Andrew M. Pettigrew, professor of strategy and organisation at the University of Oxford¡¯s Sa?d Business School, was discussing ¡°scholarship with impact¡± as part of the third annual Business Week at Birkbeck, University of London, held from 25 to 28 June.

¡°As many as 50 per cent of papers are never read by anyone other than their authors, referees and journal editors,¡± he pointed out, and 90 per cent are never cited.

¡°If the duty of the intellectual in society is to make a difference,¡± as Sir Thomas More argued shortly before his execution in 1535, Professor Pettigrew claimed that ¡°the management research community has a long way to go to realise its potential¡±.

The model of ¡°modernist science¡±, he went on, was based on a search for universal laws and rigorous testing leading to firm conclusions ¨C and ¡°only then could scientists hand over to practice the fruits of their labours¡±.

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What was now needed was an approach that combined ¡°searching for general truths¡± with ¡°a new concern for action, dynamics, context and complexity¡±.

¡°Impact¡± in any useful sense, continued Professor Pettigrew, could only be determined ¡°through an analysis of the context, content and process of knowledge production¡±.

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It was up to today¡¯s academics to shift their focus from ¡°intermediate goals¡± such as published output to the ¡°final goods¡± of both academic and real-world impact ¨C and to embrace ¡°the complementary benefits of ¡®what-is¡¯ and ¡®how-to¡¯ knowledge¡±.

Only such a ¡°contextualist and dynamic view of knowing¡±, he concluded, could create the conditions ¡°to meet the double hurdle¡±.

matthew.reisz@tsleducation.com