00:00:05 Introduction to the topic of the interview.
00:00:37 Dennis Tourish background information.
00:01:08 Dennis’s concerns about the study of management.
00:02:51 Joannes perspective on the science behind management studies.
00:06:38 Discussion of p-hacking in academia and its potential consequences.
00:08:00 Academics rewarded for publishing, not truth-seeking.
00:09:30 Flawed research in authentic leadership theory.
00:10:25 Supply chain directors and counter-intuitive aspects of leadership.
00:12:01 Negative impacts of strong personalities in management.
00:14:19 Improving academic research: publishing negative results and reducing emphasis on theory.
00:16:00 Emphasizing the importance of open-ended inquiry in academia.
00:17:30 The value of negative knowledge and reviewer accountability in academic publishing.
00:20:57 The challenges faced by modern managers and the importance of effective communication.
00:22:19 The benefits of focusing on basic elements and century-old management techniques.
00:23:00 Encouraging collective decision-making and reducing reliance on a single genius.
00:24:00 Importance of creating a safe, fearless organization for open discussion.
00:24:33 Analogy with the British Army and fostering an environment for speaking up.
00:25:25 The role of tolerance and political opinions in businesses.
00:27:23 Future of management studies and regaining its reputation.
00:27:54 Encouraging dissenting opinions for a healthier organizational environment.
Summary
In an interview, Kieran Chandler, Joannes Vermorel, and Dennis Tourish discuss the credibility and relevance of management studies. They express concerns about harmful management practices, intrusion into employees’ personal lives, and the impact of statistical manipulation on research credibility. The guests emphasize the importance of dissent in organizations and suggest focusing on basic management practices and effective communication. They also discuss the challenges of creating a happy, productive environment for employees and the dangers of CEOs judging employees’ political opinions. Despite the issues in management studies, Tourish remains optimistic about its future as more academics become involved in addressing these concerns.
Extended Summary
In this interview, Kieran Chandler discusses the credibility of management studies with Joannes Vermorel, founder of Lokad, and Dennis Tourish, Professor of Leadership and Organization Studies at the University of Sussex Business School. Tourish recently published a book called “Management Studies in Crisis: Fraud, Deception, and Meaningless Research,” highlighting his concerns about the irrelevance of academic management studies for both practicing managers and society.
Vermorel, while not an expert in management studies, shares his skepticism about certain management practices, such as having a Chief Happiness Officer in small companies. He believes that micromanaging employee happiness could be harmful and counterproductive. Tourish agrees, emphasizing that instead of appointing a Chief Happiness Officer, companies should focus on avoiding actions that make employees unhappy.
Tourish also mentions the trend of “spirituality leadership,” where leaders are encouraged to present life lessons to employees, even about spirituality. Both guests agree that such practices could be seen as invasive and that employees should have the freedom to define their values and attitudes towards work themselves.
Regarding the scientific basis of management studies, Vermorel discusses the concept of “p-hacking,” a statistical manipulation technique. In soft sciences, p-hacking is relatively easy to execute by testing a large number of hypotheses to find significant results, even if they are purely random. This leads to the publication of novel but potentially inaccurate findings. Vermorel warns that such practices can undermine the credibility of research in management and other fields.
The interview raises concerns about the reliability and relevance of management studies, touching upon potentially harmful practices, the intrusion of management into employees’ personal lives, and the impact of p-hacking on research credibility.
They discuss the misuse of statistics in academic research, particularly within management studies, and the negative impact it has on businesses.
Vermorel and Tourish agree that academics are often more focused on publishing articles than finding the truth. They argue that the overemphasis on producing statistically significant results can lead to spurious correlations and meaningless research. Tourish cites the example of authentic leadership theory, which he believes is flawed due to the reliance on survey questions and erroneous assumptions.
Vermorel shares his observation that successful supply chain directors and leaders tend to have more modest and discreet personalities, contrary to the popular image of charismatic leaders. He suggests that having a strong personality could actually stifle dissent within an organization, which is essential for embracing innovation and navigating through counter-intuitive situations.
Both guests emphasize the importance of dissent within organizations and criticize the current practices within academic journals. They propose several measures to improve management research:
1 Encourage the publication of negative results or findings that do not show statistical significance. 2 Promote multiple modes of inquiry and methodologies. 3 Reduce the emphasis on developing theory, which can lead to convoluted and pretentious writing.
Vermorel and Tourish highlight the need for changes within academia and management research to produce more meaningful and impactful findings for businesses.
The conversation revolves around the limitations of management studies, the importance of negative knowledge, and the implications of academic publishing practices.
Tourish raises concerns about how certain management practices are influenced by long-dead philosophers, suggesting that more focus should be placed on the quality of ideas rather than the sources. He also addresses the issue of overemphasis on publications in academia, which discourages researchers from tackling big, complex questions without definitive answers.
Vermorel highlights the importance of negative knowledge in supply chain management, pointing out that most initiatives in the field do not deliver the expected return on investment. He suggests that academic reviews should be published with the names of reviewers to hold them accountable for their decisions.
The discussion also touches on the inefficiencies in the academic journal review process, with Tourish advocating for a more streamlined approach to prevent papers from becoming overly complex and bloated. Both guests agree that focusing on simple, effective communication is crucial for managers in today’s rapidly changing business environment.
Regarding the role of modern managers, Vermorel emphasizes the importance of trust and feedback, while Tourish acknowledges the challenges of creating a happy, productive environment for employees. Both guests suggest that focusing on basic, time-tested management practices and effective communication techniques can lead to better outcomes for organizations.
Tourish emphasizes that the ideal manager should Excel in various aspects such as inspiring people, strategic insights, and keeping employees happy. He believes that relying on the wisdom of a genius at the top can be detrimental to an organization. To improve decision-making, top management meetings should involve questioning and critiquing decisions. Tourish suggests that organizations should create a safe environment where differing opinions are welcomed, as failure to encourage participation often leads to organizational failure.
He cites an example from the British Army, where a general discovered that during training exercises, fatal incidents occurred because people failed to speak up when they noticed something going wrong. The general’s task was to create an environment where people could speak up without fear of retribution. Tourish sees a parallel between this and the business world, where those who point out problems are often punished rather than rewarded.
Vermorel expresses hope that organizations will change, but he is not optimistic based on what he sees on social media. He is concerned about large companies taking strong positions on political issues, as he believes CEOs should not judge the political opinions of their employees. Vermorel highlights the importance of tolerance and the danger of blaming companies for the opinions of their employees, which can lead to witch hunts and a slippery slope.
Tourish mentions that management studies have a long way to go, as the field is often focused on fads and buzzwords with little productive effect. He emphasizes the importance of dissent and believes that unanimous agreement only exists in graveyards. In the real world, dissenting opinions should be brought into the open and used productively. Tourish sees a growing dissatisfaction with the status quo among academics and the increasing presence of critical opinions in academic journals. He is optimistic about the future of management studies as more people become involved in addressing these important issues.
Full Transcript
Kieran Chandler: Today on lokad TV, we’re delighted to be joined by Dennis Tourish, who’s going to discuss with us how much research into management can be trusted and what we can learn from his book entitled “Management Studies in Crisis.” Dennis, thanks very much for joining us today, and as always, we’d like to start off by learning a little bit about our guests. Perhaps you could just tell us a little bit about yourself.
Dennis Tourish: Well, thank you, Kieran. I am currently a Professor of Leadership and Organization Studies at the University of Sussex Business School. I also edit an academic journal called “Leadership.” And as you say, I recently published a book which is actually called “Management Studies in Crisis: Fraud, Deception, and Meaningless Research.” This reflects the fact that I’ve grown increasingly concerned over the past few years about what I see as fundamental problems in the academic study of management and its irrelevance, not just for practicing managers but for society at large.
Kieran Chandler: Okay, brilliant. And that’s what we’re kind of discussing today. Our topic is called “The Triumph of Nonsense in Management Studies.” Joannes, what’s the idea from your perspective?
Joannes Vermorel: So, I would not claim any deep expertise in management studies. I just happen to be the CEO of a company with 50-something employees. But my very anecdotal and casual observation is that most of the things that are pushed my way, usually, if I were to take the ideas based on studies that are pushed my way, I think they would be downright harmful to most of my employees. For example, during the last couple of years, there’s been the idea that even small, relatively small companies should have a Chief Happiness Officer. I’m very deeply skeptical that if I start to micromanage the happiness of my own employees, they will be happier. I’m not saying that there might not be science behind it, but I’m very skeptical, and my instinct tells me that, as an employer, it’s really none of my business. And actually, I’m pretty sure that if I start to meddle with the happiness of my own employees, it will pretty much have the exact opposite effect. So, again, I have no science behind this, it’s just a gut feeling, but when studies like this are pushed my way, I’m just deeply skeptical.
Kieran Chandler: Okay, and Dennis, let’s talk a little bit about the book then, “Management Studies in Crisis.” It sounds dramatic. You mentioned you noticed things that were happening in the industry that led you to be concerned. So why is it that you decided to write this book on this topic?
Dennis Tourish: Well, it reflects some of the concerns that Joannes has just mentioned as well. If you study some of the literature, it would appear that managers and leaders, and the further up the chain you are, the more this is the case, are encouraged to be responsible for absolutely everything in their employees’ lives. We had a growth a few years ago in something called, for example, “spirituality leadership,” in which leaders were encouraged to actually try and present life lessons to their employees that would
Dennis Tourish: In some way, change their views of spirituality. And some organizations in the United States have taken this quite literally and organized things like prayer breakfasts with the CEO. But I think most people would find attempts to do that kind of thing as an interference in their private lives and feel that it’s their responsibility to define their values for themselves, to feel as spiritual about their work or as unspiritual about their work as they decide to be the case. And in terms of things like happiness at work, if you need to appoint a Chief Happiness Officer, then that implies that work in itself is in some way alienating for people, making them very unhappy. And I think that rather than appointing a Chief Happiness Officer, you should probably just stop doing some of the things that you’re actually in the process of doing that is making people very unhappy.
Kieran Chandler: Yeah, it’s a very good point. I’d like to be fairly positive and think that work is the place you spend five days of the week, so you need to be kind of happy in what you do. And in terms of this kind of research that goes on into management studies, Joannes, how much actual science is there behind it, or like we said in the introduction, is it more crossing towards a bit of a dark art?
Joannes Vermorel: What I have casually observed is that there has been extensive fraud in some areas of academia with p-hacking, which has been rampant especially in soft sciences. My background is in statistics, and p-hacking is fundamentally about making a lot of measurements. If you start measuring many variables and then combine them, you end up with a large number of hypotheses that you can test. If you take 100 variables, you can easily test ten thousand hypotheses. And out of that, if you say to publish a result, I need to have something where I’m confident that there is less than a five percent chance that this resulted due to pure randomness. Well, if you test thousands of hypotheses, no matter which dataset you get, you’re going to find plenty of things to conclude, and that is going to be mostly accidental. The idea of p-hacking is that if you format your studies by actually asking tons of questions, making tons of observations, then you will end up with tons of things that you can observe. And even worse, I believe in the sort of soft sciences, is that fundamentally you’re going to end up with results that are every single time completely novel, mostly because they’re wrong.
Kieran Chandler: So, Johannes, can you talk a bit more about the issue of bias in academic research?
Joannes Vermorel: Yes, certainly. So, what I’ve seen is that statistics have been extensively misused in a lot of fields of academic research. You have cherry-picked hypotheses that are just made up, and what you don’t see behind the paper is that maybe thousands of such hypotheses have been tested ahead of time. In the end, you end up with a dataset that is valid. There was no question that the dataset has been collected without bias. This is not where the bias lies. You have a hypothesis that is valid, no question. And when you check this hypothesis, which happens to be completely novel according to the standard of science, against this dataset, it matches. But what you do not see, and that’s this idea of p-hacking, is that maybe you’ve tested thousands of hypotheses, and most of them were actually complete nonsense. So, that’s again something that I see that has been kind of from my perspective.
Dennis Tourish: I would agree very much with what Johannes has just said there. We’ll have to remember that academics are not rewarded and promoted for finding the truth. They are rewarded and promoted for publishing articles in so-called top management journals, and these journals favor findings that appear to be novel, that have some kind of interesting story to tell, and which can be defined as producing statistically significant results, as Johannes has explained. Statistical tests show that the findings haven’t actually arisen by chance. But the problem in this period of big data is that you can find utterly spurious correlations between almost anything. As an exercise in how this is done, an academic a number of years ago published a finding that showed, for example, a statistically significant relationship between levels of reinforced and inflation in the economy. There is a very amusing website now available called spurious correlations, which shows, for example, a very significant relationship between consumption of margarine and the state of Maine and the levels of divorce within that state as well. So, you can produce all kinds of findings that turn out not necessarily to be true. And there is a bias, in my opinion, in management research, now not just to produce work that produces these findings but to conduct research which can only produce these findings. Otherwise, your results aren’t publishable, and you have wasted your time. I’m thinking about, for example, the recent fad for what is called authentic leadership theory, and much of the empirical research in that, in my opinion, is absolutely flawed, consisting of giving people survey questions to answer, and then they find a correlation between people where their people are generally happy with their life in this organization and some measures of their satisfaction with the leader, and they assume quite erroneously that this shows there is such a thing as authentic leadership. In my opinion, the field is rife with these kinds of problems and not only with those kinds of problems.
Kieran Chandler: Yeah, and Johannes, you’re kind of in touch with supply chain directors and management teams on a weekly basis. I mean, what do you see is kind of the
Kieran Chandler: The impact of this kind of maybe meaningless research in some ways. What do you see the impact on those kind of management teams?
Joannes Vermorel: You see, my point is that it’s mostly negative, but in a way that is versatile. I believe that one of the characteristics of good science is that it’s profoundly counter-intuitive. Because if it was intuitive, you would not need science. In life, most of the things that are just intuitive, people have just known that. What we have called science in the modern way are all those areas where our intuition is just deceptive, where it’s just not sufficient, where we need to develop instruments. Because if intuition and basically sentiment were enough, those things would have been known 5000 years ago. And for example, I’ve met many of them, I would say brilliant supply chain directors or brilliant leaders. And the interesting thing is that brilliant in what sort of science? In the sense that they get results. And for example, one of the very surprising aspects is that most of those people in terms of personality are probably relatively discreet. They don’t necessarily, if you were to meet those people in a bar and have a discussion, you would be probably hardly pressed to think that this person is actually running a half a billion euro budget annually to run a supply chain. It looks like a very regular person with fairly modest behavior, and that’s something that is interesting.
Dennis Tourish: Because you see, in the sort of media and the sort of price when you say automatic leadership, you would think that you have some kind of flamboyant personality that has a lot of charisma, etc. But my casual observation would tend to point out pretty much the opposite. And I can even propose an explanation for that. If you are very, as a manager, you have a very strong personality, tons of charisma, it can have a dark side. The dark side can be that, for example, you just prevent descent. It’s very easy. You already have the upper hand just because you’re the boss. If, on top of that, not only you have the upper hand just because you’re higher in the hierarchy, if you on top of that, you yourself have a personality that is imposing upon the entire hierarchy, then the question is, where is there any room for descent? And again, you would think, why do you want descent? Well, it turns out that usually, that’s another thing about technology and science, it’s counter-intuitive. So if you ask most retailers at the end of the 90s, what do you think about e-commerce? Most people would think, “Well, we don’t care.” And maybe those people have young engineers that tell them it’s the future, but if you don’t tolerate descent and people who disagree with you, how are you going to embrace the next thing?
Kieran Chandler: Dennis, from your views then, what can be done? I mean, we sort of mentioned there are kind of gaps in management research.
Kieran Chandler: What can be done to improve supply chain optimization and make things more scientific?
Dennis Tourish: Well, I agree first of all very much with what Johannes has just said. I was interested that you used the expression of the dark side of charisma, and coincidentally I published a book a few years ago called “The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership” which addresses this. And I absolutely agree that we need to dissent within organizations, or else they would become totally dependent on the alleged wisdom of an infallible genius at the center. And that creates what have been described as fragile organizations because the organization is only as good as the last decision of the so-called infallible leader. So what do we need to do about all this?
Joannes Vermorel: I think there are a number of things that we need to do. We need to change the practices within academic journals so that they are more willing to publish what they regard as negative results - that is, published findings that don’t show statistical significance. I think our academic journals need to be open to more multiple modes of inquiry. I also think they actually need to put a little bit less emphasis on another thing that they stress too much, and that is the development of theory. I’m all in favor of theory; I think theory is a very good thing. The problem, however, with academic management research is that this becomes a condition of employment or publication. So, for example, if you have a very interesting empirical observation of a counter-intuitive kind - and I agree that they are the most important kinds of observations we can encounter - but you don’t yet have a fully developed theory to explain it, then it’s very difficult to get published. And what this encourages people to do is to engage in absolutely tortured, unreadable writing of the most pretentious kind, and which the tendency is to produce all kinds of obscure French philosophers, claiming that their contribution to management studies has been “unjustly neglected,” and then try to push some of their alleged insights as the basis for some new management practice. And in terms of these philosophers, the deader they are, the better, because then you can even more go out of your way to claim some kind of unique contribution.
Dennis Tourish: So those things I think need to be changed. And I also think, in terms of academic careers - and we’re talking about management studies here, the actual academic study of management - it would be very good if people were promoted more often for the quality of their ideas rather than necessarily where they publish those ideas. I think it would encourage more open-ended modes of inquiry, and maybe we need to put less emphasis on how much people publish and more on the quality of their work. Because one of the side effects of this is that it discourages people from asking big questions about important issues for which we do not have answers. And many of us are now pointing out that the amount of writing by management and organizational scholars on the really big problems facing the world is very tiny. I mean, I would say that even today, management journals have not had a great deal to say about the developing fourth industrial revolution, the growth of new technologies which are already revolutionizing the world of work. And the answer is that that’s a really big, important issue; we don’t yet have many definitive answers. It can be hard to gather data; you might begin a form of inquiry that will take you a very long time. But the pressure is on young academics, in particular, to publish a lot of material quickly.
Kieran Chandler: So it’s better to choose safe on controversial topics with tried and tested methods rather than look at questions that really really matter and I think that needs to change. It’s totally, in my opinion, dysfunctional at present.
Joannes Vermorel: Yeah, I mean, Dennis kind of touched on a few points that we’ve discussed recently. That idea of publications growing exponentially over the last 10-20 years and also that importance of negative knowledge. They’re all things that you’d certainly agree with, right, Dennis?
Dennis Tourish: Absolutely. I mean, one of my last lectures - I’m conducting a series of supply chain lectures - and actually one of the last lectures was literally negative knowledge for supply chains. Because we have, in the field of supply chain, we have this effect that we have essentially 90 plus case studies that are just demonstrating positive return on investment. And when I say 90, you know it’s a lower bound. It’s probably like 99 plus, you know, case studies that happen to be positive. But when you’re in the actual industry, you see pretty much the opposite ratio where most of the initiatives are not delivering ROI, which is not surprising because you see companies test stuff all the time and most of the things that they test end up, you know, not working. If you have the recipe to every single move that you make in a company, it would actually make the company more profitable, you would have like a complete money-making machine that would go, you know, completely, uh, uh, on a completely ballistic trajectory. That is impossible. I mean, even the best companies around keep making mistakes. Amazon made, you know, the Kindle Fire which was, you know, a completely failed smartphone. So even the very best companies keep making tons of mistakes. But the bottom line is that, yes, I completely agree with negative knowledge. I think it’s something that really deserves a lot more attention even if it’s kind of, um, it may appear as boring.
Joannes Vermorel: And also, one also another area where it’s, I would say, my pet interest would be - I would be very interested if papers in academia, the reviews were systematically being published with the names of the reviewers. So basically, if you are a reviewer who ends up being in the way of the publication of a paper that turned out to be very, very good, your name will be remembered as being on the wrong side of history. What do you think, Dennis? Would something like that work?
Dennis Tourish: Well, there are these debates taking place, and there are many people who advocate exactly that. I think the problem is maybe a little bit less with publishing the names and reviews, but a little bit more about how academic journal editors use these reviews as a crutch, and they therefore put the, uh, what peer review is - this will you submit a paper to an academic journal, it goes out to two or three other so-called experts who then give you feedback along the lines of reject, revise, and resubmit or accept. And sometimes editors send papers through that process far too many times so that the paper becomes utterly deformed, more and more complex as it goes through this process, and all life and individuality can be beaten out of it. So one of the things that I and other people advocate is that after two rounds of review, a decision should be made by editors in principle as to whether this will be published or whether it will not be.
Kieran Chandler: Let’s start wrapping things up by looking at things from the perspective of a modern-day manager within a business. Johannes, managers have to manage so many different things now, like staff welfare, diversity, and, of course, they need to manage the growth of the company. What should effective leaders be focusing on?
Joannes Vermorel: It’s very tough. My gut feeling is to find people you trust and get feedback. It’s just common sense, but it’s challenging. In terms of skills to develop, I think the most basic ones are important. For example, one underappreciated practice at Amazon that has fueled their success is working on written memos rather than PowerPoints. People tend to underplay the importance of simple things like that. With a written memo, you can’t cheat with your ideas; you need to have something that makes sense. You can’t just have bullet points that give the impression of consistency and coherent thoughts when it’s just a collection of things brought together. So, my suggestion is to focus on very basic elements, such as effective communication. It’s century-old sense, but I don’t pretend to have any specific expertise on recent results in management studies.
Kieran Chandler: Dennis, what do you think? We spoke about it earlier, this idea of managers having to create a happy environment. Would you say it’s a very challenging time to be a manager with so many things to juggle?
Dennis Tourish: Well, yes, but it always has been a challenging time to be a manager, hasn’t it? What worries me about a lot of the things that come out these days is that the expectation seems to be that the average manager should be a superman or superwoman, excelling on all fronts all the time, and on all issues, inspiring people, keeping them happy, coming up with strategic insights, and doing all kinds of wonderful things. Now, maybe one or two people in the world can do that, but most of us are closer to the average. I think one of the advantages of Johannes’s idea about dissent is that it’s another way of getting people to think like managers and become involved in the decision-making process themselves. The more an organization relies on the wisdom of a genius at the top, the more trouble it is in. I think we can do things to institutionalize these.
Kieran Chandler: Simple and basic things into the very top, for example, at top management meetings, we can more routinely spend time asking people, “What’s good about this decision? How could it be better? Or what’s wrong with this decision? What do we need to reconsider?” In a way, compelling all of us, including the CEO, to become more critical of the processes that are going underway. And in that way, we build a safe environment, a fearless organization in which it’s okay to have different opinions because when we look at organizational failure, I think most of the time it can be traced back to that failure to encourage that form of participation.
Dennis Tourish: I listened to a talk recently by a top general in the British Army. He was investigating the deaths of recruits during training exercises, and I recall he said that so far, every incident he had looked at, he had discovered that there always had been a point during the exercise in which it was obvious that something was going to go wrong, but nobody had spoken up. And the task that he saw in front of him was to try and create an environment in which, when people saw something clearly fundamentally going wrong, they would speak without fear of retribution. Well, I think there are analogies there with the world of business organizations as well. And too often, the people who point to something going wrong are regarded as contrarians who should be punished, rather than people who should be treasured, rewarded, and promoted. There’s a mind shift that has to take place in organizations to accomplish that.
Kieran Chandler: Yeah, and Joannes, do you see this as something that could change or will be changing in the future? Or do you feel that companies are going to continue in this kind of happy environment direction?
Joannes Vermorel: I mean, I hope it will change, but what I see on social media doesn’t look very good, you know. Even more, when I see large American companies that directly go completely “woke” on pushing one way to see the world. And the problem is that, precisely, when you say that, especially for example, I’ve seen large North American companies taking super strong positions on one presidential candidate versus another. From my own perspective, I would be horrified. I mean, who am I as a CEO to judge the political opinion of employees? That’s what “decent” means. It means that, whatever your political opinion, you have to be very tolerant. Again, tolerance is not that you agree, it’s just that you tolerate things that run contrary to what you believe. It doesn’t mean that you approve or endorse.
And when I see that in the media, when basically some employees of some companies do something horrible, an act that goes against mainstream values, the problem that I see is that suddenly it’s the company that is declared guilty, as if the company had to be monolithically aligned with the opinion of its employees. For me, that’s very troubling at so many levels because if suddenly the media can blame me for the opinions of my employees, then I need to be cautious.
Kieran Chandler: To do some witch hunting to get rid of the people who have opinions that I believe to be dangerous, and that’s, you see, that’s a very slippery slope. Okay, Dennis, we’ll leave the final word to you. What’s next for management studies? Can you see it regaining its reputation? What do you see as coming next?
Dennis Tourish: Well, it has a little bit to go because management studies as a discipline involves an awful lot of fad surfing. We identify this, that, or the other fad or a new buzzword, and then go herring after it at warp factor 10 to usually no productive effect. But if I can have the last word, I would like to say something again about the importance of dissent. You see, I think that there is only one organizational context that I can think of where everybody agrees with everybody else all the time on all important issues, and that’s a graveyard. In the real world that the rest of us live in, people do have dissenting opinions all the time anyway. If the CEO or the top people aren’t hearing them, that just means they’re being expressed behind their backs. It’s far better to get these opinions out into the open and then try and take positive advantage of them. If there is any way forward for management studies, then I hope and I do believe that there is, it is definitely that more and more people are becoming dissatisfied with the status quo. Academics themselves are more and more dissatisfied with this, and the publication of my book is part of that trend to expressing skeptical opinions. More critical pieces are appearing in our academic journals, and there are more academic journals appearing that are attempting to address these kinds of questions in a more productive and systematic manner than is the norm. I’m delighted to be a little bit a part of that, and I hope that more people will join us in the future.
Kieran Chandler: Okay, brilliant. We’ll have to wrap it up there, but thank you both for your time. So that’s everything for this week. Thanks very much for tuning in, and we’ll see you again in the next episode. Thanks for watching.
