Session 2 Group E

The group began with the question of relevance of our theories to practitioners. It was agreed among many that this gap is increasing. This opening question led to discussions of a few related issues, centered around the problem of getting messages or ideas across disciplines. For example, innovations mostly happen in engineering and science, but teaching of innovation typically occurs in business programs. So how do we teach innovation to engineers and scientists? How is management to be perceived by real innovators and what’s the implication of such perception to innovation process?

Then the group moved on to questions and problems concerning the existence of management as a discipline. Some have to do with keeping up with the fast changing world. For instance, theory development becomes increasingly lagging behind as the world is changing fast. Also, explaining complex things is also harder now as people become used to shallower, fast-food type of learning style (tweeting, 20mins talk, etc.).

Other questions concern the discipline itself. Are we a cumulative discipline, or do we simply reinvent and duplicate things? The importance of synthesize things and also different ways to publish articles were brought up and discussed. In the end, the promotion system was also considered. How do we validly measure or define impact of a scholar? What is really more important?