ABSTRACT
Questions needed to be answered as to why a particular construction of the original text (and by extension scholarship generally) was dominant in the literature. Answers needed to be provided for the narrowing of Burns and Stalker’s ideas to formal organisation systems and structures in both textbooks and research papers. Why did this emerge with widespread agreement among mainstream scholars? Was there, as Kuhn (1970) had suggested for scientific paradigms, this narrowing in order to be able to carry out research? Was it to suit prevailing orthodoxies in the academy? Did other disciplines influence interpretations and research applications? And can it be explained, as would critical theorists, through more substantive social and political considerations? Explanations for the dominance of this type of scholarship in management studies range across different levels of constituency and different levels of analysis. Factors at micro, meso and macro levels are discussed, involving individual actors, academic artefacts, university departments and dominant political ideologies.
