ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the health and practice of management research and offers suggestions for improvement. Management research is important because improving management is seen as the best means of attaining, sustaining, and enhancing our civilization. Management research addresses a moving target with the unusual feature that in most cases, a management solution begets more problems than it solves. In philosophical terms, the ontological question of the nature of management is a key to understanding the epistemological issues related to judging the truth of empirical findings. In processual views, management is an ongoing process of adaptation and change. Management is not a fixed role but a complex and dynamic. The chapter provides root causes of the gap between what management research could contribute and its actual contributions to both the organization sciences and society. It shows that management is best seen as a class of technologies.