action.
The cognitive dissonance example suggests
that the examination of counterintuitive cases
highlights factors that exist beyond the normal
range. They therefore help magnify and make
clear the facts that account for particular
outcomes. Pondy (1979) provides a similar
argument for the study of extreme cases.
The two examples provided before point to
two different ways in which an examination of
192
the counterintuitive can lead to robust scientific
knowledge. In the case of cognitive dissonance,
counterintuitive observations resulted in testing
a robust theory that could explain many other
important facts. In the case of escalation of
commitment, an examination of the counter-
intuitive provided a robust understanding of the
phenomenon which was interesting in its own
right. However, in both cases, robust knowl-
edge resulted from replication and refine-
ment—an option that is increasingly not
available in journals focusing on novelty and
interestingness.
Consequences of the focus on the
interesting
As we have argued, one of the consequences
of our current focus on the counterintuitive
along with a reluctance to publish replications
is the increased fragmentation of our discipline.
Another consequence is unreliable data.
Researchers could fake and fabricate data as
there is a bias towards novelty and there is no
check that comes with a need to replicate. It is
not just faked data that is a problem. A disci-
pline that does not encourage replication and
instead values the novel and the interesting
invites ambitious academics to publish inter-
esting one-off findings without any concern
about scrutiny (cf. Rosenthal, 1979, on the bias
towards publishing significant results).
A final consequence is that we are at risk of
developing an absurd ‘‘science’’ of the coun-
terintuitive. Most of the behavior in the world is
intuitive and is still deserving of explanation
and testing. By focusing on the counter-
intuitive, we fail to pay attention to a majority
of behavior. If the counterintuitive behavior
was important (as in the case of escalation of
commitment) or used to test the robustness of a
theory (as with cognitive dissonance), then we
are all for examining it. However, the current
obsession with searching for counterintuitive
findings does not appear to serve either of these
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Organizational Psychology Review 3(2)
ends. It results in an organizational science that
is fragmented. Worse, it makes it irrelevant.
As we have argued throughout this essay, the
current trend towards ‘‘interesting’’ theories
and counterintuitive facts does not allow for
progress or for relevance. So what does? We
think that Popper’s (1935) view that problem-
solving is at the heart of the scientific enterprise
provides the best way forward.
Towards a problem-centred
organizational science
For a relevant organizational science that is also
scientifically rigorous, the problem should
come first, then the theory. The theory itself
may be dull or old, but as long as the problem is
one that is unsolved and of interest, it is
demanding theory that explains it. The problem
itself may come in one of three forms:2
Two observed facts contradict each other
(e.g., people like high performers but peo-
ple also dislike high performers). A theory
which explains both facts, even if very
old, is a valuable one and a paper that
examines it is a contribution.
A well-established theory is contradicted by
a fact (e.g., the theory that people dislike
high performers because they threaten
their self-esteem is contradicted by the
fact that people with high self-esteem also
dislike high performers). The fact identi-
fied here is a significant one in Russell’s
(1931) terms because it contributes to
knowledge (in this case, providing some
evidence that the theory is bounded or
even wrong).
Two theories that explain the same fact con-
tradict each other in their assumptions.
(Theory A and Theory B both explain why
people dislike high performers but Theory
A assumes it is because high performance
threatens people’s self-esteem and Theory
B assumes it is because people are
envious.) This is a colloquial restatement
Pillutla and Thau
of the proposition that the examination of
alternative explanations with a view
towards provisionally accepting the valid-
ity of one over the other is good science.
The kinds of problems we describe before are
clearly worth studying. They are likely to be
important and generative as was the case with
the escalation research that we described in an
earlier section. Research that puts the problem
first is scientific. Such research is likely to be
interesting and scholars who examine problems
are likely to have an impact.
Notes
1. Other respected philosophers of science, Karl
Popper is the most notable, have made similar
observations.
2. We thank Wout Ultee and Rafael Wittek for the
view that the best research problems are
contradictions.
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Author biographies
Madan M. Pillutla is a Professor of Organiza-
tional Behavior at London Business School. He
received his PhD from the University of British
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Organizational Psychology Review 3(2)
Columbia. His research focuses on norm viola-
tions, reciprocity, trust, and self-regulation.
Stefan Thau is an Associate Professor of Orga-
nizational Behavior at London Business
School. He received his PhD from the Univer-
sity of Groningen. His research focuses on
norm violations, reciprocity, trust, and
self-regulation.