ABSTRACT
Britain’s national debt currently stands at a record level, and at a time when the higher education sector thought it would be continuing to expand it suddenly is faced with signifi cant challenges in the light of impeding reductions in its budget. Management academics have long known that change rarely takes place in ordered ways; instead it is pain and impending crisis that force organizations to act. The potential loss of funding to universities, research councils and other bodies could herald a crisis, but it might also offer an unlikely opportunity to change the way we think about management research.
