The Manifold Impacts of Management Research

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Management scholarship's apparent lack of impact is a misconception based on the presumption that impact involves a direct and visible influence of papers or research projects on management practice. Theory-building impacts management practice in diverse, sometimes indirect and unnoticed, manifold ways. Supported by intermediaries such as management education, the media, and consulting, impacts emerge through interest-driven knowledge production that contributes to the wider uptake and reproduction of management theory's main ideas and assumptions. We draw on Jürgen Habermas's theory of knowledge and human interests, aiming to expand how impact from scholarship can be understood, and what forms it might take as part of the kinds of knowledge-constitutive interests that are pursued through theory-building. We elaborate these different forms, building a pluralist framework of what we call ‘programmatic’ and ‘hybrid’ types of impact. We advance the argument that diverse knowledge-constitutive interests pursued through theory-building contribute to our field's impact on management practice in distinct, yet complementary ways.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Management Studies
ISSN0022-2380
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 14.05.2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 The Author(s). Journal of Management Studies published by Society for the Advancement of Management Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

    Research areas

  • impact, knowledge-constitutive interests, research programs, theory-building
  • Management studies

DOI